Bill Mounce

For an Informed Love of God

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Thursday, March 23, 2023

Can Greek Grammar Be Wrong? (Rom 6:10)

Narrative literature tends to follow the normal Greek rules of grammar, but Paul is famous for often writing in a very compact style that may appear to be incorrect grammar. This is why we always need good commentaries that deal with the Greek.

Comments

Submitted by LeviFox on Sun, 2024-12-29 21:23
Hello, I know this is about Romans 6, but I wanted to see if I could get some clarity on 1 Peter 3:21. What is the antecedent of the relative pronoun "ho" in verse 21? It seems natural to pair it up with "hydatos" since it matches gender and number and comes immediately before it. But it also seems to leave the rest of the sentence hanging. Even more problematic is that it seems to make Peter say that water saved Noah and his family (which is an extremely unnatural understanding to me). To avoid that, we could propose the antecedent of "ho" is not "hydatos" but the flood narrative in general. But that still leaves the rest of the sentence hanging. The antecedent of "ho" could also be "baptisma" since it also matches gender and number. Then "antitypon" could be a predicate of "ho" and "baptisma" is appositionally fixed to the sentence like "That which corresponds, baptism, now saves you also." I know it is unnatural to split “hydatos” and “ho” but to me this seems to make the most sense. However, I only have about the equivalent of first year in Greek (via your Greek grammar) so I would like to know what I am missing. Thank you so much!