[B-Greek] ek pistews

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Wed May 30 17:10:55 EDT 2007


mark spitsbergen wrote:
> Dear List Members,
>
> If Paul meant to say "by faith" why didn't he simply use "dia pistews" or "en pistews" instead of "ek pistews" (Romans 1:17; 3:26,30; 4:12,16; 5:1; 9:30,32; 10:6; 14:23; Galatians 2:16; 3:2,5,7,8,9,11,12,22,24; 5:5; Philippians 3:9)? It appears to me that the more legitimate translation of 'ek' (as a preposition governing a genitive) would be: "from", "out of", or "away from." If so, then Paul must have intended to communicate to us a realm of the Spirit rather than a mental or philosophical affirmation (Galatians 5:22; Jude 20; 1 Corinthians 12:9). 
>   

Hi Mark,

I'm not at all sure what you are trying to suggest. Are you saying that 
when Paul uses the phrase "ek pistews", then pistews refers to a realm 
of the Spirit? I'm not sure what you mean by the phrase, or whether you 
can point to some place where Paul makes this clear.

In general, prepositions are used quite differently from one language to 
another, and it seems to me that you are arguing mostly on the basis of 
logical associations you have with English translations of the 
prepostion ek. That kind of argument makes me nervous ....

Jonathan



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