Quote From William Most Dealing With Grammatical Gender

"In passing, sophia, wisdom, is grammatically feminine in Greek, as is also Hebrew hochmah. But to anyone with even a slight knowledge of the languages, these are purely artificial grammatical genders, and have nothing whatever to do with sex or gender. Further, Christ is the wisdom of the Father, and He is not feminine" (William Most).

While I do not advocate all or the majority of his beliefs and ideas, here is a site that contains writings by Most: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/browse.cfm

Words of the Month (October 2022)

1. El Olam (Hebrew)

Derek Kidner offers these comments on Genesis 21:33 (Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary):

"The tree (RV, RSV) and the divine name ’ēl ‘ôlām, the Everlasting God, have both been taken to prove that Abraham worshipped the local god in the local manner. But there is no hint that the tree was anything but commemorative; and as for the divine name, Speiser points out that it would be ‘a logical epithet of a Deity called upon to support a formal treaty … expected to be valid for all time’.4 The name is one of a series that includes El Elyon (14:18), El Roi (16:13), El Shaddai (17:1), El-elohe-Israel (33:20), El-Beth-el (35:7), each an aspect of God’s self-disclosure. See Introduction 4a, p. 36."


2. Participle (English)

From the Cambridge Greek Grammar (page 606):

"Participles are verbal adjectives:
— they are like adjectives in that they are marked for case, number and gender, and
follow the rules of agreement (—27.7);
— they are like verbs in that they are marked for tense-aspect and voice, and may be
construed with an object, complement, etc.; modified by adverbs; etc."


Examples of participles in English include walking, talking, thinking, taking, extended, and rushed. Two famous Latin participles are extensa and cogitans.