NOTES

Introduction

1   For some of these advances, see Constantine R. Campbell, Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for Reading the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015).

2   Moisés Silva, God, Language, and Scripture: Reading the Bible in the Light of General Linguistics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 144.

3   Ibid., 115: “But we can feel confident that no reasonable writer would seek to express a major point by leaning on a subtle grammatical distinction—especially if it is a point not otherwise clear from the whole context (and if it is clear from the context, then the grammatical subtlety plays at best a secondary role in exegesis).”

4   Rodney J. Decker, Mark 1–8: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), xxii–xxiii.

5   Silva, God, Language, and Scripture, 13.

6   Decker, Mark 1–8, xxii.

7   Dana and Mantey 268.

8   Chrys Caragounis, The Development of Greek and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 21.

9   Ibid., 33.

10 Stanley E. Porter, “Studying Ancient Language from a Modern Linguistic Perspective: Essential Terms and Terminology,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 2 (1989): 153–54; Silva, God, Language, and Scripture, 41–44.

11 Matthew Brook O’Donnell, Corpus Linguistics and the Greek of the New Testament (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005).

12 Although the two standard editions differ in format (the UBS edition presents only a small selection of the textual variants presented in the Nestle-Aland edition), they represent the same edited Greek text. The SBLGNT, edited by Michael W. Holmes, represents an alternative edition of the Greek text that differs from the Nestle-Aland / United Bible Societies text in more than 540 variation units.

13 Martin Luther, “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools,” in The Christian in Society II, vol. 45 of Luther’s Works, ed. Walther I. Brandt (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1962), 358–65.

Chapter 1

1   An eight-case system was argued for by several older grammarians. See Robertson 446–543; Dana and Mantey 65–68. There are still some supporters of the eight-case system for Koine Greek (i.e., nominative, genitive, ablative, dative, locative, instrumental, accusative, vocative): see Brooks and Winbery 2–3. However, based on the formal evidence that at most there are only five case endings and that advocates of the eight-case system rely too much on a historical approach to the cases (diachronic) rather than on the evidence from Koine Greek (synchronic), this view is becoming less common in grammars and will not be discussed any further.

2   J. P. Louw, “Linguistic Theory and the Greek Case System,” Acta Classica 9 (1966): 73.

3   Gary A. Long, Grammatical Concepts 101 for Biblical Greek (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 38.

4   Joseph E. Grimes, “Signals of Discourse Structure in Koine,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1975 Seminar Papers (Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Literature, 1975), 1:151–64.

5   See Wallace 42–45 (Wallace calls this the “pecking order”); Porter 109. The standard work on this is Lane McGaughy, Toward a Descriptive Analysis of EINAI as a Linking Verb in New Testament Greek, SBL Dissertation Series 6 (Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Literature, 1972).

6   McGaughy, Toward a Descriptive Analysis, 46–48, 55–61.

7   Ibid., 55–56.

8   Steven E. Runge, Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 289.

9   Long, Grammatical Concepts, 42.

10 Porter 87–88. Cf. Wallace 66–67, who argues for a separate vocative case.

11 Moule 32; Turner 34.

12 See Zerwick 35–36, who notes that ὦ before the vocative was usual in Classical Greek, and that when it occurs in the Greek of the NT, “one is justified in supposing that there is some reason for its use” (36). BDF §146.1.b says that it expresses emotion, and Dana and Mantey (71) say that it carries more force.

13 Porter 92; Wallace 78; Long, Grammatical Concepts, 52.

14 Porter 92; Louw, “Linguistic Theory,” 83–84; Long, Grammatical Concepts, 50.

15 Porter 92, italics original.

16 Moisés Silva, Interpreting Galatians, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 65n2.

17 Porter 92, italics added.

18 Jean Héring, The Second Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians (London: Epworth, 1967), 50.

19 Zerwick is representative. Of 2 Cor. 5:14 he says,

The objective genitive (Paul’s love for Christ) does not suffice for, apart from the fact that Paul usually renders the objective-genitive sense by εἰς (cf. Col. I,4), the reason which he adds speaks of the love which Christ manifested for us in dying for all men; nor is the subjective genitive (Christ’s love for us) fully satisfactory by itself, because the love in question is a living force working in the spirit of the apostle. In other words, we cannot simply classify this genitive under either heading without neglecting a part of its value. (13)

20 David L. Mathewson, Revelation: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 1.

21 See Mathewson, Revelation, 263:

It is possible that this should be understood as a subjective genitive (the testimony that Jesus bore). However, the fact that the testimony is something that they have (ἐχόντων) along with the clear references elsewhere (6:9; 11:7; 12:11; 17:6) to the saints as testifying/having testimony as a cause for their death, suggests that the genitive Ἰησοῦ here should be taken as objective (the testimony about Jesus). G. K. Beale opts for both a subjective and objective genitive reading (The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999], 947; see also Stephen S. Smalley, The Revelation to John: A Commentary on the Greek Text of the Apocalypse [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2005], 487). However, this confuses grammatical ambiguity with semantic “fullness” of interpretation.

22 Peter is making a momentous theological statement that can only be fully grasped in the context of both Testaments of Scripture.

23 Dana and Mantey 84; Black 52; James Allan Hewett, New Testament Greek, rev. C. Michael Robbins and Steven R. Johnson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 254.

24 Louw, “Linguistic Theory,” 81, 83; followed by Porter 97.

25 Porter 98–99. For the distinction between these usages, see Wallace 158–69; Dana and Mantey 89–91; Brooks and Winbery 42–49.

26 This is irrespective of the actual duration of the action, whether short or long. The dative simply indicates a specific time.

27 The following are some verbs that can take an object in the dative case: ἀκολουθέω, ἀνίστημι, ἀπειθέω, βοηθέω, διακονέω, διατάσσω, δουλεύω, ἐξομολογέω, ἐπιτάσσω, ἐπιτιμάω, εὐχαριστέω, λατρεύω, ὀργίζω, παραγγέλλω, πείθω, πιστεύω, προσκυνέω, συμβουλεύω, ὑπακούω, ὑπηρετέω, χαρίζομαι.

28 For example, Dana and Mantey 91; Young 9; Zerwick 23; Wallace 178.

29 Louw, “Linguistic Theory,” 78.

30 Porter 88, italics original.

31 E.g., Robertson 490; Dana and Mantey 93; Brooks and Winbery 56.

Chapter 2

1   Young 71. So Brooks and Winbery 74.

2   Robertson 676. Also Dana and Mantey 122.

3   See Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 316–17.

4   Constantine R. Campbell, Colossians and Philemon: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013), 41.

5   Compare the categories found in Robertson 676–753; Dana and Mantey 122–35; BDF §§277–306; Wallace 315–51; Porter 129–38; Young 71–80; Black 67–73; Gary A. Long, Grammatical Concepts 101 for Biblical Greek (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 133–57.

6   Dana and Mantey 123; Young 72.

7   Long, Grammatical Concepts, 139.

8   Ibid., 138.

9   Ὅδε is used only 10× in the Greek NT: Luke 10:39; Acts 21:11; James 4:13; Rev. 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14.

10 Stephen H. Levinsohn, “Towards a Unified Linguistic Description of οὗτος and ἐκεῖνος,” in The Linguist as Pedagogue: Trends in the Teaching and Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Matthew Brook O’Donnell (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009), 204–16.

11 Black 73; Wallace 328.

12 Long, Grammatical Concepts, 140.

13 Ὅτου, standing for οὗτινος and following ἕως five times in the NT, might be considered an exception.

14 K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 149.

15 A. T. Robertson and W. Hersey Davis, A New Short Grammar of the Greek Testament, 10th ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 270.

16 Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 362n13.

17 McKay, New Syntax, 149–50. Cf. BDF §294(5).

18 Wallace 342–43; Moo, Romans, 320–29.

19 Moule 124; Porter 133; Long, Grammatical Concepts, 156.

20 James Allan Hewett, New Testament Greek, rev. C. Michael Robbins and Steven R. Johnson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 133–34.

21 Chrys Caragounis, The Development of Greek and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 113.

Chapter 3

1   Approximations (“most,” “some,” etc.) are derived from William D. Mounce, The Morphology of Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994).

2   Wallace (306), following Robertson (776), seems to indicate that in this structure (his first attributive position) the adjective is always emphatic. There is a significant minority of exceptions, however, according to Levinsohn:

When this Principle [i.e., the principle of natural information flow, which states that “information that has already been established in the immediate context precedes information that is new to the context and, more generally, more established information precedes less established information” (p. 1)] is violated, then the adjective is indeed emphasised. When the Principle is adhered to, in contrast, it is often the case that the noun or some other element of the clause is emphasised. (Stephen H. Levinsohn, “A Fresh Look at Adjective-Noun Ordering in Articular Noun Phrases” [July 2011]: 8, http://www -01.sil.org/~levinsohns/Greek-Adjective-Noun-Ordering.pdf)

In other words, when an adjective gives new information and precedes the noun, it is emphatic. However, when an adjective repeats information established in the previous context and precedes the noun, it is not emphatic.

3   Levinsohn, “Fresh Look,” 2.

4   “Both substantive and adjective receive emphasis and the adjective is added as a sort of climax in apposition with a separate article” (Robertson 776). Wallace (306), Young (81), and Black (59–60) note the emphatic nature of this structure.

5   Levinsohn, “Fresh Look,” 2.

6   Jesus introduced the shepherd metaphor in John 10:2, so the principle of natural information flow is not violated in verse 14. “Good” and “shepherd” are equally emphasized.

7   Romans 16:25–27 is placed in brackets in NA28 and UBS5.

8   James Hope Moulton, Prolegomena, vol. 1 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek, by James Hope Moulton, Wilbert Francis Howard, and Nigel Turner, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908), 78.

9   In Hebrew the comparative is expressed by the positive + מִן. Superlative constructions are too numerous to mention here but also employ positive adjectives.

10 Moulton, Prolegomena, 79.

11 But Robertson (665) says that καινότερον “means, of course, something newer than what they had recently heard,” but also that “the elative comparative is still comparative.”

12 Contra Zerwick (50), who thinks the comparative is equivalent to a positive.

13 “When [ἄνδρες, used “as a formal opening to a speech”] is followed by another vocative noun identifying the referents, it should be left untranslated.” Martin M. Culy and Mikeal C. Parsons, Acts: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2003), 11.

14 William Watson Goodwin, Greek Grammar, rev. Charles Burton Gulick (Boston: Ginn, 1930), 90.

15 That is, these case endings are present but nonfunctional.

16 Peter Giles, A Short Manual of Comparative Philology for Classical Students (London: Macmillan, 1895), 299.

17 Zerwick (49–50) cites John 13:27 as an example.

Chapter 4

1   Those grammars that designate ὁ, ἡ, τό as “the definite article” are misleading.

2   In Modern Greek the number “one” is used in the singular, and the word for “some” (μερικοί, -ές, -ά) is used in the plural.

3   Robertson (755) claims that the article isn’t deictic because it “does not point out the object as far and near” but later says that it “aids in pointing out like an index finger. It is a pointer” (756).

4   Haiim B. Rosén, Early Greek Grammar and Thought in Heraclitus (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1988), 45, quoted in Wallace 209.

5   D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 79; Porter 104. Generic articles and articles with abstract nouns challenge the widely held notion that “a noun cannot be indefinite when it has the article” (Wallace 243, emphasis original).

6   Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 79.

7   Stephen H. Levinsohn, Discourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook, 2nd ed. (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 2000), 165.

8   See Porter 103–4; Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 79–80.

9   Wallace labels the article before ἀμνός in ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (at least in John 1:29) as monadic (i.e., unique) because only Jesus is designated this way in the NT. Taken without τοῦ θεοῦ, it could also fit his category of lamb par excellence: the best of all lambs (Wallace 222–24). We would be more inclined to label both nouns, not the articles, as either monadic (there is only one true God and one Lamb of God) or par excellence (Jesus is the best of all possible lambs, and God is the best of all possible gods). Both categories tell us more about the mind of the interpreter than what can be known about the NT author’s use of the article.

10 Nouns modified by possessive pronouns are almost always articular in the NT. This idiom is carried over from Attic Greek. William Watson Goodwin, Greek Grammar, rev. Charles Burton Gulick (Boston: Ginn, 1930), 206.

11 Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1981), 489.

12 Granville Sharp, Remarks on the Uses of the Definite Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament, ed. William David McBrayer (1774; repr., Atlanta: Original Word, 1995), 8, italics removed.

13 Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 81. For a more thorough treatment of Sharp’s rule, see Wallace 270–90.

14 The rule does not imply that two or more articular, singular, personal, common nouns (A + S + καί + A + S) joined by καί must refer to different people.

15 E. C. Colwell, “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature 52 (1933): 13.

16 Ibid., 17.

17 “It is obvious that the significance of these figures rests upon the accuracy with which definite predicate nouns without the article have been identified. There are bound to be mistakes in the list of definite predicate nouns without the article, but an attempt has been made to exclude all nouns as to whose definiteness there could be any doubt” (ibid., 17).

18 Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 84.

19 Sanford D. Hull, “Exceptions to Apollonius’ Canon in the New Testament: A Grammatical Study,” Trinity Journal, n.s., 7 (1986): 5.

20 Ibid., 7–8.

21 David W. Hedges, “Apollonius’ Canon and Anarthrous Constructions in Pauline Literature: An Hypothesis” (MDiv thesis, Grace Theological Seminary, 1983).

Chapter 5

1   Porter 140, italics removed.

2   In Classical Greek both περί and ὑπό also take the dative case. William Watson Goodwin, Greek Grammar, rev. Charles Burton Gulick (Boston: Ginn, 1930), 259, 261.

3   For lists of improper prepositions, see Murray J. Harris, Prepositions and Theology in the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 241–42; Porter 179–80.

4   Harris, Prepositions, 27.

5   Ibid., 13.

6   Turner 249; Young 85–86; Moule 48.

7   Porter (142) adopts a similar approach.

8   The following list does not include ἀμφί (on both sides of; Goodwin, Greek Grammar, 254) since it never occurs independently in the NT but only as a prefix to certain verbs (e.g., ἀμφιβάλλοντας, “casting” [Mark 1:16]).

9   J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989).

10 The statistics for NT occurrences of this and all subsequent prepositions are taken from Wallace 357; the parenthetical statistics for prepositions taking more than one case are from BibleWorks 9.

11 For a detailed discussion of these two texts, the history of treatment of the preposition ἀντί in them, and the theological implications, see Wallace (365–67) and Harris (Prepositions, 52–54), though both discussions range beyond the meaning of the preposition ἀντί.

12 See Wallace 365–67; Harris, Prepositions, 52–54.

13 Harris, Prepositions, 55.

14 D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 132.

15 Porter 148; Robertson 583.

16 Harris, Prepositions, 84–88; Wallace 363; Zerwick 33–37; Young 86.

17 The definitive study is now Constantine R. Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012).

18 Young 96. See also Harris, Prepositions, 123.

19 See Moule 78; Young 97.

20 This could be seen as an extension of the basic sense of “location in.”

21 Harris, Prepositions, 137.

22 Moule 49–50; Dana and Mantey 106.

23 Harris, Prepositions, 137.

24 Zerwick 43–44; BDF §224; Turner 268.

25 For a detailed exegetical treatment, see Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ.

26 Harris, Prepositions, 200.

27 Ibid., 211–12. For this usage, see also Robertson 630–32; Dana and Mantey 111–12; Moule 64; Zerwick 30; Porter 176–77; Young 101–2; Wallace 383–89.

28 Harris, Prepositions, 215.

Chapter 6

1   BDF §318. Aktionsart is a German word that means “kind [Art] of action [Aktions].”

2   See Dana and Mantey 177.

3   See esp. Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood, Studies in Biblical Greek 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1989); Buist M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994); Rodney J. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark with Reference to Verbal Aspect, Studies in Biblical Greek 10 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001); Constantine R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek New Testament, Studies in Biblical Greek 13 (New York: Peter Lang, 2007). For the implementation of verbal aspect into a first-year grammar, see Rodney J. Decker, Reading Koine Greek: An Introduction and Integrated Workbook (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014); Stanley E. Porter, Jeffrey T. Reed, and Matthew Brook O’Donnell, Fundamentals of New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).

4   Porter 20–21, italics removed. Or more technically: “Greek verbal aspect is a synthetic semantic category (realized in the forms of verbs) used of meaningful oppositions in a network of tense systems to grammaticalize the author’s reasoned subjective choice of conception of a process” (Verbal Aspect, 88).

5   Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 84. See Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 6: “Verbal aspect refers to the manner in which verbs are used to view an action or state.”

6   J. W. Voelz, “Present and Aorist Verbal Aspect: A New Proposal,” Neotestamentica 27 (1993): 157.

7   For a recent argument for the nontemporal nature of the Greek tense endings, see Stanley E. Porter, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament: Studies in Tools, Methods, and Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), chaps. 10, 11.

8   Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 97.

9   We will continue to use the word tense to refer to the tense-forms themselves, not to time.

10 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 103.

11 It does have future forms, but remember that the future is probably not fully an aspect (see below).

12 By “discourse” we are referring not to speech but to larger units of text beyond the sentence and even the paragraph.

13 See also Buist M. Fanning, “Greek Presents, Imperfects, and Aorists in the Synoptic Gospels: Their Contribution to Narrative Structuring,” in Discourse Studies & Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn, ed. Steven E. Runge (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2011), 157–90.

14 See Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, Anchor Bible 30 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), 297.

15 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 230.

16 McKay, New Syntax, 39. Porter (Idioms, 28–42) gives examples.

17 For use of these labels, along with definitions and descriptions, see Wallace 513–86.

18 Martin M. Culy, I, II, III John: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2004), xxiii.

19 Decker, Reading Koine Greek, 226.

20 Saying that the aorist views the action as a complete whole is not to be confused with saying that the action is completed.

21 Gary A. Long, Grammatical Concepts 101 for Biblical Greek (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 73.

22 Brooks and Winbery 103; Wallace 564.

23 Dana and Mantey 196; BDF §332; Wallace 557–58.

24 See especially the important, older work of Frank Stagg, “The Abused Aorist,” Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972): 222–31. After the work of Stagg, there is no excuse to perpetuate this and other misconceptions regarding the aorist tense.

25 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 261–63.

26 Mounce 135, 245, 250; Dana and Mantey 178–79, 181; Black 96.

27 McKay, New Syntax, 41; Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 222, 225; Wallace 335–36.

28 Donald W. Burdick, The Letters of John the Apostle: An In-Depth Commentary (Chicago: Moody, 1985), 246.

29 See David L. Mathewson, “The Abused Present,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 23, no. 3 (2013): 343–63.

30 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 207–8; Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 84–85.

31 McKay, New Syntax, 45–46.

32 Rodney J. Decker, Mark 1–8: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 24–25.

33 Dana and Mantey 200; Moule 13; Brooks and Winbery 104. See also Wallace 573.

34 Porter 21–22; McKay, New Syntax, 49. See, however, Campbell (Verbal Aspect, 195–99), who argues that the perfect tense-form communicates imperfective aspect with heightened proximity to the action (sort of a super present). See Porter, Linguistic Analysis, 195–215.

35 McKay, New Syntax, 49.

36 Gordon D. Fee, 1 Corinthians, rev. ed., New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 806.

37 Wallace 578–79; Turner 69; BDF §343; Chrys Caragounis, The Development of Greek and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 154–55.

38 David L. Mathewson, Verbal Aspect in the Book of Revelation: The Function of Greek Verb Tenses in John’s Apocalypse, Linguistic Biblical Studies 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 131–32.

39 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 122–23.

40 McKay, New Syntax, 34.

41 Moule 10: “‘punctiliar’ action in the future.”

42 McKay, New Syntax, 34.

43 See also Zerwick 93.

44 Porter 43–44; Long, Grammatical Concepts, 77.

45 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 414, 335.

Chapter 7

1   Albert Rijksbaron, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 137.

2   Since Greek verbs are inflected for person, an explicit nominative subject is not required. Also, infinitives take their “subject” in the accusative case.

3   Historically, it appears that the active and middle voices existed first, and the passive voice was a later development.

4   See Dana and Mantey 155–62; Brooks and Winbery 108–14; Wallace 408–41.

5   Rijksbaron, Syntax and Semantics of the Verb, 137.

6   Robertson 797; Wallace 409.

7   Rijksbaron, Syntax and Semantics of the Verb, 141.

8   Martin M. Culy, “Double Case Constructions in Koine Greek,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 6 (2009): 82–106.

9   Wallace 416. Wallace says that this use of the middle “is quite rare.” Cf. also Moule 24; Robertson 806; Dana and Mantey 158; Porter 67; Young 134.

10 Porter 67, italics original. For a similar understanding of the middle, see Wallace 414–15; Young 134.

11 Rutger J. Allan, “The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek: A Study in Polysemy” (PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2002), 185.

12 As nearly all grammars recognize, Greek once had a dual number that died out by the time of Koine Greek.

13 Also Turner 313.

14 For some exceptions, see Wallace 400n15.

15 Porter 74; Wallace 400–401; Robertson 404; Turner 311–12; K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 19.

16 Robertson 405; McKay, New Syntax, 19.

17 Turner 313–14; Porter 75.

18 David E. Aune, Revelation 6–16, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 1998), 488.

19 G. Mussies, The Morphology of Koine Greek as Used in the Apocalypse of John: A Study in Bilingualism, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 27 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 217.

Chapter 8

1   This assertion is in no way intended to undermine a high view of the authority and inspiration of the Bible.

2   “Greek [is] . . . a bi-temporal language (past-present) . . . rather than tri-temporal. . . . The future is . . . a unique form in Greek, similar both to the aspects and to the attitudes [moods], but fully neither, and realizing not a temporal conception but a marked and emphatic expectation toward a process” (Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood, Studies in Biblical Greek 1 [New York: Peter Lang, 1989], 411, 414).

3   Θέλω occurs 208× in the NT, frequently as a participle.

4   Some grammars speak of the subjunctive as expressing uncertainty or doubt, if less so than the optative. E.g., John W. Wenham calls it “the mood of doubtful assertion.” See his Elements of New Testament Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 160.

5   Since the Greek imperative mood has only second- and third-person forms, the hortatory subjunctive can fill the first-person slot.

6   D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 74.

7   Ibid., 75.

8   The negated second-person subjunctive appears over 80 times; the negated third-person form appears 5 or 6 times.

9   Οὐ normally negates the indicative mood, and μή normally negates the oblique moods; together they form a stronger negative than either does on its own. James L. Boyer suggests that the double negative is “a form of litotes; i.e., the second negative (μή) negates the subjunctive verb . . . ; the first negative (οὐ) negates the doubtful clause introduced by μή. As a whole the clause communicates that ‘there is no doubt about it; it is not an uncertain matter’” (“The Classification of Subjunctives: A Statistical Study,” Grace Theological Journal 7, no. 1 [1986]: 6).

10 James Hope Moulton, Prolegomena, vol. 1 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek, by James Hope Moulton, Wilbert Francis Howard, and Nigel Turner, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908), 190.

11 Abera Mitiku Mengestu, “The Use of OU MH in the New Testament: Emphatic Negation or Mild Negation?” (ThM thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 2005), 72.

12 Culy also notes, “The conditional construction functions as a mitigated exhortation.” Martin M. Culy, I, II, III John: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2004), 19.

13 Boyer, “Classification of Subjunctives,” 9–11.

14 James L. Boyer, “The Classification of Optatives: A Statistical Study,” Grace Theological Journal 9, no. 1 (1988): 129.

15 Dana and Mantey (165) define mood as an “affirmation of relation [of a verbal idea] to reality . . . : mood represents the way in which the matter is conceived” (italics original). In their system, the indicative is “the mood of certainty”; the subjunctive is “the mood of probability”; the optative is “the mood of possibility”; and the imperative is “the mood of volition” (168–74, italics original). The imperative “expresses neither probability nor possibility, but only intention, and is, therefore, the furthest removed from reality” (174).

16 Boyer, “Classification of Optatives,” 138.

17 Gary A. Long, Grammatical Concepts 101 for Biblical Greek (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 80.

18 Rodney J. Decker, Reading Koine Greek: An Introduction and Integrated Workbook (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 490–91.

19 There are ten perfect subjunctives in the NT (all from the stative verb οἶδα) and four or five perfect imperatives (two or three from οἶδα, one as a standard, if stative, greeting [Acts 15:29] and one that seems stative by choice [Mark 4:39]).

20 In the NT, unlike secular Greek, present imperatives outnumber their aorist counterparts.

21 James L. Boyer, “The Classification of Imperatives: A Statistical Study,” Grace Theological Journal 8, no. 1 (1987): 45.

22 For an examination of all of the prohibitions in the NT with specific reference to whether they are cessative or ingressive, durative or punctiliar, and general or specific, see Douglas S. Huffman, Verbal Aspect Theory and the Prohibitions in the Greek New Testament, Studies in Biblical Greek 16 (New York: Peter Lang, 2014).

23 Boyer, “Classification of Imperatives,” 35.

24 Ibid., 36.

25 Cf. David L. Mathewson, “Verbal Aspect in Imperatival Constructions in Pauline Ethical Injunctions,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 9 (1996): 21–35.

26 See BDF §335; Buist M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 327; Mounce 317.

27 Aorist prohibitions are about evenly split between general and specific by Huffman’s reckoning (Verbal Aspect Theory, 176–96).

28 Ibid., 200.

29 Boyer, “Classification of Imperatives,” 37.

30 See, e.g., Young 142–43; Huffman, Verbal Aspect Theory; Porter 224–26; Mathewson, “Verbal Aspect,” 21–35.

31 Boyer, “Classification of Imperatives,” 37.

32 Ibid.

33 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 353.

34 Joseph D. Fantin, The Greek Imperative Mood in the New Testament, Studies in Biblical Greek 12 (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 306.

35 For more discussion, see Daniel B. Wallace, “Ὀργίζεσθε in Ephesians 4:26: Command or Condition?,” Criswell Theological Review 3 (1989): 353–72; Fantin, Greek Imperative, 303–6.

Chapter 9

1   James L. Boyer, “The Classification of Infinitives: A Statistical Study,” Grace Theological Journal 6, no. 1 (1985): 20.

2   Ibid., 21.

3   Ibid., 22.

4   Ibid., 9.

5   In the NT, when an infinitive is the object of a preposition, it is articular in all but eleven occurrences, and these exceptions are when the infinitive follows the improper prepositions πρὶν and πρὶν ἤ. This further strengthens our argument for viewing the infinitive as a substantive in this construction (contra Wallace 589).

6   Boyer, “Classification of Infinitives,” 14.

7   Ibid., 17.

8   Boyer (ibid., 15) thinks the “so-called imperatival infinitives should be considered elliptical and assigned to the complementary or indirect discourse categories.”

9   Ibid., 17.

10 Ibid., 16.

11 Adjectival infinitives in the NT are arthrous 15 times and anarthrous 73 times.

Chapter 10

1   Warren F. Dicharry, Greek without Grief: An Outline Guide to New Testament Greek (Chicago: Loyola, 1989), 84.

2   Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood, Studies in Biblical Greek 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 377–88; Constantine R. Campbell, Verbal Aspect and Non-indicative Verbs, Studies in Biblical Greek 13 (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 13–47.

3   Contra Wallace (615–16), who thinks the aspect is sometimes reduced.

4   James L. Boyer, “The Classification of Participles: A Statistical Study,” Grace Theological Journal 5, no. 2 (1984): 163.

5   Wallace 623; Black 123–24.

6   K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 61.

7   David L. Mathewson, Revelation: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 4.

8   Martin M. Culy, “Double Case Constructions in Koine Greek,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 6 (2009): 82–106.

9   Dana and Mantey 226: “Its adjectival force is retained and relates it intimately with the noun as well as the verb.” Adverbial participles that modify an infinitive, however, can agree with their accusative “subject” (cf. Matt. 13:2).

10 Brooks and Winbery 145; Robertson 1124; Chrys Caragounis, The Development of Greek and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 175. For this reason we prefer the term “circumstantial” to encompass all the ways an adverbial participle can function.

11 Robertson 1124: “It must be distinctly noted, the participle does not express time, manner, cause, purpose, condition or concession. These ideas are not in the participle, but are merely suggested by the context, if at all.” Though written in the 1930s, Robertson’s advice has not always been heeded.

12 Stephen H. Levinsohn, Discourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook, 2nd ed. (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 2000), 183: “This means that the information they convey is of secondary importance vis-à-vis that of the nuclear clause.”

13 This is sometimes confusingly labeled by grammars as the “circumstantial participle.”

14 Wallace 640; Young 158.

15 Stanley E. Porter, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament: Studies in Tools, Methods, and Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 245.

16 Steven E. Runge, Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 262. What Wallace labels the participle of means describes this use of the participle: “In some sense, the participle of means almost always defines the action of the main verb. . . . The participle of means could be called an epexegetical participle in that it defines or explains the action of the controlling verb” (629, italics original).

17 Runge, Discourse Grammar, 247, italics original.

18 Dana and Mantey 229–30; Wallace 623–27.

19 Porter 188; and Porter, Verbal Aspect, 380–85. See also James Hope Moulton, Prolegomena, vol. 1 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek, by James Hope Moulton, Wilbert Francis Howard, and Nigel Turner, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908), 131; Young 147.

20 Robert E. Picirilli, “Order and Relative Time in the Participles of the Greek New Testament,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 57, no. 1 (2014): 99–110, though not all of Picirilli’s examples to the contrary are convincing.

21 BDF §§414–16; McKay, New Syntax, 65.

22 David E. Aune, Revelation 1–5, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco: Word, 1997), cc.

23 As does Boyer, “Classification of Participles,” 173.

24 Moulton, Prolegomena, 180–83, 223–25.

25 Levinsohn, Discourse Features, 182. By “switch reference” he refers to “a natural way of highlighting the introduction to an existing scene of participants who perform significant actions that change the direction of the story, etc.”

26 English, e.g., uses periphrastic constructions frequently: “I am going,” “I am reading,” “She was studying.”

27 See Stanley E. Porter, “Vague Verbs, Periphrastics, and Matt. 16.19,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 1 (1988): 155–73.

28 Porter 46; cf. Young 161.

Chapter 11

1   Peter James Silzer and Thomas John Finley, How Biblical Languages Work: A Student’s Guide to Learning Hebrew and Greek (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), 120.

2   A primary (independent) clause modified by one or more secondary (independent) clauses is sometimes called a complex sentence.

3   These are often discussed throughout this grammar under the “substantival” or “noun” use of these grammatical forms.

4   John Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 344–46.

5   Most grammars treat adverbial participles and adverbial infinitives as secondary clauses that modify the verb.

6   Not all questions in Greek require information. Deliberative questions (see below) are used to express hesitation or doubt, not necessarily to ask for information.

7   For these first two, see Porter 276.

8   Richard A. Young, “A Classification of Conditional Sentences Based on Speech Act Theory,” Grace Theological Journal 10, no. 1 (1989): 29–49.

9   A. T. Robertson and W. Hersey Davis, A New Short Grammar of the Greek Testament, 10th ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 350.

10 Ibid. Dana and Mantey (287) call it the “simple condition.”

11 Porter 256; D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 7.

12 BDF §§371–72; Turner 115.

13 James L. Boyer, “First Class Conditions: What Do They Mean?,” Grace Theological Journal 2, no. 1 (1981): 75–114.

14 This is probably the most common description of class 1 conditionals in the grammars. See Black 144; Wallace 692.

15 Boyer, “First Class Conditions,” 82.

16 There are a few examples of the particle εἰ with the subjunctive in the protasis rather than ἐάν. See, e.g., Rev. 11:5b: καὶ εἴ τις θελήσῃ αὐτοὺς ἀδικῆσαι, οὕτως δεῖ αὐτὸν ἀποκτανθῆναι (“And if anyone desires to harm them, thus it will be necessary for him/her to be put to death”). Since the class of conditional is determined by the mood of the verb in the protasis, these should be treated as class 3 conditionals.

17 Dana and Mantey 290; Brooks and Winbery 121; Black 145.

18 James L. Boyer, “Third (and Fourth) Class Conditions,” Grace Theological Journal 3, no. 2 (1982): 163–75. See Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 78.

19 Porter 262, italics removed. Moule (150) says that the subjunctive mood in conditional sentences marks them as “hypothetical or uncertain.” Cf. Turner 113.

20 Wallace 696–97; William Watson Goodwin, Greek Grammar, rev. Charles Burton Gulick (Boston: Ginn, 1930), 295, 298. K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 167–73, distinguishes between “Particular Conditional Protases” and “General Conditional Protases” but does not limit them to class 3 conditionals. Zerwick (109–13) uses the terms “Eventual” and “Universal.”

21 Boyer, “Third (and Fourth) Class Conditions,” 175.

22 Robertson says, “There is less mist over the subj[unctive] than the opt[ative]” (1005).

23 Chrys Caragounis, The Development of Greek and the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 187.

24 Porter 244. For similar statistics, see James L. Boyer, “Relative Clauses in the Greek New Testament: A Statistical Study,” Grace Theological Journal 9, no. 2 (1988): 244.

25 These categories come from Young 231–33.

26 The following NT examples are also taken from Young 231–33.

27 Can you explain why the relative is in the genitive case? Hint: look up χρείαν (need) in BDAG.

Chapter 12

1   This last one is actually a neuter genitive form of a relative pronoun meaning “where.”

2   Stanley E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood, Studies in Biblical Greek 1 (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 414.

3   Wallace 677; Zerwick 122: “A consecutive [result] clause declares the end which in the nature of things is reached by something, whereas a final [purpose] clause declares the end which someone intends to reach.”

4   David L. Mathewson, Revelation: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 179–80.

5   Steven E. Runge, Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 233.

6   K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 135.

7   Brooks and Winbery 184; Porter 269.

8   Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Dionysis Goutsos, Discourse Analysis: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 91.

9   Runge, Discourse Grammar, 20.

10 They are addition (which includes ascensive and adjunctive), emphasis, reason, contrast, purpose, condition, consequence, concession, time, relative, conclusion, and comparison.

11 Martin M. Culy, I, II, III John: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2004), 5.

12 Kermit Titrud, “The Function of καί in the Greek New Testament and an Application to 2 Peter,” in Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Discourse Analysis, ed. David Alan Black et al. (Nashville: Broadman, 1992), 245.

13 See also Young (183–84), who treats it under the categories of contrast, addition, transition, explanation, emphasis.

14 Titrud, “The Function of καί,” 250.

15 Stephen H. Levinsohn, Discourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook, 2nd ed. (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 2000), 72, italics original.

16 Runge, Discourse Grammar, 31.

17 Ibid., 56.

18 Levinsohn, Discourse Features, 126; BDF §451: “After parenthetical remarks οὖν indicates a return to the main theme (resumptive).”

19 Levinsohn, Discourse Features, 91.

20 Runge, Discourse Grammar, 54.

21 Ibid., 74.

22 Margaret E. Thrall, Greek Particles in the New Testament, New Testament Tools and Studies 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 10.

23 Levinsohn, Discourse Features, 95. See BDF §459(2).

24 Levinsohn, Discourse Features, 95.

Chapter 13

1   Porter 298–307; Young 247–66; Gary A. Long, Grammatical Concepts 101 for Biblical Greek (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 211–23; David Alan Black, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 170–98. For an attempt to address grammar more extensively in light of discourse analysis, see Steven E. Runge, Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010). This trend is in response to the call of Stanley E. Porter and Jeffrey T. Reed, “Greek Grammar since BDF: A Retrospective and Prospective Analysis,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 4 (1991): 143–64.

2   Stanley E. Porter and D. A. Carson, eds., Discourse Analysis and Other Topics in Biblical Greek, JSNTSup 113 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995); Stanley E. Porter and Jeffrey T. Reed, Discourse Analysis and the New Testament: Approaches and Results, JSNTSup 170 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999); Stanley E. Porter, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament: Studies in Tools, Methods, and Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 88–92, 133–43.

3   Gillian Brown and George Yule, Discourse Analysis, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–26.

4   Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Dionysis Goutsos, Discourse Analysis: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 27.

5   Jeffrey T. Reed, “Discourse Analysis,” in A Handbook to the Exegesis of the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 190–91; Porter 298.

6   Georgakopoulous and Goutsos, Discourse Analysis, 56.

7   Ibid., 91.

8   Reed, “Discourse Analysis,” 205.

9   Cynthia Long Westfall, A Discourse Analysis of the Letter to the Hebrews: The Relationship between Form and Meaning, Library of New Testament Studies 297 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 244–45.

10 Robert A. Dooley and Stephen H. Levinsohn, Analyzing Discourse: A Manual of Basic Concepts (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 2001), 27.

11 Brown and Yule, Discourse Analysis, 95.

12 Ibid.

13 The paragraph divisions in your Greek NT (the most common editions are the NA28, UBS5, and SBLGNT) are the decisions of the editorial committee. While they are often helpful, they are not always accurate or based on clear linguistic criteria. Therefore, they should be regarded as only suggestions.

14 Levinsohn, Discourse Features, 278–79.

15 Westfall, Discourse Analysis, 37.

16 Dooley and Levinsohn, Analyzing Discourse, 36.

17 Robert E. Longacre, “Towards an Exegesis of 1 John Based on the Discourse Analysis of the Greek Text,” in Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Discourse Analysis, ed. David Alan Black et al. (Nashville: Broadman, 1992), 271–86.

18 Stanley E. Porter, “Prominence: An Overview,” in The Linguist as Pedagogue: Trends in the Teaching and Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Matthew Brook O’Donnell, New Testament Monographs 11 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009), 45–74.

19 Cf. Kathleen Callow, Discourse Considerations in Translating the Word of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 50. As Reed says, prominence is “the semantic and grammatical elements of discourse that serve to set aside certain subjects, ideas or motifs of the author as more or less semantically and pragmatically significant than others.” Jeffrey T. Reed, Discourse Analysis of Philippians: Method and Rhetoric in the Debate over Literary Integrity, JSNTSup 136 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 106, italics removed.

20 S. Wallace, “Figure and Ground: The Interrelationships of Linguistic Categories,” in Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics, ed. P. Hopper, Typological Studies in Language 1 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1982), 201–33.

21 “Signals of continuity followed by variation are the primary indicators of discourse shifts as well as prominence” (Westfall, Discourse Analysis, 77).

22 Porter 302–3; Porter, “Prominence,” 58–61.

23 For more detail, see David L. Mathewson, Verbal Aspect in the Book of Revelation: The Function of Greek Verb Tenses in John’s Apocalypse, Linguistic Biblical Studies 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 123–29.

24 Porter, “Prominence: An Overview,” 73.

25 Runge, Discourse Grammar, 288–93.

26 Porter 86; Young 15.

27 Westfall, Discourse Analysis, 60.

28 Robert A. Dooley, “Let Me Direct Your Attention: Attention Management and Translation,” in Discourse Studies & Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn, ed. Steven E. Runge (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2011), 76.

29 Long (Grammatical Concepts, 217–18) refers to this as “Quantity of Information.”

30 Dooley and Levinsohn, Analyzing Discourse, 111.

31 Levinsohn, Discourse Features, 136.

32 Georgakopoulou and Goutsos, Discourse Analysis, 99.

33 Reed, Discourse Analysis of Philippians, 103.

34 Matthew Brook O’Donnell, Corpus Linguistics and the Greek of the New Testament (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005), 421.

35 Runge, Discourse Grammar, 6–7, with slight modifications.