[B-Greek] Novice question on Mark 9:29
timothy mcmahon
targum at msn.com
Sat Aug 22 01:58:53 EDT 2009
EXACTLY what I was looking for - the word definitions helped, but a grammatical explanation (if there was one in this case) was what I hunting.
Thanks so much - I remember now that I have read that the pronoun agrees with the antecedent, but lately I think I've read so much, I've forgotten what I read!
Ken B.
I didn't see where anyone actually answered Kenneth's question on Mark 9:29, "What "kind" comes out by prayer - unbelief or a demon?" Harold was right in that the demon is what is
the antecedent but Kenneth said up front that this is a novice question, so I think we need to tell "him" (Kenneth, the antecedent of the pronoun "him") why the demon is being referred to.
Kenneth, a pronoun agrees with its antecedent in gender and number. That is why TOUTO TO GENOS (Neuter) refers back to PNEUMA (Neuter) and not unbelief APISTIA (Feminine).
rod rogers
bargersville, in
"EXACTLY what I was looking for" -- too bad it's incorrect, though.
TOUTO in this verse is not a pronoun referring back to an antecedent. It's a demonstrative ADJECTIVE modifying GENOS. It's neuter to agree with the noun it modifies. The gender of TOUTO has nothing to do with any antecedent noun, much less one as far back in the passage as APISTIA or PNEUMA.
The correct answer to Ken's question is that the Greek text does not identify what TOUTO TO GENOS ultimately refers to. It simply tells us "this kind" without telling us "this kind of what." If I may exceed the desired scope of the list ever so slightly, I'd say logically it's "this kind of spirit" that goes out since the spirit is what's being cast out. But that's my interpretation, not a fact derived from the syntax or morphology of the text.
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list