A word of warning here, Him. Cjab doesn't know Greek. I don't know why he is pretending he does. There is nothing wrong with the translation you offered other than what I explained. εἰς isn't required. So you know who to believe, here is Romans 6:11 from the NA 28 and the ESV:
Rom. 6:11 οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς λογίζεσθε ἑαυτοὺς [εἶναι] νεκροὺς μὲν τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ ζῶντας δὲ τῷ θεῷ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.
Rom. 6:11 (ESV) So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Cjab, if you want to start a thread pretending you know Greek, have at it. But don't mislead people when they ask questions. You don't know what you are talking about.
A word of warning: John Milton likes to think he knows more than everyone else, but he doesn't.
So what JM has construed is that "being dead ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις -
in sins" in Eph 2:1
could be grammatically translated in the same way as "ογίζεσθε ἑαυτοὺς εἶναι νεκροὺ - consider yourselves to be dead - μὲν τῇ ἁμαρτίαις - indeed
to sin(ning)" in Rom. 6:11 to give "being dead
to sins" in Eph 2:1 also. But this is nonsensical, as it conveys the opposite theological meaning to that intended in Eph 2:1, which is that a person is dead by reason of multiple sins.
There is a lacuna in quite a lot of would-be NT grammarians: they limit grammar dimensionally, and fail to adequately relate it to the underlying theological semantics. It occurs in those far more qualified than JM also.
ἁμαρτία, means forfeiture because missing the mark, emphasizing
self-originated (
self-empowered) nature, i.e. not originated or empowered by God. It has three primary senses (a) sin as a concept, i.e. sinning, esp. in dative sing. (b) sin as a particular offence, esp. with accusative sing., (c) multiple offences (plural).
As to the colloquialism "being to dead
to sin
s" in English we wouldn't normally use this version of it; but rather "being dead to sinning" or "being dead to sin." For if we did use that version, it could also mean "insensate to sins" i.e. professional atheism that doesn't even recognize the concept of sin, akin to one that has descended into a state like an animal like Nebuchadnezzar who lived as a beast. Paul says that (sane) people know that they do wrong Rom 1:32; so this sense is not likely to arise in the NT.
I didn't consider orginally (a) the full ambit of "dead to sins", nor (b) the whole range of Greek particles. Yet in the "insensate to sins" case, which I did consider, Εις + acc would be an option. There may be others. In the "removed from sins" scenario, ἀπό would be the appropriate particle: cf 1 Pet 2:24 - consider the compound particle-participle ἀπογενόμενοι. However if, as JM points out, if we intended "dead to sinning (as a concept)," we could employ ἁμαρτία in dat. sing. Yet this concept doesn't arise in Eph 2:1.
If we have regard to Winer's definition of the dative, we might substitute the particles in/to inserted by our English translations, which particles are not synonymous and don't appear in the Greek, for the more anodyne "re", as conveying a more technical sense of the Greek. Rom. 6:11 becomes "reckon yourself dead re sinning." Eph 2:1 becomes "being dead re multiple sins." The different senses are being conveyed by the different contexts and numbers of the nouns. This doesn't give a licence to introduce English particles into the translation indiscriminately.
So in no sense can Eph 2:1 be translated as "being dead
to (multiple) sins" or even "being dead
to sinning" as JM maintains, as the English particle "to" is non-contextual.
