[B-Greek] Romans 8:23

Craig J newsgroupstuff at gmail.com
Sun May 21 18:20:13 EDT 2006


> I am looking at Romans 8:23, where is says, "the redemption 
> of our body."  The resource that I have (Zodhiates The 
> Complete WordStudy New Testament) shows the word "our" as a 
> personal pronoun rather than a possessive pronoun, and it 
> shows the word "body" as a noun with a definite article.  
> With that in mind, why then was it translated as "our body" 
> rather than something like "us, the body" or "we, the body"?  
> Would "us, the body" be a valid translation from the Greek?  
> Please keep the answer fairly simple, as I'm not a Greek 
> scholar.  Thank you very much.
> 
> Mark Frost

Here is the Greek from 8:23:

hUIOQESIAN APEKDECOMENOI, THN APOLUTRWSIN TOU SWMATOS hHMWN

The TOU SWMATOS hHMWN seems quite a normal to write "of the body of us" or
"of our body".

For example in Luke 1:75 we have PASAS TAS hHMERAS THS ZWHS hHMWN as "all
the days of the life of us" or "all the days of our life". I don't think it
would make sense here to say "all the days of the life, us". This has the
same pattern of singular genitive noun with the article, followed by the
genitive personal pronoun.

However, I find you question interesting, as I take it you are suggesting it
might mean 'the body' as the one corporate, collective body of Christ (=
'us') and not the many individual physical bodies of us. I wonder, how would
the Greek translate it if it meant the former, and would it be any different
than in 8:23. How would the personal pronoun be put in apposition with TOU
SWMATOS?

Also, I wondered if there is some rule about when to use singular or plural
for nouns in Greek. Eg what would be the difference in meaning between TOU
SWMATOS hHMWN and TWN SWMATWN hHMWN?

--
Craig Johnson
Brisbane, Australia
Blog Experiment: http://bloggledegook.blogspot.com/




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