Re: Hebrews 10-26

From: Karen Pitts (karen_pitts@maca.sarnoff.com)
Date: Mon Oct 02 1995 - 21:29:44 EDT


Re> Hebrews 10:26 10/3/95 9:21 AM

At 12:28 PM 10/2/95, Paul Watkins wrote: (and Ron Stephens / CLCC@pacifier.com
forwarded)

>As my knowledge of Greek grammar is not yet sufficient to answer this next
>question, please forgive my ignorance: in Hebrews 10:26 where does the word
>"if" come in? "Ekousiws gar hamartanontwn hemwn" (am I spelling that right
in
>English?) - is it inherent in the declension of one of those words? If so,
>which class does the protasis fall into? Theologically, I would expect a 2nd
>class condition but I'm not knowledgable enough to determine if that is so.
>
>Please write to me directly, as I am not currently subscribed to the list.
>
>
>Paul Watkins
>Grace College and Seminary
>

Ron and Paul:

I don't have any references here at work so I can't answer the "eike"
question. The other phrase from Hebrews is a construction called a Genitive
Absolute, with participles in the genitive case. In this case both the
subject and the verb (participle) are in the genitive case. These
constructions frequently indicate causal issues, such as "because, since,
although, if, when", which is where the "if" comes from, and also indicate the
subject of the dependent clause is different from the independent. If you
look up the introduction of participles and look for the words "gentitive
absolute" in any grammar, you'll find a more detailed explanation.

Karen Pitts
Hopewell Pres. Church, Hopewell, N.J., teacher of NT Greek
David Sarnoff Research Center, Princeton, N.J., statistician
kpitts@sarnoff.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:28 EDT