From: Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Jun 23 1997 - 08:01:54 EDT
At 04:47 AM 6/23/97 -0700, Josef Lowder wrote:
>To: b-greek@virginia.edu
>Subject: 2 Corinthians 9:7 "God loves"?
>
>ekastos kaqws proaireitai th kardia mh ek luphs h ex anagkhs
>each as purposes the heart not of sorrow or of necessity
>
>ilaron gar dothn agapa o qeoV
>cheerful for giver loves God
>
>What criteria of Greek grammatical construction warrants or requires
>the translation "for God loves [a] cheerful giver" (as seems to be an
>almost universal translation in most English texts) ... rather than
>"for [the] cheerful giver loves God" ?
In Greek, the subject is in nominative, and the direct object will be in the
accusative. Actually, this is even true of English to some extent:
I hit him ("I" is nominative, "him" is accusative)
He hit me ("He" is nominative, "me" is accusative)
In Greek, word order is much more flexible, and the use of cases is much
stronger, so word order is next to useless for deciding who the subject is,
but case is very useful. Look for that nominative noun when you want to know
the subject of a sentence.
In "hILARON GAR DOTHN AGAPA hO QEOS," hO QEOS is nominative, so God is the
one who loves. DOTHN is accusative, so the cheerful giver is the one who is
loved.
Does this help?
Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com http://www.mindspring.com/~jwrobie
POET Software, 3207 Gibson Road, Durham, N.C., 27703 http://www.poet.com
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