Re: PRWTOTOKOS, Partitive Words and listing of LXX use (64 verses)

From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Sat Nov 07 1998 - 22:06:38 EST


At 07:08 PM 11/7/98 -0700, Wes Williams wrote:
 
>_A Dictionary of Modern English Usage_, by H.W. Fowler, 1994, p. 613, says:
>
>partitive (Gram.) ...
>P[artitive] words are such nouns & pronouns as by their nature imply the
>separating or distinguishing of a part of some whole from the rest, such as
>part, portion, half, much, superlatives, some, any, each ; the p[artitive]
>genitive is that of the word denoting the whole, which is made to depend on
>a p[artitive] word by being put in the genitive in fully inflected
>languages, but in English attached to it by of.
>
>The word "firstborn" (PRWTOTOKOS) is intrinsically such a partitive word.
 
As I understand your statement, the construction PRWTOTOKOS PASHS KTISEWS
implies that the PRWTOTOKOS is also part of PASHS KTISEWS because (1)
PRWTOTOKOS is intrinsically a partitive word, and (2) the genitive noun
denotes the noun of which the partitive noun is a part.

In Revelation 1:5, Jesus is called hO PRWTOTOKOS TWN NEKRWN. Using your
reasoning, I would think this would imply that Jesus is one of the dead,
which seems contrary to other statements made by the author of the Revelation.

Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com

Little Greek Home Page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/koine
Little Greek 101: http://sunsite.unc.edu/koine/greek/lessons
B-Greek Home Page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
B-Greek Archives: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek/archives

---
B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@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 - 15:40:06 EDT