R. Perkins wrote:Well, I finally passed Greek I with an overall grade of 95%. And, it's been several weeks since I've looked at the text books so I'm finding out really fast that "if you don't use it, you lose it

."
Question (I hope this is the place to ask this?): While discussing "aner" and "gune" my proff. mentioned something about "natural gender" & "arbitrary gender." Is anyone familiar with this? He said that there are nouns that are "naturally" gender specific (e.g., John or Mary), then there are nouns that seem to have no rhyme or reason as to why they are gender specific (e.g., "Ekklesia" is feminine).
I've been looking closely at ἀποστόλοις in Rom. 16.7. My query is that while looking at the nouns used for the entire 5-fold ministry, I noted that they are all in the masculine. Would this be simply due to "people group" nouns (i.e., arbitrary gender) or is this a "natural gender"?
I am not asking a theological question (hope this question is not out of order

), just wondering about the gender issue & if there's any meaning to this?
Thank you much in advance.
I would express it as "natural gender" and "grammatical gender" - the natural gender of a noun is the gender of the thing to which it applies
ἀνηρ, πατηρ, Πετρος, Παυλος, ἀδελφος all refer to masculine entities, and have a natural and a grammatical masculine gender.
γυνη, μητηρ, θυγατηρ, Mαρια, Mαρθα, ἀδελφη all refer to feminine entities, and have a natural and a grammatical feminine gender.
However, some entities are naturally neuter, but have endings and decline like the words ending in -ος
So λογος, οἰνος, θρονος, κοσμος are said to be grammatically masculine - because they behave like the main bunch of masculine nouns.
and ἀγαπη, εἰρηνη, ἐπιστολη, καρδια, ἡμερα are said to be grammatically feminine - because they behave like the main bunch of feminine nouns.
When one comes to the plural, there is an added complication, in that one may be dealing with a group of entities, some of whom are naturally masculine, and some of whom are naturally feminine. For this it seems that the masculine forms are used as a common catch-all, and are probably best translated by an English common noun (if available).
So οἱ ἁγιοι are "the saints" and οἱ Ῥωμαιοι are the Romans (or the people of Rome, etc). Similarly τοις οὐσιν ἐν . . . may be translated as "to those in . . . ".
So it might be taken that in Romans 16:7 the ἀποστολοι to whom Paul refers may include some women - particularly when one sees (16:6, 12, 13, 15) references to Mαρια, Tρυφαιναν και Tρυφωσαν τας κοπιωσας ἐν κυριῳ, Ῥουφον και την μητερα αὐτου, Nηρεα και την ἀδελφην αὐτου
The relationships between -o or -u endings and grammatical masculine, and between -a or -ay endings and grammatical feminine are shown by many Indo-European languages.
Of course, there are always exceptions

and there are a few -os nouns which are treated as feminine, and a group of -ας and -ης nouns which are masculine (Ἀνδρεας, προφητης)
Somewhere at the bottom of it all there is (or was) a rhyme and reason for why things are the way they are - but it's all back a couple of thousand years in the start of the language and the various dialects that coalesced to form what we have now.
So keep on reading Greek, and keep on thinking about it and asking

Best wishes with Greek II
Shirley Rollinson