The NIV footnote to Jude 1 alerted me to a great example of the challenges of the dative case.

The second part of the salutation reads, “To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father (τοῖς ἐν θεῷ πατρὶ ἠγαπημένοις) and kept for Jesus Christ (Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ τετηρημένοις).”

I was a bit surprised to find that this is an issue of some debate: who is doing the groaning in Rom 8:26, the believer or the Holy Spirit?

My son Tyler is learning Greek at Biola University. Not many dads get to spend Skype time helping their son translate Greek. And who says knowing Greek isn’t practical?

In the early times of Greek, before Classical Greek, there weren't prepositions. Basic ideas were associated with the different cases, and it was left up to the rhetorical skill of the speaker and the listening skills of the hearer to determine from context what was the specific meaning of the case.