I was reading through Mark 5 this weekend in preparation for Sunday school, and it was interesting to watch the prepositions. It illustrates how you have to watch context carefully in choosing just the right translation. I will be using the NIV to illustrate.

I don’t know about you, but prepositions can be such a pain. It is strange to think that something that is so often ambiguous could have been created for clarity.

I remember writing about this several months ago. In the course of the Greek language, there was so much ambiguity to the case system that prepositions were created to bring clarity. But through the centuries, it appears that many (not all) of the prepositions picked up some of the same ambiguity as the cases they were meant to clarify. Just think of ἐν and the dative.

ἐπί has got to be the strangest of all. A simple glance over the article on επί in BDAG shows a breadth of meaning that one wonders if it means anything at all.

I had a great comment about a previous blog, and I thought I would follow up. It helps show the kind of transitions we all have to make from first year to second year Greek.

My brother-in-law asked me a question that came up in his Bible study the other day, and it illustrates several interesting points of Greek grammar. Thanks Terry.

1 Cor 11:24 in the ESV reads, “and when he had given thanks, he broke (εκλασεν) it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you (το υπερ υμων). Do this in remembrance of me.’” The interesting phrase is, “which is for you.”

The article το is telling you that the following prepositional phrase is functioning in some substantive manner that is qualifying the previous noun. Jesus says that the bread of communion is “my body,” and in some way his body is “on behalf of you.”

This is typical Greek in that you have to supply a verb; you can’t translate word for word: “This is my body the on behalf of you.”

Prepositions can be nasty things. Part of the problem is that the meaning of some can be quite fluid, hard to nail down. But the advantage of prepositions is exactly the same; they are fluid and can often mean many different things.

Then add to this the hermeneutics of rhetoric. When you tread poetry, or when words are begin chosen not only for their meaning but also the rhetorical effect, the meanings of words can become stretched.

And then just to complicate words further, if there is a possibility that the author is quoting something, then you have to take into account the original author’s intent, and how the quoting author uses words has less significance relative to the word’s meaning. This is why seminaries have courses in hermeneutics.

“Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Tim 1:2). Paul begins his letter to Timothy with a somewhat normal greeting, and yet sometimes familiarity can hide significant truths from English eyes.

One of the joys of Greek is in seeing the nuances of grammatical constructions. Albeit, it can take some time in the language to develop this level of sensitivity, but that’s the joy of the journey.