From: Bryant J. Williams III (bjwvmw@com-pair.net)
Date: Thu May 17 2001 - 13:22:57 EDT
Dear David:
I understand where you are coming from regarding the nomitive case, but here
are few things that I remind myself.
1) BGAD p. 357, QEOS, #2
"Some writings in our lit. use the word Q. w. ref. to Christ, though the
interpretation of some the pass. is in debate." "On the other hand, Q,.
certainly refers to Christ in the foll. NT passages.: J 1:1b...(w. HO QEOS
1:1a, which refers to God the Father; on QEOS w. and without the article,
acc. to whether it means God or the Logos, s. Philo, Somn. 1, 229f;
JGGriffiths, ET 62, '50f, 314-316;BMMetzger, ET 63, '51f, 125f), 18b (my
note: this last references is to J 1:18b). HO KURIOS MOU KAI HO QEOS MOU my
Lord and my God! (nom. w. art. = voc.; s. beg. of this entry) 20:28 (on the
combination of KURIOS and QEOS s. 3c below). Tit 2:13 (MEGAS Q.). Hb 1:8,9
(in a quot. fr. Ps 44:7, 8 [45:7,8])."
2) Since this is a quote from the LXX, preceding the NT, by about 200-250
years. This is not a Christian interpolation of the text. True, it is a
Christian interpretation of the text, apparently going back to Christ (Lk
24:44). In fact, all the quotes found in Hebrews are from the LXX.
3)Further examination of the NIV Triglot Old Testament (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1981), in which I compared the LXX and MT, shows that the quote
is a direct translation of the Hebrew; although the NT quote is not precise
from the LXX (no article with AIWNA and AIWOS, EUQUTHTAS)
4)It has been my opinion that the Church, as a whole, has not paid enough
attention to the use of the LXX by authors of the NT, especially as it
relates to matters of grammatical structure.
Thank You in Christ,
Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Thiele" <thielogian@yahoo.com>
To: "Biblical Greek" <b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 3:19 PM
Subject: [b-greek] Re: Heb.1:8 Is Jesus God or is God the Throne?
> I appreciate the concerns (with regard to Heb 1:8)
> that have been expressed about getting into
> theological discussions on this forum. I have no
> desire to do so. (I am unreservedly trinitarian in my
> theology).
>
> However, I have a question regarding the Greek of this
> verse. By my reading QEOS is in the Nominative Case
> and has a Nominative article. How is it possible to
> translate it as a vocative? I have always been given
>
> to understand that there is no vocative article, that
> is, that vocatives cannot take an article.
>
> From a grammatical point of view I would have thought
> Wayne's options 2 and 3 were the only ones available.
> Have I missed something.
>
> Regards
>
> David Thiele
> Pacific Adventist University
>
> --- Wayne Leman <Wayne_Leman@SIL.ORG> wrote: >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Harry W. Jones" <hjbluebird@aol.com>
> > >
> > > Dear B-Greekers,
> > >
> > > I could use some help on this. Most translations
> > that I know of
> > > translate this as Jesus having a throne and being
> > God. But the New
> > > World Translation (no I'm not a Jehovah Witiness)
> > translates it as
> > > God being the throne without Jesus being God. The
> > question is, could
> > > this passage be translated the NWT way?
> >
> > It looks possible to me that hO QRONOS SOU hO QEOS
> > can be translated with
> > "God" as either:
> >
> > 1. vocative ("your throne, O, God, is forever...",
> > as in most English
> > versions), or
> > 2. nominative subject of an equative construction
> > ("God is your throne..."),
> > or
> > 3. predicate nominative of an equative construction
> > ("your throne is God...)
> >
> > I just looked in a nice exegetical summary I have of
> > Hebrews, written by the
> > Greek professor J. Harold Greenlee, and he points
> > out the same options. If
> > you are commentary counting, option 1 wins, by far,
> > but that could be
> > attributed to the theology of the commentators.
> >
> > I am not Arian, either, but I think that we do need
> > to recognize that all 3
> > exegetical options are possible here. To me it makes
> > better theological
> > sense that God would be telling his messianic son
> > that his throne will last
> > forever, since this seems to be a quote to that
> > effect from the OT, and
> > there are other Bible passages that speak of the
> > eternal throne of the
> > messiah.
> >
> > But the exegetical options are still there are
> > cannot be ruled out purely on
> > syntactic or other linguistic grounds, as far as I
> > can tell.
> >
> > Wayne
> > ---
> > Wayne Leman
> > Bible Translation discussion list:
> > bible-translation-subscribe@kastanet.org
> > Bible translation site:
> > http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> > B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> > You are currently subscribed to b-greek as:
> > [thielogian@yahoo.com]
> > To unsubscribe, forward this message to
> > leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
> > To subscribe, send a message to
> > subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
> >
> >
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk
> or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [bjwvmw@com-pair.net]
> To unsubscribe, forward this message to
leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
> To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
>
>
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:57 EDT