View Single Post
  #4  
Old 03-19-2008, 01:18 PM
Praxeas's Avatar
Praxeas Praxeas is offline
Go Dodgers!


 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 45,794
Re: Masculine or Feminine?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Singrkel View Post
Can anyone explain to me this whole masculine and feminine nouns and verbs in the Greek and Hebrew? Are there counterparts for each word? How do you know which one is the right one?
Greek has masculine, feminine and neuter nouns.

Generally context determines what should be used. Im not sure there are always m,F and N versions of each noun or not. For example church in greek is feminine....Now there is no reason in the context to determine the church is a she...unless in greek language all non personal bodies are "shes" then there might just be one gender word for church...for example we often refer to a ship as a she.

However I do know that nouns and pronouns most usually coincide...if the noun is masculine the pronoun must be masculine...if the noun is neuter the pronoun must be neuter.

So every time spirit is mentioned the noun is the neuter gender pnuema and so the pronoun grammatically MUST be a neuter pronoun "it".....and this IS the case in places like Romans where the Trinitarians have "himself" the pronoun is really "itself".

In John though they point out that there is a masculine pronoun with Spirit in Jn 14...however greek scholars like Daniel Wallace point out the antecedent is the masculine "comforter".

I always wondered why there seems to be only one gender for spirit...pneuma....so either they were trying to say spirit is neuter gender and OR there IS only one gender in the greek for Spirit.
__________________
Let it be understood that Apostolic Friends Forum is an Apostolic Forum.
Apostolic is defined on AFF as:


  1. There is One God. This one God reveals Himself distinctly as Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
  2. The Son is God himself in a human form or "God manifested in the flesh" (1Tim 3:16)
  3. Every sinner must repent of their sins.
  4. That Jesus name baptism is the only biblical mode of water baptism.
  5. That the Holy Ghost is for today and is received by faith with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues.
  6. The saint will go on to strive to live a holy life, pleasing to God.
Reply With Quote