Genitives in Revelation 11:15

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lutherkent
Posts: 1
Joined: April 30th, 2021, 11:07 am

Genitives in Revelation 11:15

Post by lutherkent »

Hello. I have a question about the genitive phrases in Revelation 11:15:

Ἐγένετο ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ κόσμου τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν καὶ τοῦ χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ

How do we know that τοῦ κυρίου does not modify τοῦ κόσμου? (Something awkward like "the kingdom of the world of [our] Lord"? I understand an implied βασιλεία as the object of Ἐγένετο but I'm wanting to understand how to know to apply τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν καὶ τοῦ χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ to this implied object.
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Genitives in Revelation 11:15

Post by Jonathan Robie »

I can see how this is tricky. This is a subject / predicate construction. I have marked the verb, the subject, and the predicate below:

v Ἐγένετο
s ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ κόσμου
p τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν καὶ τοῦ χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ

So why is the predicate genitive rather than nominative? Because this tells us whose kingdom it has now become. Perhaps this becomes more obvious if I add a few words to make it very explicit:

v Ἐγένετο
s ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ κόσμου
p [ἡ βασιλεία] τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν καὶ τοῦ χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ

Does that help?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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