David,
David Lim wrote:Jesus' name is only partially declinable, having been borrowed from the Hebrew word "Yeshua" (Joshua) and transliterated into "ΙΗΣΟΥ".
This is your opinion, since the Greek name Ἰησοῦς was used throughout the Septuagint to translate יהושע (Yehoshua), and ישוע (Yeshua) appeared late in the Tanach and is also translated in the same way. There's certainly no way to be sure what Jesus' Hebrew or Aramaic name
may have been, so this should be stated as an opinion for the sake of those who read the forum and would come away with the impression of authority from our posters' contributions.
David Lim wrote:The use of the article with names seems rather haphazard and dependent on whether it sounds better, varying with the author, but usually used when resuming a reference to the same person mentioned a while previously. In Funk's Grammar there is a very brief mention of it at
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/f ... on-49.html, I supposed because there is no really clear reason for the presence or absence of the article with proper names.
This is the more relevant portion of your post, I think. The link you provided does touch on the question being discussed, and it reduces this use of the article to grammatical need — on the one hand to signal a return to the same person who was spoken of before, and on the other hand to indicate case in a non-declinable name (such as the example with Philip and Nathaniel).
Very nice link! But, again, you probably gave too much information for this specific question in your first paragraph. Don't you think we should, as Louis has done, first attempt to find out what the participant is studying from, if anything? Our goal should be to get them to engage some textbook, any textbook of worth, to begin to study Greek seriously — not to inundate them with information about declensions and cases and exceptions... unless this is what their question touched on. Here, the question was specifically about the use of the article, so try to focus your answer on that and then give a nudge in the direction of formal study.
Know what I mean?
Your second paragraph was great, with the link and the focus on answering the question. Very nice!

Jason A. Hare
Rehovot, Israel