Andrew Chapman wrote:Recently I found something by Zerwick, citing A. Deissman, to say that the grammarian classification of genitives, while useful, can also be misleading, and claiming that the fundamental force of the genitive is 'the appurtenance of one notion' to another. 'The exact nature.. of the relation between the notions, depends upon context and subject matter, so that of itself the use of the genitive may have as many varieties as there are ways in which two notions may be associated.
Andrew
χαῖρε, φίλε Ἀνδρεῖε!
Stephen Hughes has suggested that one way to understand these genitives is to transform the phrase into a participle or relative clause. Thus your ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῦ Ἰσραήλ from John 1:49 would be not only the obvious
ὁ βασιλεὺς ὁ βασιλεύων τοῦ Ἰσραήλ.
but also
ὁ Βασιλεὺς ὃν Θεὸς ἔδωκε τῷ Ἰσραήλ.
ὁ Βασιλεὺς ὃν δεῖ τὸν Ἰσραήλ δέχεσθαι.
ὁ Βασιλεὺς ὁ γεννήθεις ἐν τῷ Ἰσραήλ.
ὁ Βασιλεὺς ὃς ἄρξει τοῦ κόσμου ἐκ τῆς γῆς τοῦ Ἰσραήλ.
You try to come up with every possible way you can paraphrase the phrase and then you choose the one that context (or theology) seems best to support.
For the genitive in question on this thread:
ἡ μορφὴ ἣ ἔρχεται ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ
ἡ μορφὴ ἣ ὁμοία τῷ Θεῷ.
ἡ μορφὴ ποῦ δυνάμαθα βλέπειν τὸν θεὸν.
In my humble opinion, this is a better approach than Wallace's categories. If you do this with enough genitives, you began to see some basic patterns (φέρειν and διδόναι come up a lot) but at the same time you realize, as you have said, that a lot happens semantically between the head and genitive nouns that must be supplied from context (and theology.)
χαίροις δὴ ἐν ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ!