ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἰσραήλ: objective or subjective genitive?

[Andrew Chapman]

"the language of love" (the one others are assuming) = "the language that pertains to love" which implies "the language that love speaks"

I know that God speaks, and that men speak, and I admit that wisdom may cry out, but does love speak, or is it men and women who express love for one another in word and deed?

What is the benefit of knowing what name every useage of the genitive has?

Another reason is so that I can understand the commentaries on the Greek text of the New Testament which use this terminology.

Here are some other examples that show that the English "of" (excluding the idiomatic uses) has about the same flexibility as the (non-idiomatic) Greek genitive:

Yes, I have noticed this and find it quite surprising. But there are exceptions and it is these that first got me interested in the subject. In particular, one may hear a preacher say that ἔχετε πίστιν Θεοῦ should not be translated 'have faith in God' because the Greek text really says 'have the faith of God' or 'have God's faith'. And as it happens, I was trying to demonstrate to one such bible teacher that this isn't necessarily true, by showing how the genitive can have either an objective or subjective force in English with some words such as 'love', as a way of making it comprehensible that in a different language faith in somebody or something could be expressed with a genitive, even though it can't be in English.

Andrew

[Jonathan Robie]

'Darling, what does 'the language of love' mean to you?'

'If you do something by word or deed, that communicates your love to me, .. that is the language of love.'

'I thought so, that's the objective genitive.'

Silence. (This 'metalanguage', or this technical grammatical terminology, is evidently not the language of love.)

I'm with your wife. That silence is telling you something.

I think you are beating your head against the wall needlessly here. English "of" links one English noun to another in the same way that an adnominal genitive links one Greek noun to another Greek noun. Forget about "subjective" and "objective" descriptors here -- they are neither needed nor helpful; in fact they only serve to obfuscate; the "language of love," as you very well know, is the language that lovers speak to each other, while the "love of language" is the passion that philologists, Hellenic or otherwise, share with each other. If you don't grasp intuitively what these words mean -- particularly when you see them used in context -- they you won't ever grasp them.

Yeah. That's what your wife's silence is telling you.

[Jonathan Robie]

Another reason is so that I can understand the commentaries on the Greek text of the New Testament which use this terminology.

For that, you mostly need to know how to look up the terms as they occur in the commentaries. And in Wallace and Mounce, you will find categories that the commentaries do not use.

[Stephen Hughes]

What is the benefit of knowing what name every useage of the genitive has?

One perhaps less important reason is that this system is used not only by Wallace, but by a whole tradition of grammarians, both classical and New Testament. I would like to understand the system fully, before I consider whether to keep, discard or modify it. If several generations have found it useful, perhaps it has some or much value.

No. Wallace is a different animal. What makes it different from Robertson, Smyth, etc. is that teaches the student to make a half-conjectural translation, and then to (at least implicitly) reason back from English to the Greek. The student never leaves the grid of thinking in English and translating.

Robertson by quoting his teacher warns about this,

Another reason is so that I can understand the commentaries on the Greek text of the New Testament which use this terminology.

For that, you mostly need to know how to look up the terms as they occur in the commentaries. And in Wallace and Mounce, you will find categories that the commentaries do not use.

More categories, and finer distinctions in understanding are generally a good thing in any field of knowledge. By playing advocatus diaboli in asking your goal, it may have seemed that I don't think learning the categories is a useful use of a learner's time. Actually, I think that at a point in the language acquisition process, a foreign language becomes so totally strange and difficult to relate to. The feeling is that everything you thought you knew is not what you actually know and you become unsure of everything. After a little while, things become familiar again but in a way that is suitable for the target language. I think that during that process, it is very useful to at least be aware of the (many) categories that others have found before you, and to let them guide you in your own search for meaning. If the list of categories (of genitives) is rote learnt without meaning before considering their use in texts, that can be useful because the categories can be recalled at that time. If one already has a reading knowledge and has developed some opinions about the use and fuction of a genitive in a given situation, then seeing other categories that others have suggested may challenge or suggest alternative understandings that we had not considered before - which can be a good thing. "look up the terms as they occur in commentaries" (JR) is good advice, but when you have had experience in almost all of them, you could consider learning the others just by rote - without much effort.

I think that by following the way of learning by metalanguage, that you are presently following, at a later stage of learning, you will eventually come to more and more consider the relatedness of the uses of the genitive rather than their distinctiveness. That will be a natural return to equilibrium. The advice that has been given about learning examples of each type genitive as example, will help you understand the relatedness in a more gradual and relaxed way as you learn the distinctions.

[Stephen Hughes]

Beharkener? Is that Aussie for one who tries to pay attention? I don't know where I stand with regard to the still point of the turning universe, but I think I'd better quit while (I think) I'm ahead.

Well, let's not blame the whole country for that silly word. I see now that it perhaps would have been more correctly (but none-the-less ignorantly) been constructed as "behearkener". Our underlying assumptions about what is fixed what is able to be challenged, and what in the opinion of that person or group can be naturally be expected to change is an interesting way to read across what people are saying without neccessarily getting involved in what they are really trying to say. Anyway, enough of this rubbish.

[Stephen Carlson]

Beharkener? Is that Aussie for one who tries to pay attention? I don't know where I stand with regard to the still point of the turning universe, but I think I'd better quit while (I think) I'm ahead.

Well, let's not blame the whole country for that silly word.

Google cannot find a single page with that word, so it's quite an accomplishment to come with something sounding plausible that does not exist in Google's indices.

[Stephen Hughes]

Google cannot find a single page with that word, so it's quite an accomplishment to come with something sounding plausible that does not exist in Google's indices.

It will be interesting to see how long till it gets on the list.

[cwconrad]

Beharkener? Is that Aussie for one who tries to pay attention? I don't know where I stand with regard to the still point of the turning universe, but I think I'd better quit while (I think) I'm ahead.

Well, let's not blame the whole country for that silly word.

Google cannot find a single page with that word, so it's quite an accomplishment to come with something sounding plausible that does not exist in Google's indices.

But the intelligible "beharkener" is surely as plausible-sounding as some of the jargon coined by linguists. Even after i know what they mean by "grammaticalize," I'm still befuddled (and irked) by the barbarous-sounding neologism.

[Stephen Hughes]

harken -> beharken - intransitive verb -> transitive veb?

Reactivating a formerly active verbal component to form a "new" word even for a joke is plausible. I think that the -er on beholder is also a bit grating, since behold (and hark too) sort of lives on in the interjection. Due to the limited evidence for Greek, it is something that we need to do when composing, I think.

The intended sense is, It's a compliment Carl if you want to listen to it in that way. The following post explained what I admired in more detail.

[Andrew Chapman]

Forget about "subjective" and "objective" descriptors here -- they are neither needed nor helpful; in fact they only serve to obfuscate; the "language of love," as you very well know, is the language that lovers speak to each other, while the "love of language" is the passion that philologists, Hellenic or otherwise, share with each other.

Thanks, Carl, that's clear. You had previously said, with regard to 'the love of language' and 'the language of love' that:

We may say that "of language" represents an "objective" function of the prepositional phase "of language" and we may say that "of love" represents a "subjective" function of the prepositional phrase "of love"

which I understood to mean that you saw 'love' as doing the speaking. Also, David Lim said that:

"the language of love" (the one others are assuming) = "the language that pertains to love" which implies "the language that love speaks"

again making 'love' the subject of the speaking that may be implied in 'language'.

Understanding what an expression in Koine Greek means is a matter of intuition, not of analysis in terms formulated by a metalanguage. Rather the metalanguage assists us in discussing with each other how the expression in Kone Greek can bear the meaning that it does.

How would you advise me, sir, to develop such an intuition? I notice that commentators on the Greek text of the New Testament come to very different conclusions on the force of adnominal genitives in key passages. One reason I like to read what the nineteenth century commentators have to say is that I think that a higher proportion of them would have had the opportunity to develop their intuition in Greek by reading the classical literature from a young age. I have used my intuition to understand English 'of' genitives for fifty odd years without recourse to any grammatical system of classification so I can see that that must be the right end result, but I wonder if there needs to be a process of conscious deconstruction of one's natural English intuition in order to avoid imposing it inappropriately upon the Greek text. In the case of a language still spoken today, then no doubt one can gain that intuition by immersion, but how does one do it for an ancient language? For those of us whose primary interest is in reading and understanding the New Testament, how important is it for us to spend time reading a) classical Greek, b) the LXX c) general Koine literature? And could learning modern spoken Greek be helpful too?

Thanks for your help,

Andrew