A little help, please.\u00a0 Where Matthew records; “….and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”\u00a0 What is the “it” referring to?\u00a0 I have heard some say it was the “church.”\u00a0 Others, that it was the “rock,” Christ.<\/p>\n
According to your studies of the Greek definition, what is the\u00a0“it”?<\/em><\/p>\n\t In Greek, a pronoun must match its antecedent in number and gender. The case might not match because of how the pronoun is being used in a sentence.<\/p>\n “When\u00a0autos<\/em>\u00a0functions as a pronoun, its case is determined by function, its number and gender by antecedent.” [William D. Mounce,\u00a0Basics of Biblical Greek<\/em>, p. 104].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Because Greek doesn’t use punctuation as we do in English, you typically find the antecedent of a pronoun by going backward to find the first noun with the same number and gender. “It” is autes<\/em>\u00a0in Greek and is singular feminine. “Hades” is singular masculine. “Gates” is plural feminine. It isn’t until you reach “church” or “assembly,” which is\u00a0ekklesian<\/em>\u00a0in the Greek, that you find the next singular feminine noun. So the antecedent of “it” is “church.”<\/p>\n It is true that “rock” (petra<\/em>\u00a0in Greek) is also singular feminine, but it is further back in the text and is not the antecedent of “it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question: A little help, please.\u00a0 Where Matthew records; “….and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”\u00a0 What is the “it” referring to?\u00a0 I have heard some say it was the “church.”\u00a0 Others, that it was the “rock,” Christ. According to your studies of the Greek definition, what is the\u00a0“it”? Answer: In Greek, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[1098,1574,708],"class_list":["post-24117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-grammar","tag-greek-language","tag-matthew"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":819,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/can-the-greek-word-translated-himself-in-james-127-also-be-translated-themselves\/","url_meta":{"origin":24117,"position":0},"title":"Can the Greek word translated “himself” in James 1:27 also be translated “themselves”?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 2, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: While reading a book by Basil Overton, I ran across this argument, \"Some have argued that the church cannot help orphans but the individual Christians must do this. They say James 1:27 is addressed to the 'individual. James 1:27 is not addressed to the individual. \"Himself\" of the text\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1350,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/objections-to-satan-being-referred-to-as-male\/","url_meta":{"origin":24117,"position":1},"title":"Objections to Satan being referred to as male","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 16, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: You recently posted an answer to a young lady who said that her boyfriend joined the House of Yahweh and is advocating that Satan is a female.\u00a0What I got from your answer was that Satan is referred to as male in the Scriptures! There recently was a gathering of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":85488,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/their-face-our-heart-your-body\/","url_meta":{"origin":24117,"position":2},"title":"Their Face, Our Heart, Your Body","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 9, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Oliver Watts via\u00a0Sentry Magazine, Vol. 16 No. 1, March 31, 1990 In the King James and American Standard Versions, \"your\" is always plural. It means belonging to more than one person spoken to. Unlike how we talk now, when \"belonging to one person spoken to\" was meant, the word\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5092,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/can-you-explain-the-difference-between-heautou-and-idios\/","url_meta":{"origin":24117,"position":3},"title":"Can you explain the difference between heautou and idios?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I would like to ask for your insight. I am trying to understand two Greek words better. As I was doing a Google search I came upon your website and read many of your articles. I also noticed your apparent love for Greek word studies. Here are the two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1309,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/gender-neutral-bibles\/","url_meta":{"origin":24117,"position":4},"title":"Gender-Neutral Bibles","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Our society has been extremely concerned about avoiding giving offense to various sections of our culture \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Just to use certain words can be perceived to be an insult by various groups. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0B.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0All variations of Negro are off limits, as is use of colored to refer to people with very dark\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sermon"","block_context":{"text":"Sermon","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/sermon\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":57971,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-lords-supper-two-or-three-symbols\/","url_meta":{"origin":24117,"position":5},"title":"The Lord’s Supper: Two or Three Symbols?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jefferson David Tant From time to time, brethren have discussions about the Lord's Supper with respect to the \"one cup\" view as opposed to the practice of serving the fruit of the vine in multiple cups. I have had discussions with those of the \"one cup\" view through the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Answer:<\/h2>\n