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).”

The NIV goes with “in” for ἐν, although its meaning is not immediately apparent, and it goes with “for” for the dative Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. The footnote reds, “Or by; or in.”

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?

The Greek seems so straight forward. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness;  for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself (αὐτὸ τὸ πνεῦμα) intercedes (ὑπερεντυγχάνει) for us with groaning (στεναγμοῖς) too deep for words” (ἀλαλήτοις).

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?

We covered a passage this week that had me scratching my head. In Matt 8:23 we read, “Then he got (εμβαντι αυτω) into the boat and his disciples followed him” (αυτω). Why is the first αυτω in the dative? The second αυτω is easy; ακολουθεω takes a direct object in the dative. By why the first?

One idea was that it was anticipating the case of the second αυτω. The disciples followed Jesus, and Jesus got into the boat.

Or, perhaps it had something to do with the dative of time when.

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.

Prepositions came into the language in an attempt to be more specific, a fact that a student of biblical Greek might find almost humorous considering the lack of specificity enjoyed by some prepositions. I mean, what really does επι really mean?

But the connection between cases and prepositions somewhat explains some of the similarities between cases and prepositions. Take, for example, the interchange of εν and the dative case in Matt 3:11.