Heb 11:1 Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ...

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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Heb 11:1 Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ...

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I got a decent response from an Aaron Jensen on Facebook:
It's topical. Faith was just mentioned in the context, so here “faith is” is topical to clarify up front the sentence is meant to provide a definition of said faith, and then that definition is allowed to be the accented beginning of its intonational phrase. Topicalizing a copula like this is a little clumsier in English, but we still might say something like, “Now as for what faith is, it’s …"
If the subject is "what faith is," that can explain the anarthrous πίστις (cf. Barry's suggestion of being qualitative).
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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