Help! John 8:44 EK TOU PATROS TOU DIABOLOU
DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Sun, 18 Aug 1996 15:23:09 -0700 (PDT)
Jonathan, your translation "the father of the devil" is a possible way to
translate the phrase, though there are other ways this idea could be expressed
in Greek (e.g. TOU TOU DIABOLOU PATROS). The "your" found in most translations
is derived from the article TOU before "father", because Greek often just used
articles in this way to indicate possession when the possessor was obvious
from the context. The equation of "father" with "devil" comes from the infer-
ence that TOU DIABOLOU is in apposition with TOU PATROS, i.e. that it clarifies
or further identifies the latter. This can be done by using the genitive case
alone, or by placing the appositional word in the same case (which happens to
be genitive here) as the word it clarifies.
Don Wilkins
UC Riverside