8.2 ‘To’, ‘for’ and the dative case

So much for the genitive or the ‘of’ case. Now let us look at the dative case. If I were to write a letter in Greek, I might use a noun in the dative case to refer to the recipient. The letters of the New Testament offer numerous examples. Nouns in the dative case and their English equivalents are emphasised in bold.

A letter might also begin or end with a standard phrase such as:

There is no word for ‘to’ in these passages. Instead, Greek conveys the same idea by changing the ending of the recipient (‘Philemon’, ‘the churches’, ‘you’), specifically, by putting it in the dative case.