Opinions needed on some original language books

It was good to learn the truth about the 8 case system. I had read somewhere that some hold to five cases and some to eight, but had not given it any serious thought and did not know exactly what to think of all this. Now I see it is reasonable to say that the Greek of the Bible exhibits 8 cases as can also be proven from various contexts. In light of this I wonder why some plainly deny that the Biblical Greek has 8 cases. Still there is one instance which I wonder how it would be classified - Romans 1:4. In the Greek it reads thusly - tou oristhentos uiou Theou en dunamei kata pneuma
agiôsunês ex anastaseôs nekrôn Iêsou Christou tou Kuriou êmôn. The wording I ponder on is "...Iêsou Christou tou Kuriou êmôn". Ricker Berry in his interlinear has it like this: "...resurrection of [the]dead- Jesus Christ our Lord; " . But all the last five words are genitive. Therefore I ask, would it be grammatically legitimate to translate them as "concerning Jesus Christ our Lord". If it read "of Jesus Christ etc." it would not sound so logical, neither would "from Jesus Christ our Lord" sound logical in this context. The "of Jesus etc." would be genitive of definition/description and the "from Jesus etc." would be ablative. But if it might read "concerning Jesus etc.", what would that be designated? It looks like a genitive as to construction but in this context what is it?

Harald

 

Hi Tom. I happen to own Friberg's Analytical Greek NT. Apart from the inconvenience of having the UBS Greek text I have found it most useful. As a Textus Receptus advocate I would prefer the Greek text to be the TR. Friberg apparently holds to the five case system as can be seen from the abbreviations and symbols card which helps decipher the morphological tags beneath the Greek words. So one would have to study the context carefully to discern between e.g. ablative and genitive so as to know how to render it in another language. But it is one of those tools I use most frequently. It might be it is the only of its kind available. In those instances where the UBS text omit words in regard to the TR I check from Perschbacher's Analytical Lexicon which has all words of the TR. But as one who likes to translate the Greek myself into my two native languages as well as English it feels almost indispensable, especially as I most definitely try to consistently translate using formal equivalence. Hope this helped somewhat.

Harald