D
DelsonJacobs
Guest
If the Trinitarian “Holy Spirit” is also a person, such as is the Father and Son, of which singular personal pronouns are used e.g. “I, you, who, he, him, his…”, many, many times, just why is there not a single use (in the original Greek, not biased translation English) of any personal pronoun used of such so-called “Holy Spirit”!–A.G., Jehovah’s Witness.
You must not be familiar with the fact that there are several such usages for the Spirit in Scripture, in particular John chapter 16. But you are also confusing Greek grammatical gender form with English pronoun usage.
Tables Aren’t Women, But “She” is Pretty
People who do not speak other languages are often unaware that translation from one tongue to another is not a word-for-word process. Other languages often use grammatical tools in ways that do not exist in English, one of which applies here to this question: grammatical gender inflection and concord.
What is that?
Of all other languages, speakers of American English may be more familiar with Spanish than anything else. So I will use this to present an example.
In Spanish the word “table” has a feminine gender, even though it is an inanimate object.
Because of this all the words associated with “table” in Spanish are either modified (inflection) or related words such as the article “the” or pronouns must be chosen from the same gender pool (concord).
While in English we speak of a table in the neuter form:
This is a table. It sits in the other room.
In Spanish we literally say:
She is a table. She sits in the other room.
The grammatical gender can sometimes even be the opposite of the gender of the subjects involved too. A group of children is always spoken of in the masculine even if it consists of boys and girls (and sometimes even only girls). The term “niños” literally means “boys” even though the group has more than just boys in it.
Generally speaking, grammatical gender does not get translated from other languages into English because it deals with form and function or syntax rules unique to the specific language we are translating from. Grammatical gender is often nothing more than a tool used to preserve the logic employed in the language and can have nothing to do with the subject at all. Literal gender has to be translated from the context and not the grammatical gender syntax, otherwise we would be talking about tables like women and missing the point that some groups of children could contain girls each time we translate Spanish into English.
Make sense?
Grammatical Gender in Greek
Grammatical gender in Greek is similar to the way it is used in Spanish.
In English only third person singular pronouns (words like “he, she, it”) and particular nouns about persons have gender. Most other nouns are regarded as neuter, without gender attributes.
Koine Greek shares the Spanish approach in that all nouns have gender, even if they are abstract or refer to inanimate objects like “table.” This again is just a tool for grammar form and function.
Where a noun is used to describe an entity that can also be used for an inanimate object, one must use the context in order to properly translate any pronouns that will always be in the neuter.
To illustrate, the word for “spirit” for can refer to God and the wind. God is a person, but wind is an inanimate object.
At 2 Corinthians 3:17 we read “the Lord is the Spirit.” So when “Spirit” is used in this context in English you have to supply it with pronouns that refer to a person because the Lord is not an “it.”
The same word in the Greek for “spirit” also means “wind.” At John 3:8 it occurs in the sentence: “The wind blows where it wills.” In this case since the context is clear that the word means the wind, the pronoun in English needs to remain neuter because in English “wind” has no gender.
So at John 16, when Jesus speaks of the arrival of the Spirit upon his disciples that will occur after his Passion, he declares that the coming “Advocate” or “Helper” is the same as “the Spirit of truth.” The word for “Spirit” is neuter, but the actions of the “Spirit” tell us that it is the same as the “Spirit” mentions in 2 Corinthians 3:17, a Person.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.—John 16:3.
You must not be familiar with the fact that there are several such usages for the Spirit in Scripture, in particular John chapter 16. But you are also confusing Greek grammatical gender form with English pronoun usage.
Tables Aren’t Women, But “She” is Pretty
People who do not speak other languages are often unaware that translation from one tongue to another is not a word-for-word process. Other languages often use grammatical tools in ways that do not exist in English, one of which applies here to this question: grammatical gender inflection and concord.
What is that?
Of all other languages, speakers of American English may be more familiar with Spanish than anything else. So I will use this to present an example.
In Spanish the word “table” has a feminine gender, even though it is an inanimate object.
Because of this all the words associated with “table” in Spanish are either modified (inflection) or related words such as the article “the” or pronouns must be chosen from the same gender pool (concord).
While in English we speak of a table in the neuter form:
This is a table. It sits in the other room.
In Spanish we literally say:
She is a table. She sits in the other room.
The grammatical gender can sometimes even be the opposite of the gender of the subjects involved too. A group of children is always spoken of in the masculine even if it consists of boys and girls (and sometimes even only girls). The term “niños” literally means “boys” even though the group has more than just boys in it.
Generally speaking, grammatical gender does not get translated from other languages into English because it deals with form and function or syntax rules unique to the specific language we are translating from. Grammatical gender is often nothing more than a tool used to preserve the logic employed in the language and can have nothing to do with the subject at all. Literal gender has to be translated from the context and not the grammatical gender syntax, otherwise we would be talking about tables like women and missing the point that some groups of children could contain girls each time we translate Spanish into English.
Make sense?
Grammatical Gender in Greek
Grammatical gender in Greek is similar to the way it is used in Spanish.
In English only third person singular pronouns (words like “he, she, it”) and particular nouns about persons have gender. Most other nouns are regarded as neuter, without gender attributes.
Koine Greek shares the Spanish approach in that all nouns have gender, even if they are abstract or refer to inanimate objects like “table.” This again is just a tool for grammar form and function.
Where a noun is used to describe an entity that can also be used for an inanimate object, one must use the context in order to properly translate any pronouns that will always be in the neuter.
To illustrate, the word for “spirit” for can refer to God and the wind. God is a person, but wind is an inanimate object.
At 2 Corinthians 3:17 we read “the Lord is the Spirit.” So when “Spirit” is used in this context in English you have to supply it with pronouns that refer to a person because the Lord is not an “it.”
The same word in the Greek for “spirit” also means “wind.” At John 3:8 it occurs in the sentence: “The wind blows where it wills.” In this case since the context is clear that the word means the wind, the pronoun in English needs to remain neuter because in English “wind” has no gender.
So at John 16, when Jesus speaks of the arrival of the Spirit upon his disciples that will occur after his Passion, he declares that the coming “Advocate” or “Helper” is the same as “the Spirit of truth.” The word for “Spirit” is neuter, but the actions of the “Spirit” tell us that it is the same as the “Spirit” mentions in 2 Corinthians 3:17, a Person.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.—John 16:3.
