# Compound Articles:  "tee tou"  (of the)



## HDSjr55

In studying Galatians 2:20, I found the use of a double article -- _tee tou_ -- which is translated in the KJV (and several other translations) as "...faith *of the* son of God..."   Other translations have it as "...faith *in the* son of God..." I have been unable to find an answer as to which is correct.  Why the double article and how is it correctly translated?  My study so far indicates that "_tee_" is article, feminine, singular, dative, and that "_tou_" is article, masculine, singular, genitive. Obviously, the two different translations have very different meanings.  One reference I found said it is objective (ie. our faith in the son of God) and another said it is subjective (the faith of the son of God).  Can anyone shed some light on the correct translation of this for me.  Thank you.


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## Kevman

Welcome HDSjr55,



> Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι· ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός· ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγαπησαντός με καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ.


The article τοῦ clearly belongs to the genitive υἱοῦ ("of the Son...").  But I believe τῇ is actually a relative pronoun referring to something feminine ("faith" I think).  So my own rough gloss of the line would be something like: "I live in faith, (to wit: ) _in that [faith]_ of the Son of God...".

It looks like a lot of English translations render that dative as "_by_ the faith of the Son etc...", but I don't think that makes a huge amount of difference in meaning as far as lofty, Biblical English is concerned.  Luther's German version, which is the earliest, most authoritative non-Greek translation I can understand myself, translates that ἐν+dative as "in."

As far as whether the genitive should be interpreted as 'faith _in_ Christ' or 'Christ's faith,' the justification for one interpretation or the other probably lies in the context of the surrounding verses, and I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with this part of the Bible to provide a very authoritative judgment at the moment. Based on the literal words of this verse alone, however, I'd conservatively opt for 'the faith of Christ,' although, again, my lay ear doesn't discern a whole lot of meaningful distinction either way.

Let's see what the experts think, though....


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## ireney

As far as Ancient Greek go, Kevman is correct. As far as how you would translate it he is correct again  That is, it is open to interpretation. You see, what the author does is sort of repeat the word "faith" by tee. So it's something like "in faith, in the son-of-God-faith". Think of similar constractions in English such as "I live for glory, glory for the nation" or maybe "I live in fear, fear for my life". The second explains, defines the first reference and could very well replace it altogether.
Now is is "of the son of God" or "in the son of God" or "to the son of God"? I agree with Kevman that I can't see a difference really in all the possible alternatives since it boils down in "I believe in the son of God" but, apart from a lay ear, I also have a half awoken brain right now.


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## HDSjr55

Thank you very much for your help with this.  

After re-reading your reply, I think I may be misunderstanding the use of the two words. Am I to understand that the Greek word "_tee_" is actually referring back to the word "faith" and is translated as the English word "by" in "...*by* the faith of the son of God..." and that the Greek word "_tou_" is actually referring to the word "son" (or the phrase "son of God") and is translated by the English word(s) "of (the)" in "...by the faith *of the* son of God..."? That would make sense as the word "faith" is feminine and the word "son" is masculine, in accordance with the gender of the two words. 

The reason I am looking so hard at this verse and whether it means "...by (or in) the faith *in* the son of God" or "...by (or in) the faith *of* the son of God" is as follows: *"in* the son of God" indicates *our* faith in the son of God, a faith that can and does fail at times; however, "*of* the son of God" indicates that it is not our faith but *the son of God's* faith that is working in us, and *His* faith cannot fail! The reason I was leaning toward "of" is because the surrounding verses talk about us being crucified to ourselves so that, while we live, it is truly Christ that is living through us to the point where we are living the life that He wants us to live rather than our own. If we are truly at the point where He is living through us that completely, then it would be HIS faith and not ours that would be operating in our lives, and that would be an incredible place to be! However, I have always tried to believe what the Bible actually says, not what I think it says. That is why it is so important to me to understand exactly what this verse says in the Greek.

 If I originally misunderstood the meaning and use of the two words and "_tou"_ is translated correctly as "of (the)", then whether "_tee_" is translated as "by" or "in" does not change the phrase "of the son of God" itself as it refers to the word "faith" and not the phrase "son of God": that would make my original thought of what it means probably true, based upon the surrounding verses (and other references in the NT that indicate that this state is possible to attain). Am I understanding this correctly?

Again, thank you for your help.


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## ireney

Ok some Greek grammar 101 
The Greek language is an inflected, declined language. That means that it has cases (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Vocative for ancient Greek to be exact). That means that the definite article, the "the" of English, is also declined.
Since Greek is also a language with genders (masculine, feminine and neuter to be exact), the article has itself three genders. 
"Tou" (του) is the genitive of the definite article in masculine. The genitive case is most of the times most appropriately translated with "of the". However this is not the only possibility.
"Tee" (τη) is the dative of the definite article in feminine. The dative has many possible translations, depending on context.
The word "son" is masculine in Greek (obviously  ) so it takes the masculine form of the article "the". Being in the genitive, the article has to follow suit. "Tou" then in this case.
The word "faith" in Grek is feminine. The article is feminine too of course. Being in dative, it's "tee".
Now the way things are, both your interpretations could be valid. It's in these cases that the overall context gives us the clue.
A verbatim (horrible) translation would be "in (en) faith (pistee) I live (zo) the (tee) [faith is ommitted since it was just mentioned before] "one" in/of the son of God (tou yiou tou Theou).

I hope it's clear now why our answers are so vague. Even if I were to read the rest of the passage, I'm afraid I may not be able to come to a conclusion since I am not all that well versed in theology. And, anyway, there's always the chance that it is indeed open to interpretation.


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## Kevman

HDSjr55 said:


> it is not our faith but *the son of God's* faith


I personally am inclined to favor this interpretation as the simplest, most literal reading of the text.   The different rendering in some translations must be due to a broader interpretation of the genitive.  The Greek words literally say "of the Son of God," after which I suppose it is up to the interpreter to understand that as either "_belonging_ to the Son of God" or else more generally as just "_pertaining_ to the Son of God."

The important thing to understand about the τῇ is that it is not an article here, nor does it correspond simply to an English preposition.  It is a relative pronoun like English "that" or "which":
A joke that she'd never heard before.
The book which I left in the car.
That guy who always wears a shirt.
It refers to something mentioned earlier (in our case the feminine "faith") and introduces a clause that describes that thing in more detail.

That our τῇ is in the dative case means that it is like an English relative pronoun associated with a preposition, such as:
The field in which the corn was growing.

This is what a relative pronoun looks like when it's modified by a possessive (genitive) in English:
Here is my mother's signature, and here is that of my father.

I guess a lot of translators of this verse find the τῇ a little redundant and sort of gloss over it, but by my reading the entire first half of that sentence literally goes like this (ὃ is another relative pronoun):
That which I now live in flesh, I also live in faith, in that _[faith]_ of the Son of God....


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## HDSjr55

Thank you very much for your assistance.  It has greatly helped me in my understanding of the Greek meaning.  I am trying to learn how to study in Greek itself.  Can you suggest somewhere on-line or books that could help me to easily (or as easily as is possible) understand Greek formulations, syntax and translation?  Thanks again.


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## Kevman

I'm glad we could help. 
You might want to check out the WordReference collection of Ancient Greek Resources links.  In particular the one called *textkit* has some nice old public-domain texts you can download.

In the real, non-online world, I've had some great success learning from a pair of books called _Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek_ (Books I and II) by Maurice Balme and Gilbert Lawall, Oxford University Press.  I found them in my local public library, and I just felt like they were easier to get started with than some of those staid, turn-of-the-century textbooks.

And of course you've already found this forum to ask questions in. 
Good luck!


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## brian

For what it's worth, regarding _belief/faith *in* someone or something_, I think in classical Greek you had either πίστεις + *dative*, or πίστεις *περί + genitive*.

But as we all know Koine Greek doesn't really follow many rules, and often simply doesn't make logical sense.


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## orthophron

Hi!
Well, it is normal to see a dative (*objective dative*) after "πίστις", since the verb of same root or synomym takes dative as object (πείθομαι τινί). In the phrase "σωφροσύνης πίστιν έχω περί τινος" which appears in LS dictionary, I just think that preposition "περί", just denotes relation and it does not depend on the noun "πίστις".

What I would like to remark is that a genitive preceded by an article of different case is generally an *attributive genitive*; equals an attributive adjective: "η του Θεού πίστις" means "η θεία πίστις".




> ἡ τοῦ Θεοῦ πίστις OR [ἡ] πίστις ἡ τοῦ Θεοῦ | dative: "πίστει τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ"


You can see another example of this structure: τῷ βίῳ τῷ τῶν ἀνθρώπων in Isokrates Περί αντιδόσεως 79.
An adjective can follow the noun for emphasis and sometimes has an article in front. Even though it is still an attributive adjective: [ο] καλός ποιμήν or [ο] ποιμήν ο καλός. Similarly an attributive genitive can follow the noun.

Whatever the case, to ensure who believes/trusts whom (God or people), which was the main issue of this post, one has to read the context and maybe all of Paul's writing.
"ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ" : I think that as Paul experiences something preternatural, then he possibly wants to explain how (the means) by the use of "εν + dative" (εν πίστει) and thus he more likely means "the faith in God".

By the way - forgive me English speakers - I think that "of" after nouns can introduce either the object or the subject of an action or feeling: love of mother [for children], but the public love of scandals.
So, I do not see why those who say "faith of the son of God" cannot not mean "faith in the son of God".
Regards


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## Kevman

orthophron said:


> What I would like to remark is that a genitive preceded by an article of different case is generally an *attributive genitive*; equals an attributive adjective: "η του Θεού πίστις" means "η θεία πίστις".
> 
> You can see another example of this structure: τῷ βίῳ τῷ τῶν ἀνθρώπων in Isokrates Περί αντιδόσεως 79.
> An adjective can follow the noun for emphasis and sometimes has an article in front. Even though it is still an attributive adjective: [ο] καλός ποιμήν or [ο] ποιμήν ο καλός. Similarly an attributive genitive can follow the noun.


Oh, I see what you mean. This makes *much* more sense than my erroneous "relative pronoun" line of thinking, which I was so stuck on that I didn't even catch Irene refuting it!  I think I'm just used to seeing articles in _both_ places in such constructions: *ο* άνδρος *ο* καλός, so without that repetition I got sidetracked.

Thanks for clarifying, expert orthophron, and I hope my blunder hasn't caused too much confusion.
(I would like to point out that even though my _grammatical_ explanation of τῇ was completely wrong, the _meaning_ that I deduced from it wasn't too far off the mark. Surely it is because Ancient Greek articles and relative pronouns are so closely related semantically that they look so similar.)



orthophron said:


> By the way - forgive me English speakers - I think that "of" after nouns can introduce either the object or the subject of an action or feeling: love of mother [for children], but the public love of scandals.
> So, I do not see why those who say "faith of the son of God" cannot not mean "faith in the son of God".


You are right. That's exactly why it's so ambiguous and open to the interpretation of the reader/translator, and why ultimately there is no real 'right' answer to HDSjr55's question. The best anyone can do is form his own opinion and try to defend it as best he can with contextual clues.


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## HDSjr55

Help!  I thought I understood, but now I am confused.  I do not understand what Orthophron is saying as I am not a student versed in Greek (I am trying to learn however).  Kevman, can you explain in simple English the point that Orthophron is making?  Thank you.


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## ireney

Does it help if you think it with dashes? "The of-the-son-of-God (faith)"?


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## brian

I think orthophron's point was that the noun (for "son") is genitive for _grammatical_, not _semantic_ reasons, i.e. because that's how an attributive genetive works, not because it's a matter of πίστις_ + _genetive, right?

So you could think of it alternatively as: _the *in*-the-son-of-God (faith)_, purely because in English one has faith "in" someone/something.


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## HDSjr55

Ok,  I can see that.  From a purely semantic point of view, there may be little difference between "in the son of God" and "of the son of God".  However, theologically, the difference between the two is like night and day. Of course, in a theological sense it stands to reason that the Greek construction would be such that it could be seen either way.  Theologically, God always leaves some way out, a little "wiggle room," for those who do not want to believe or have faith in what a scriptural verse may be saying.  IF the verse is constructed that way, then it would be necessary to look at what the surrounding verses say and how it fits with other verses throughout the Bible to get a true understanding.


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## brian

Sorry, what I meant was that there is a semantic difference in _English_--as you rightly point out--but the difference in _Greek_, in this case, is purely grammatical, owing to the attributive genitive construction.

But you may have a point that it's ambiguous in Greek too. I'm not a biblical scholar, so I don't know about these things.


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## Kevman

HDSjr55 said:


> Help!  I thought I understood, but now I am confused.  I do not understand what Orthophron is saying as I am not a student versed in Greek (I am trying to learn however).  Kevman, can you explain in simple English the point that Orthophron is making?  Thank you.


So sorry about my mistake.  I feel terrible to have confused you.

In Greek an adjective usually comes before the noun and after the article, exactly like in English:
the good person
ο καλός άνθρωπος
However, it can also come _after_ the noun, in which case the adjective gets its own article, basically the article is repeated:
ο άνθρωπος ο καλός
In English this would sound something like "the person the good," but it still means "the good person" only with a different sort of emphasis on the adjective.

Now another thing about Greek is that you can use pretty much entire clauses as adjectives. Sort of the way you can say in English:
the red-painted door
where you're putting almost a whole sentence's worth of information in that adjective slot. In Greek sometimes you can take this idea to almost ridiculous lengths, as if you could say
the red-painted-that-got-kicked-in-last-week-but-that-I-rehung-over-the-weekend door

What's happening with our τῇ is a combination of these two ideas.  You've got a big long phrase acting like an adjective:
in the of-the-Son-of-God,-the-loving-of-me-and-surrendering-of-himself-for-me faith
but this phrasal 'adjective' is coming _after_ the noun it modifies, so it gets its own article and reads like this:
in faith *the* of-the-Son-of-God...

What confused _me_ was that there isn't a repeated article here.  I would have expected something more along the lines of the person the good above, i.e.:
in the faith the of-the-Son-of-God-etc.
but that first article doesn't appear in the verse.
Also, having the verb (ζῶ) mixed in the middle there threw me off as well.  I didn't know it was okay to do that. 

In the final analysis, though, none of this affects very much the _meaning_ of my translation of the sentence.  I just goofed on the purely _grammatical_ explanation of things. Relative pronouns in Ancient Greek are identical to articles, and in fact there is something rather relative-pronouny about this whole repeated-article construction in the first place, e.g.:
the person the good _[one]_
This verse may even be something of an instructive example of how closely Greek articles and relative pronouns are related, since you can almost see our τῇ here as somewhere in between, sort of like one and at the same time sort of like the other.  Well, at least _I_ can, anyway.

I hope that makes enough sense to redeem my error!


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## orthophron

It is obvious that equating a particular structure of genitive to an attributive adjective does not help much in translation. An attributive adjective may still expess possession, belonging,..., association generally.
A subjective or objective genitive, instead, would be easier to translate. e.g. “η πίστις του Θεού” would mean either the trust that God has in people (subjective) or the faith people have in God (objective).

It would be worth paying attention to some points of Classic Greek Grammar (Smyth's on-line) concerning Genitive.
The connection between the noun of a genitive and the noun it refers to must often be determined by the meaning of the words, *the context, or the facts presupposed as known* (Smyth 1295).
The genitive preceded by an article of different case is attributive to the noun following (Smyth 1154-1156). If placed after the noun the emphasis is on the noun as something *definite or previously mentioned* and the attributive is added by way of explanation (Smyth 1158).

As you see, Grammar suggests that the aspiring translator reads the letter from the beginning with a view to find who this son of God is and what this “πίστις” we ‘re talking about is.

Otherwise, the extract "ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ" alone, though grammatically standing, is open to many more explanations. I would justify the one that would translate it as follows: _"the writer lives a tragedy after realizing that the confidence he had placed on somebody called son of God had been abused"_. The adjunct “εν πίστει” could very well denote the cause (Smyth 1687) and people here hopefully will correct me if I am wrong.

Therefore I think that the existence or not of a parallel version speaking about a more just God is still not a good reason to close the eyes to the context.

God be with us

_____________________________________________________________________ 
Additional links for reference
Position of article Smyth 1154
Use of objective genitive to denote the object of an action (even if redkind verb takes dative) Smyth 1328a
Meanings of πίστις (LS dictionary)




orthophron said:


> In the phrase "σωφροσύνης πίστιν έχω περί τινος" which appears in LS dictionary, I just think that preposition "περί", just denotes relation and it does not depend on the noun "πίστις".


On second look, yes! "περί" goes with "πίστις". One of its structures is "πίστιν έχω περί τινος" – as correctly stated by brian8733 - in sense of confidence.


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