Re: Addendum: a holy spirit

On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 08:15:31AM +0100, Philip Newton wrote:
[...]
> No definite article before "holy spirit" in any of those three passages.
>
> I never studied NT Greek, though, so can't speak to the significance
> or not of the absence or presence of the definite article.
Keep in mind that Greek does not have an indefinite article, so the
absence of the definite article does not necessarily mean that the NP
is indefinite. E.g. the initial portion of the gospel of John reads:

	en arxe: e:n ho logos. kai ho logos e:n pros ton theon. kai theos e:n
	ho logos.

In the last clause, _theos_ (God) appears without a definite article.
Although most orthodox Christians understand that it refers to (the)
God, and indeed, there are a number of places in the New Testament
where _theos_ appears without a definite article yet clearly referring
to the unique God (from context), some people claim that it has an
indefinite meaning. Now, this debate is way out of my depth, but it
shows you that it takes a lot more than a mere superficial knowledge
of Greek to be able to properly translate it.

Also keep in mind that the Greek definite article does not always
behave like the English definite article; Classical Greek tends to use
the article with all proper names (hence, _ho sokrate:s_ rather than
merely _sokrate:s_). I don't know if this is still true in Koine Greek
(==NT Greek), but it should warn one not to quickly jump to
conclusions based on how the article behaves in other languages.


T

--
Freedom: (n.) Man's self-given right to be enslaved by his own depravity.

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