PRWTOTOKOS with EK in Col 1.18

Juan Stam B (jstam@irazu.una.ac.cr)
Mon, 24 Feb 1997 23:15:54 -0600 (CST)

Thanks, Ron, for your comment on KTISIS but my question was about the EK
in Col 1.18. Something makes me get a sense like "firstborn out of from
among the dead" (in atrocious English!); my feel is that the EK makes it
emphatically partitive, perhaps by contrast to the simple genitive in
1.15, which could also be partitive but by contrast to 1.18 could be a
genitive of comparison (firstborn before all creation, as Louw-Nida render
1.15).

While what Ron says about KTISIS is obviously true, and I wasn't really
pointing to the difference between singular in 1.15 and plural in 1.18, I
wonder whether a full parallel of the two phrases (1.15; 1.18), if the
author had also used EK in 1.15 and then the plural of KTISIS or even of
KTISMA, the sense of 1.15 would have then been explicitly partitive. My
intuitive hunch is that by differentiating the two phrases, the author
means to communicate some nuanced distinction in their meaning.