NOTES

---

Preface

[1]. Most (but not all) Christians do not accept the LXX as “canonical Scripture,” but it is an extremely important early translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (the first such translation of the entire Hebrew Bible in any language) that all Christians acknowledge. The LXX is also a major form of those Scriptures used by Jesus, the apostles, and the early church.

[2]. For several helpful discussions of matters related to teaching Greek, see Porter and O’Donnell, Linguist as Pedagogue.

[3]. This is far too large a subject for me to summarize here. For a superb introduction to this study and its relevance for biblical studies in both Testaments, see Silva, God, Language and Scripture.

[4]. See my essay “Adapting Technology to Teach Koine Greek,” in Porter and O’Donnell, Linguist as Pedagogue, 25–42.

[5]. Some of the examples have been slightly simplified by omitting various constituents of the sentence, whether modifiers, unnecessary phrases, and so on. Some sentence-initial conjunctions have been omitted as well, especially καί in narrative text. Punctuation and some accents may vary slightly from published texts as a result of these omissions, most of which have not been marked with ellipses. None of these changes are textual judgments; they are strictly pedagogical, to enable students to focus on the elements they know or are learning. Interpreting any of these texts should always be based on full, credible editions of the work in question, read in context.

[6]. From time to time I have also used other lexicons, such as Abbott-Smith, Liddell and Scott, and for the LXX, Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie (LEH) as well as Chamberlain’s recent work Greek of the Septuagint.

[7]. The current version of Accordance, a superb Bible software package from OakTree Software, is v. 10.4 (2014). I have used nearly every version almost from the program’s inception; consequently there might be minor discrepancies due to differing versions of the search software or the underlying databases. Such differences are insignificant for pedagogical purposes. Originally I used the GNT module, which was the Accordance implementation of the GRAMCORD tagged NT, the most recent version of which was v. 3.6 (2001). More recently I have used the GNT-T, a tagged NT text based on NA27 developed by William Mounce and Rex Koivisto (2003; the current version is v. 4.0, 2009), as well as NA27-T (v. 1.0, 2009) and UBS4-T (v. 1.0, 2011), both of which use the same Mounce/Koivisto tagging.

Introduction

[1]. This summary generally follows Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers. See also Buck, Greek Dialects; and Palmer, Greek Language.

[2]. There is some disagreement as to these groupings and even the geographical distribution shown in the map (fig. I.3). The data summarized here follows Horrocks, Greek, 13–42.

[3]. On these matters see Horrocks, Greek, 9–59.

[4]. Horrocks, Greek, 60–78.

[5]. Horrocks, Greek, 79–80.

[6]. Horrocks, Greek, 87.

[7]. Horrocks, Greek, 88.

[8]. The discussion in this section will not be clear to you until you have mastered a good bit of this book, but it is important information for you to have as your study progresses. For now, be content with knowing that there are distinctions between various forms of the language.

[9]. Those interested should consult Horrocks, Greek, parts 2 and 3, pp. 189–470. A summary of the characteristics of Byzantine Greek is given on pp. 226–27, 272, and in more detail, 284–322.

[10]. The use of a Katharevousa Greek (“corrected” by Attic norms) dates to the mid-nineteenth century and continued until 1976.

[11]. An extremely contentious, politicized debate throughout the twentieth century culminated in this decision. For the historical, political, cultural, and linguistic background of the controversy, see Horrocks, Greek, 438–66.

[12]. Even in the twentieth century some similar suggestions were made. It was proposed that the NT was a unique dialect of Koine (Turner and Gehman) or that parts of the NT were translation Greek, either from Aramaic (Torrey, Black) or Hebrew (Segal, Manson). For classic essays by these writers, see the collection by Porter, ed., Language of the New Testament.

[13]. Rydbeck, “On the Question of Linguistic Levels.”

[14]. Wallace, Greek Grammar, 17–30.

Chapter 1

[1]. Greek has not always had uppercase and lowercase letters. When the literature of Koine Greek was written, there was only one case. The origin of two distinct cases, upper and lower, as we call them in English, can be traced to the ninth century AD.

[2]. Technically some English letters also have names (e.g., the letter j can be identified as a jay, and y may be spelled out as wye), but these are rarely, if ever, used in common parlance.

[3]. There are a few variations in some of the letters. Your teacher may write a letter or two somewhat differently from what is shown here. If so, follow that pattern.

[4]. The pronunciation of Greek in its various historical stages is debated by scholars. What you read in this chapter represents one form of what is called Erasmian pronunciation, though an alternate system is also given. See the explanation in the preface.

[5]. English teachers and grammarians do not agree on whether or not to include w as a vowel.

[6]. As just one example, iota is long “when it ends a word or syllable, or forms a syllable by itself, e.g. ἐλπί-σι, ὅτι, πεδ-ί-ον; the sound of i in pin, when it is followed by a consonant in the same syllable, e.g. πρίν, κίν-δυνος” (Kühner, Grammar of the Greek Language, 17).

[7]. The front of a word is the only place where Greek uses the h sound (although in Latin script the letter h is used to transliterate φ [phi] and θ [theta]). Some scholars suggest that the h sound was not pronounced in first-century Koine. It is, however, vocalized in academic, Erasmian pronunciation.

[8]. Breathing marks may also appear in some texts when there is a double rho in the middle of a word. This depends on the editor and is not a common convention in current printed texts or in BDAG.

[9]. Greek does not distinguish the colon from a semicolon as we do in English. The raised dot (sometimes called a middle point or a mid-dot) in Greek serves to indicate either function, though it is most commonly the equivalent of an English semicolon.

[10]. The accent named grave is pronounced gräv (an ä sounds like the a in father); some pronounce it like the English synonym for a cemetery plot: grave (grāv). The circumflex accent can be written either as a simple curve (῀) or in the “wiggly” tilde form (~). Many fonts and published books (including CL, BDAG, and the NA Greek NT) use the tilde form, but others such as the UBS Greek NT and Rahlfs’s LXX use the curved form. The more usual form in handwritten text is the simpler curved shape.

[11]. The grave is sometimes described as a falling pitch, but “in fact it indicated a pitch maintained at the normal level, in contrast to (and therefore lower than) the acute or the circumflex” (Carson, Greek Accents, 16). For those who can read music, these accents are given in musical notation in MHT 2:53.

[12]. One of the best is Carson, Greek Accents.

[13]. The NA text also uses a capital for the beginning of a “subparagraph,” otherwise indicated by a wide space within the line of text.

[14]. Cited by Metzger, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 23. For an explanation of this text, see the sidebar “A Greek Palindrome.”

[15]. Technically, we use the modern form of the polytonic Greek alphabet. Modern Greek (as spoken and written in the country of Greece today) is monotonic (see the explanation under “Accents” above), but that is a relatively recent change, dating from the 1960s, when a major change in Greek spelling and orthography was legislated by the Greek government.

[16]. You will need to read the context to make sense of this example, but the issue is that “the seats beside Jesus, then, are reserved either for certain ones who have already been designated (and these might well be the sons of Zebedee themselves), or for others (excluding the sons of Zebedee)” (Aland and Aland, Text of the New Testament, 277).

[17]. In Turkish, an agglutinative language, ev = house; evler = houses; evleri = his houses; evleriden = from his houses, etc. I am told that in Hawaiian, Kananinoheaokuuhomeopuukaimanaalohilohinokeawealamakaokaokalani, a single word consisting of sixty-three letters, means “The beautiful aroma of my home at Sparkling Diamond Hill is carried to the eyes of heaven.”

[18]. The addition of various morphemes may seem agglutinative, but inflected languages can add only certain types of prefixes and suffixes and in fixed patterns. There are a limited number of elements that can be added to the base word, and compound words are relatively rare.

[19]. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Prologue, §1, “Concerning Hobbits.”

[20]. Part of speech is the traditional term for what is now sometimes called word class. Either term includes such categories as noun, verb, adjective, and so on. The vocabulary lists given at the end of each chapter are divided into these groups so that you have an idea how the Greek words you are learning are likely to function in a Greek text.

[21]. Louw and Nida’s lexicon (LN) is a useful supplement, but it is not a standard lexicon and cannot serve as the only such reference work to be consulted. For LXX study there are more specialized lexicons available (LEH gives only glosses; MLS provides basic definitions).

Chapter 2

[1]. If these terms are not familiar to you, the subject of a sentence identifies who or what performs the action described. The action word in a sentence is called the verb. If that action is done to someone or something, we designate that the direct object.

[2]. The emphasis might be somewhat different with differing word order, though that would also depend on the form of the verb that is used.

[3]. It is actually a bit more complicated than this, but a simple description will do for now.

[4]. That may seem like an odd sentence, but it makes perfectly good sense if him refers to a stallion or perhaps if Pinocchio was a wrestler.

[5]. The possessive case in English is broader than possession or ownership, but that is perhaps one of the most common uses and the one most commonly thought of due to the designation possessive.

[6]. In older forms of Greek there was also a dual form. This was used for things that came in pairs—for example, ears. The same category is used in Biblical/Classical Hebrew and also in Modern Hebrew, though less frequently, since many duals from the classical period have become plurals in the modern form of the language.

[7]. Or sometimes -es (e.g., box ► boxes).

[8]. The normal plural for brother is now brothers. The illustration above uses the older English spelling, brethren (which you might recognize if you have ever used a King James Bible or read Shakespeare).

[9]. Remember this when you get frustrated with Greek for not having an explicit form, forcing you to judge from the context. English often does the same thing. It might be more frequent in Greek than English, or perhaps we just notice it more because we make such judgments automatically in English without even stopping to think about them.

[10]. Each of these pieces is called, in technical terminology, a morpheme—the smallest meaningful unit in a word.

[11]. That is why you see the parentheses in the chart and the uppercase/lowercase distinction: (M/f), (F/m), (N). The last column, the neuter variation of the second declension, is always neuter.

[12]. Most first-declension masculine words are proper names. There are only a half dozen that use alpha endings that are not names, and all of them are used infrequently. In chap. 3 you will meet a few common first-declension masculine words that use eta endings.

[13]. In place of the single-letter abbreviations used here (i.e., N, G, D, A and S, P), some reference works will use the abbreviations nom., gen., dat., acc., sg., and pl.

[14]. There are only 36 words in the NT that do this, and only 3 are common (i.e., they occur 50 or more times in the NT: δόξα, “glory”; γλῶσσα, “tongue, language”; θάλασσα, “sea, lake”). There is a rule that tells you which words will use the hybrid pattern (Smyth, Greek Grammar, §217a–c). If you want a list of all these words, see MBG, 174. The three patterns given above are the only patterns used; no Greek word has any other pattern, such as η α α η or α η α η.

[15]. If you study the chart of the technical endings in the sidebar “Technical Case Endings,” you will find that there are three endings with only a sigma, five with only an iota, and three with ις. Most of these are easily distinguished if you learn the endings with the connecting vowel.

[16]. The “ου, ὁ” is part of the lexical form. You will learn what these pieces mean shortly.

[17]. The capital letters used in these headings represent the usual classification, but a lowercase letter in the same heading (e.g., M/f) is to remind you that sometimes these forms are feminine rather than the usual masculine.

[18]. The best discussion of the article is in Wallace, Greek Grammar, 206–54. For those of you wanting to go further, I would encourage you to browse that section. Pay particular attention to the qualitative use of anarthrous forms (i.e., words without an article, 244–45), which is different from English, as well as the generic use of the article (227–31).

[19]. Ἰησοῦς is nominative case (as you would guess from the article). See the explanation in the “Vocabulary Notes” at the end of chap. 3.

Chapter 3

[1]. A number of grammatical terms used to describe either English or Greek are imprecise or even inaccurate. They have developed over many centuries, and by now the tradition is so deeply embedded that it is extremely difficult to make changes.

[2]. Buckler and McAvoy, English Fundamentals, 107 §9h.

[3]. Buckler and McAvoy, English Fundamentals, 107 §9h. I have reformatted the text and abridged the explanations given for each of these examples.

[4]. The sentence “Meghan threw Liam” says something quite different.

[5]. Would you agree that English is sometimes weird? It can say the same thing two different ways with no difference in meaning. Actually, that is very normal. It is the same way in Greek. Do not try to make every little difference in Greek the basis for some special nuance—a “golden nugget.” As you hear people talking about the Greek NT (whether commentators, preachers, or Bible study leaders), it is often a safe rule of thumb that their reliable knowledge of Greek is inversely proportionate to the number of “golden nuggets” that they find in the text.

[6]. A Greek genitive noun or pronoun may also be the object of a preposition or the direct object of some verbs. For now, do not worry about these other functions.

[7]. In English “of God” is a prepositional phrase, but in Greek it would be a genitive-case noun (θεοῦ). Many Greek genitives are translated with such an “of” phrase, but that is not the only way to translate a genitive.

[8]. LN, 1:67, §6.112. Louw and Nida’s work is a specialty lexicon, not a standard one for regular use. It does make a nice supplement to BDAG. Your teacher can tell you more about it. Another lexicon that uses this alternate pattern is Muraoka’s Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint.

[9]. The word ἦν is roughly equivalent to a past tense form of our English verb “to be.” It occurs very frequently in the NT and LXX, though you will not learn its grammatical form until lesson 16. It will be glossed when it occurs in examples that have no parallel English translation, but you will also quickly learn it from seeing it so frequently.

[10]. This example introduces a feature that we have not yet talked about. You will meet it officially in chap. 5, but if you think your way through the verse, you can figure out what it must mean. It is a construction that is also used in English.

[11]. The vocative (VS, vocative singular, in the chart above) is the case of direct address; it is not common in the NT or LXX (see app. D).

Chapter 4

[1]. Historical narrative may, of course, embed oral dialogue or personal letters in the narrative.

[2]. Pronouns do not occur in the vocative case.

[3]. It has traditionally been said that the accented forms are emphatic, but this is debatable. A more probable explanation relates to word order, but the details are well beyond your needs at the moment. All you need to be able to do now is to recognize either form as a pronoun.

Chapter 5

1 . These are sometimes called auxiliary or helping verbs. The most common are do, have, and be (and their various forms).

[2]. Some English grammarians include other tenses, such as the future perfect or the past perfect. Other grammarians insist that there are only two tenses in English, present and past.

[3]. As you become more proficient with the language, you will intuitively think of somewhat different equivalents as you read. From the flow of the context, you will sense what the writer is saying and how it is best expressed in English.

[4]. Occasionally a student reads this statement as if it said, “eliminates rote memory.” That is entirely wrong. You must memorize certain core data. You may think there is quite a bit of it to learn even with this second approach, but it is a whole lot less than the traditional approach.

[5]. Some grammars refer to this as a theme vowel.

[6]. There is a rule that tells you which it will be. You are not responsible to know this rule, but if you are curious, here it is: if the next letter is mu or nu, the connecting vowel is omicron, otherwise it is epsilon; if there is no letter following, the connecting vowel can be either omicron or epsilon.

[7]. I often tell students that they must pass the “2 a.m. test” on these forms. That is, they need to have someone wake them without warning at 2 a.m. and ask, “What are the present active indicative forms of λύω?” When the student can recite them immediately and fall back asleep (or continue sleeping), they pass the test. (Yes, there is some hyperbole here, but it is intended to stress the necessity of learning these forms well.)

[8]. There are other ways to explain some of these combinations. What is given here is simplified for pedagogical purposes.

[9]. This is sometimes called compensatory lengthening.

[10]. When a word ends with a vowel and the following word begins with a vowel, the letter nu is usually added to make it easier to pronounce. (You will see it both ways in the NT.) We do something very similar in English: we say, “a critter,” but “an animal.” (The English rule is that if a word begins with a vowel, the indefinite article is an, otherwise it is a.)

[11]. One reason for this is that the nu is far more often present on third plural verbs in the NT than absent, and that in a ratio of nearly 70 to 1. The LXX also uses the nu far more often than not.

[12]. In addition to εἰμί there are several other linking verbs in Greek, including γίνομαι and ὑπάρχω.

[13]. The accent pattern ἔστιν does not always indicate the existential use; the same pattern also occurs when ἔστιν occurs at the beginning of a sentence.

[14]. In the NT, there are 98 accusative articles with infinitives, 67 genitives, 48 datives, and only 9 nominatives. In the LXX, the genitive case dominates (1,494 of 2,215 total).

Chapter 6

[1]. There are only three adjectives in the NT that use the mixed α/η feminine endings: πᾶς (“all”), ἅπας (“whole”), and μέλας (“black”). For example, the feminine forms of πᾶς are as follows: πᾶσα, πάσης, πάσῃ, πᾶσαν, πᾶσαι, πασῶν, πάσαις, πάσας. All other feminine adjectives will have either α-pure or η-pure endings.

[2]. In the same way, if either the adjective or noun is indeclinable, the endings will not be spelled the same; for example, Josephus refers to ταῖς ἐννέα πύλαις (“the nine gates”) of Solomon’s temple (J.W. 5.5.3 §205). The adjective ἐννέα (“nine”) does not decline.

[3]. Some two-form adjectives use third-declension endings, for which see chap. 12.

[4]. In addition to ἔρημος, ον (“desolate”; occurs 48× in the NT and 65× in the LXX), other frequent adjectives with this pattern of endings are αἰώνιος, ον (“eternal,” 71× NT/153× LXX; more on this adjective below); ἁμαρτωλός, όν (“sinful,” 47×/179×); and διάβολος, ον (“slanderous,” 37×/22×). There are also two third-declension adjectives (both numbers) that are common: τρεῖς, τρία (“three,” 68×/352×) and τέσσαρες, α (“four,” 41×/224×). Less common (and not part of the vocabulary of this textbook) are words such as ἀληθής, ές (“true,” 26×/20×) and ἀσθενής, ές (“weak, sick,” 26×/21×); see app. A for their forms. There are over four hundred two-ending adjectives, but most of these occur only a few times in the NT.

The adjective αἰώνιος, ον is usually a two-form adjective, but rarely it uses a separate form for feminine (only 2× in the NT). This is a more common pattern in the LXX, where 12 of the 60 occurrences of the feminine form use alpha endings. As a result, some lexicons (including CL, but not BDAG) list this word as αἰώνιος, α, ον.

[5]. You may be familiar with the term subject complement instead of predicate adjective. They refer to the same thing: an adjective functioning as a subject complement.

[6]. The second predicate position is not as common in the NT as the first predicate position.

[7]. There can be a compound predicate in which two (or more) verbs are connected by καί.

[8]. διάβολος, ον, “slanderous,” is most commonly used substantivally as “the slanderer/adversary”; παραλυτικός, ή, όν, “paralyzed,” is commonly “paralyzed person.”

[9]. The subject that is modified by αὐτός functioning as an adjective does not have to be third person. It may modify a second-person pronoun: σὺ αὐτὸς λέγεις τῷ ἀδελφῷ σου (“You yourself speak to your brother”). Or the subject may come from the verb (i.e., there may not be a separate word in the sentence that serves as the subject): αὐτὸς λέγεις τῷ ἀδελφῷ σου (“You yourself speak to your brother”). Both of these sentences are intensive statements, but the first gives greater prominence to the statement by using the explicit second-person pronoun as the subject along with the intensive use of αὐτός.

[10]. Without an article it is not possible to determine this grammatically, but it makes good sense as such here.

[11]. Αὐτοῦ does not agree with a noun; οἱ μαθηταί is nominative plural, but αὐτοῦ is genitive singular.

[12]. The most common way to form an adverb in English is to add an -ly suffix to an adjective, but not all adverbs in English have such a suffix (e.g., then, downward). Nor are all English words ending with -ly adverbs (e.g., manly, fly), and neither are all Greek words that end with -ως (e.g., αἰδώς, “respect”—a noun; Ἀμώς, “Amos”—a proper noun; γέλως, “laughter”—a noun; and εἰδώς, “knowing”—a participle).

[13]. There will be some apparent spelling anomalies at the end of the stem, but that is usually the case with adverbs formed from third-declension adjectives. Technically, the ending is added to the genitive plural form of the adjective.

[14]. Examples of these include τότε, “then” (time); ἄνωθεν, “from above” (source); ὄπισω, “behind” (position); and δίς, “twice” (frequency).

[15]. You will learn later what the difference is. If you are dying to know now, indicative-mood verbs normally take οὐ, but all other moods (e.g., subjunctive, imperative, etc.) use μή.

[16]. This is one situation in which the negative μή can be used with an indicative verb.

[17]. The parallel English equivalents given in this section deliberately use a translation that makes the meaning unambiguous. Simpler English equivalents may often be satisfactory.

[18]. Not all forms of each word listed here occur in the NT or LXX.

[19]. The adjective ἀγαθός has several sets of comparatives. The two most commonly used in Koine are listed; there were others in Classical Greek. The κρείττων/κράτιστος set is typically used when the comparison involves strength or force, but βελτίων/βέλτιστα when the comparison involves moral qualities (see further Smyth, Greek Grammar, §319).

[20]. Μέγας is unusual in having two comparative forms. The original comparative was μείζων, but that word had begun to lose its comparative force and was slowly being replaced by μειζότερος, a process only beginning in NT times. Μειζότερος does not occur at all in the LXX and only once in the NT.

[21]. The full paradigm of the comparative form πλείων is given in app. A.

[22]. Most comparative and superlative forms appear in the lexicon under the positive form, though a few have their own listing. If you do not find a form in one place, check the other.

[23]. The superlative form μάλιστα occurs only 6 times in the LXX, but 31 times in the Pseudepigrapha, 303 times in Josephus, 259 times in Philo, and 14 times in the Apostolic Fathers.

Chapter 7

[1]. The aorist active indicative form accounts for 4,409 of 9,939 active indicative verbs in the NT (44%) and 24,607 of 43,372 in the LXX (57%). For comparison, the next most common in the NT is the present active indicative with 3,141 (32%) and the future active indicative in the LXX, 8,057 (19%).

[2]. It is often said that the augment is a past-time marker. It is true that many verbs that have augments do refer to past time, but that is because the verb forms that have augments as part of their spelling are typically used in statements that refer to the past (e.g., historical narrative).

[3]. Outside the indicative mood the secondary endings are not normally used. For example, the aorist subjunctive has no augment and uses primary endings even though aorist indicatives always use secondary endings.

[4]. This morpheme goes by several names. In various grammars you will find it referred to as a tense morpheme, tense suffix, tense formative, aspect morpheme, and so forth.

[5]. Remember that the augment is a marker for secondary personal endings (the B and D quadrants). Non-finite forms (i.e., infinitives and participles) do not use personal endings. Other non-indicative finite forms do not use secondary endings (e.g., the subjunctive mood, which you will learn later), so they do not use augments either.

[6]. This also happens sometimes when a word begins with a diphthong (e.g., αι, ει ► ῃ). Other times the diphthong remains unchanged.

[7]. Some such conventions may be simply idiomatic; others may have some semantic association. The reasons go well beyond the needs of first-year study. When you want to pursue the question further, see Wallace, Greek Grammar, 131–34, 171–73; Blass, Debrunner, and Funk, Greek Grammar, §§169–78, 202.

[8]. If you want to pursue this further, see Wallace, Greek Grammar, 399–400, who says that “since the neuter usually refers to impersonal things (including animals), the singular verb regards the plural subject as a collective whole. It is appropriate to translate the subject as a plural as well as the verb, rather than translate both as singulars.”

Chapter 8

[1]. You have probably not heard many word studies on these words. There is a story told of a famous (or perhaps, infamous!) sermon preached in the chapel service of a well-known seminary in which the visiting preacher spent much of his time expounding the significance of the Greek word yap. That is not a wise thing for a preacher to do when speaking to an audience composed of students and professors who know Greek. (Can you identify the preacher’s error? If not, consider the list of conjunctions discussed below.)

[2]. Yes, I know, that sounds like an odd sentence. Think of a wrestling match.

[3]. In Greek (less commonly in English) a linking verb may be omitted but implied in a clause. This is called a verbless clause.

[4]. Since Greek finite verbs have a “back pocket” subject in the personal ending, phrases missing a subject will typically have infinitives or participles, or no verbal form at all.

[5]. In Greek there are some other options, such as some participles or participial phrases that translate as subordinate clauses in English.

[6]. Sometimes καί is not a conjunction at all but functions as an adverb: “even, also.” You can usually tell these two uses apart by whether or not the two linked elements are grammatically equal (or if there are two elements). If they are not equal or there are not two elements, then καί is probably being used adverbially. Here is an example: Mark 4:41, Τίς ἄρα οὗτός ἐστιν ὅτι καὶ ὁ ἄνεμος καὶ ἡ θάλασσα ὑπακούει αὐτῷ; (“Who, then, is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?”) Note that the second καί in this example is a coordinating conjunction (“and”).

[7]. The word δέ typically is the second or third word in its clause, but it can occur later as well; for example, in 1 John 2:2 it is the fifth word: καὶ αὐτὸς ἱλασμός ἐστιν περὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν, οὐ περὶ τῶν ἡμετέρων δὲ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου.

[8]. Similar to δέ, the English conjunction however may occur in a postpositive position. For example, in Bilbo’s birthday speech he says, “The banquet was very splendid, however, though I had a bad cold at the time, I remember, and could only say ‘thag you very buch’” (Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, book 1, chap. 1).

[9]. In the Gospels and Acts, γάρ occurs about 4 times per thousand words. In Romans through Galatians, the average is about 14 times per thousand words, with the technical argument of Romans representing the high end, with almost 17 instances per thousand.

[10]. You will not meet subjunctive-mood verbs until chap. 28. Any that are found in examples before then will be indicated for you, usually by an English gloss or a note. When you read ἵνα in a text, you will need to assess the options above in light of the context; just realize that you probably will not understand the morphology of the following verb.

[11]. In Mark, more than 60 percent of the sentences begin with καί. By contrast, in Matthew the figure is only 30 percent.

[12]. Technically all Greek verbs have at least one complement, since the subject is considered a complement. Since all Greek verbs have a default, back-pocket subject, it is not particularly helpful to think of the subject as a complement. Later you will learn that verbs can also take adjuncts in addition to complements.

[13]. The five sentence types are based on Funk, Beginning-Intermediate Grammar, 2:377–91, §§500–523.

[14]. Scholars debate whether or not there is any significance to these variations, but the arguments are not yet definitive despite some assertions. It is possible that some patterns may suggest a focus on a particular part of the statement, but that should not be extrapolated to conclude that this involves heavy emphasis. The meaning of a statement does not change if word order changes, though the focus might.

Chapter 9

[1]. This is not unique to Greek. English prepositions are also very flexible in meaning. Only the context can determine the particular meaning in each situation. Note these English examples, which illustrate how flexible and diverse is the meaning of a simple English preposition, with (Goetchius, Language of the New Testament, 147).

He fought with the Japanese. (i.e., against them)

He fought with the A.E.F. (i.e., together with it)

He fought with a machine gun. (i.e., by means of it)

He fought with courage. (i.e., in a courageous manner)

[2]. These changes usually occur but occasionally do not. For example, both κατὰ εἷς (Mark 14:19) and καθ᾿ εἷς (John 8:9) occur in the NT (though only once each). Likewise, both ἐπὶ ἔθνος (Matt. 24:7) and ἐπ᾿ ἔθνος (Mark 13:8) occur. Even in parallel passages the spelling may differ. Mark 9:2 has μετὰ ἡμέρας ἕξ; the same statement in Matt. 17:1 has μεθ᾿ ἡμέρας ἕξ. Greek writers in both the Classical and Koine periods were notoriously inconsistent in such spellings; there were general patterns but no standardization in this regard.

[3]. For those who are curious about such things (or for those whose goal is to do Greek composition), the final vowel of a preposition drops off if the next word begins with a vowel. If the vowel at the beginning of the next word has a rough breathing mark, then prepositions that end with pi, kappa, or tau (after dropping a final vowel) change to phi, chi, and theta (respectively). Likewise ἐκ becomes ἐξ when the following word begins with a vowel (regardless of the breathing mark used). A few prepositions that end with a vowel never drop that vowel—for example, περί and πρό.

[4]. If you are sharp, you will be able to figure out how each worm tells you which case is used as its object.

[5]. Some prepositions are never used this way; they are called improper prepositions—those that cannot be prefixed to another word. These include words such as ἐνώπιον, ἄχρι, and ὀπίσω.

[6]. These changes are the same as those listed earlier in the chapter.

[7]. This sample sentence comes from Voelz, Fundamental Greek Grammar, 77–78.

[8]. The article in this usage is technically called an adjectivizer.

[9]. The article in this usage is technically called a nominalizer.

[10]. Technically, “speaking” is a participle, but it still takes an object.

[11]. Vocative is the case used for direct address; see app. D. This noun, πατήρ, πατρός, ὁ, is in the third declension (do not worry about the form now—we will figure that out later).

Chapter 10

[1]. The far demonstrative occurs only in predicate position in the NT. Attributive position—either first attributive (ὁ ἐκείνος ἄνθρωπος) or second attributive (ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὁ ἐκείνος)—is possible but occurs rarely in Koine. It is not found at all in the NT, and second attributive occurs only a few times in the LXX (e.g., Exod. 2:11). A first attributive example occurs in T. Ab. 7.9.

[2]. That seems to be the answer to a great many questions like this, but that is language—there typically is no set of rules for such things.

[3]. Read some of the contemporary translations that pay close attention to both English and Greek to see how this works (e.g., NIV or HCSB); you might find that the NASB too often mechanically leaves weakened demonstratives as this/that and as a result comes across as rather clumsy English (though in Luke 1:32 it is correct).

[4]. The word that is not always a relative pronoun in English, but it may be (e.g., “The book that you are reading . . .”). It may also be an adverb (“I’ll go that far, but no farther”) or a conjunction (“I believe that Jesus is God”). In English there has been a technical distinction between which and that—a distinction that students (and teachers) sometimes have trouble remembering. The rules of English usage are beginning to blur that distinction so you can ignore them for our purposes.

[5]. Although it is not common, occasionally a relative pronoun has no antecedent. In such situations the clause is called a headless relative clause. For example, 1 John begins with the words “That which was from the beginning.” The English “that which” translates a relative pronoun (ὅ) that cannot have an antecedent, since it is the first word in the book of 1 John.

[6]. Remember that who is subjective (nominative) case in English and whom is objective (accusative) case, so the correct English form must be selected, depending on the pronoun’s function in its own clause.

[7]. There is also a specific form called the indefinite relative pronoun, ὅστις, a compound formed from the relative pronoun and the indefinite pronoun. Both parts of this word decline, so you will see not only ὅστις but also forms such as αἵτινες and ὅτου. See chap. 12 for details and app. A for a complete set of these forms.

[8]. E.g., in 3 Kgdms. (1 Kings) 17:12 the widow of Zerapath says, Ἐγὼ συλλέγω δύο ξυλάρια καὶ εἰσελεύσομαι καὶ ποιήσω αὐτὸ ἐμαυτῇ καὶ τοῖς τέκνοις μου (“I am gathering two sticks, and I will go in and prepare it [i.e., the remaining handful of flour] for myself and my children”).

[9]. Josephus has four feminine forms, but three are an alternate formation: σαυτῆς, σαυτῇ, σαυτήν; Philo’s usage is similar.

[10]. The parties need not be personal, though they most commonly are (and always are in the NT); inanimate objects can also be related in various ways to “one another,” whether ships, pages, furniture parts, and so on.

[11]. Some reference tools class these words as possessive adjectives, others as possessive pronouns.

Chapter 11

[1]. There are some third-declension nouns whose lexical form ends with -ος, such as ὅρος (“mountain”), but the genitive ending given makes it obvious that it is third declension: ὅρος, ους, τό.

[2]. As you will learn below, there are other reasons for this. There are specific situations in which the sigma ending drops off and leaves the nominative consisting of just the stem.

[3]. These modifications may be described as euphonic, that is, to make it sound better. The opposite of euphony is cacophony.

[4]. Labials are letters that are pronounced by the flow of air being stopped by the lips, the velars by the soft palate and tongue, and the dentals by touching the tongue to the teeth.

[5]. Since it is the sigma that introduces the change, this chart is primarily relevant in the nominative singular and dative plural forms of the third declension. Whatever happens in the nominative singular also happens in the dative plural because the ending begins with a sigma in both instances (sigma alone in nominative, -σιν in dative). E.g., σάρξ, σαρκός, ἡ, “flesh,” in the nominative is *σαρκ + σ = σάρξ, and in the dative is *σαρκ + σιν = σαρξίν.

[6]. You do not need to memorize the labels for each row (labials, velars, dentals) unless your teacher tells you to do so.

[7]. Technically the liquids are λ and ρ; μ and ν are nasals. It is somewhat standard practice, however, to simply group all four together as liquids, at least for purposes of first-year Greek.

[8]. The curious can find the details in MBG, 209–10.

[9]. For more information on these types of words, including a complete list for the NT, see MBG, 202–6.

Chapter 12

[1]. Some lexicons will also give the genitive forms: παντός, πάσης, παντός.

[2]. See Conybeare and Stock, Grammar of Septuagint Greek, §63.

[3]. In the LXX there are also some instances of noun forms: τετράς, αδος, ἡ, “four, the fourth day (of the week or month)”; εἰκάς, άδος, ἡ, “twenty, twentieth day (of the month)”; and τριάκας, αδος, ἡ, “thirty, thirtieth day (of the month).” These do not occur in the NT.

[4]. In the NT there are a few instances of the spelling οὐθείς, none of μηθείς.

[5]. See further, Conybeare and Stock, Grammar of Septuagint Greek, §2; MLS, s.v. εἷς, 197.c; and BDAG, s.v. εἷς, 292.3.b.

[6]. The indefinite pronoun in the NT has no accent more than 460 times out of about 530 occurrences (about 87 percent). In the LXX approximately 230 of 260 have no accent (89 percent).

[7]. The older Greek texts published by Westcott and Hort and by Tischendorf are examples where this form is printed as a single word, ὅτι.

[8]. See Smyth, Greek Grammar, §2501.b. The use of a nominative relative pronoun with a first-person verb is rare. In the NT and LXX I know of only two other instances: Lev. 20:24, ἐγὼ κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν, ὃς διώρισα ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν, and 1 Cor. 15:9, Ἐγὼ γάρ εἰμι ὁ ἐλάχιστος τῶν ἀποστόλων ὃς οὐκ εἰμὶ ἱκανὸς καλεῖσθαι ἀπόστολος.

Chapter 13

[1]. Gandalf, in Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, book 5, chap. 9.

[2]. Pence and Emery, Grammar of Present-Day English, 256.

[3]. Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, 253, §5.20.

[4]. Two tenses: Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, 253, §5.20; Huddleston and Pullum, English Grammar, 56; and Huddleston and Pullum, Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 208–12; three tenses: Kaplan, English Grammar, 187–90; six tenses: Pence and Emery, Grammar of Present-Day English, 261–67; and twelve: Fairbairn, Understanding Language, 117.

[5]. English can use the present tense, for example, to indicate not only present time but also past time (the historical present) or future time—and there is even variation within the category of present time. Many English grammars give examples of these uses; see, for example, Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, 254–66, §§5.21–24; Huddleston and Pullum, English Grammar, 30–31, 44–48. This last grammar explicitly states that “by a past tense we mean one whose most central use is to indicate past time. . . . It is important to be aware that preterite [i.e., past] tense does not always signal past time” (30–31). An equivalent statement is made concerning the present tense in the next paragraph (31).

[6]. More technical English grammars do, indeed, discuss aspect, and some use the same technical terms perfective and imperfective that are used here for Greek (e.g., Huddleston and Pullum, English Grammar, 51–53; see also Huddleston and Pullum, Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 124).

[7]. I am using technical linguistic terms here (perfective, imperfective). In more common English grammar parlance, this is what is sometimes described as the difference between the simple and progressive tenses.

[8]. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, book 1, chap. 3.

[9]. A stem is never used alone. It must always have a personal ending added. You will never see βαλλ in a sentence. It will always be one of the forms in the chart above (or another similar form you have not met yet).

[10]. You do not even know if this word is a verb. It could also be a noun: “The throw to home plate was too late.”

[11]. Technically, we would say that in English tense refers to the grammaticalized location of an event in time.

[12]. As noted above, English is not absolute in this regard. Present tense-form verbs can sometimes refer to the future, and so forth.

[13]. Some of the other tense-forms do not have the full range that is evident in the aorist form, but the principle is true: the form does not in itself identify invariably a particular time relationship; context must always be considered. Even older grammars acknowledge this since they recognize that context can indicate what they view as exceptions to standard usage.

[14]. Robertson made this same observation a century ago: “The term tense . . . is a misnomer and a hindrance to the understanding of this aspect of the verb-form. . . . We must therefore dismiss time from our minds in the study of the forms of the tenses as well as in the matter of syntax. It is too late to get a new name, however” (Grammar, 343–44).

[15]. These distinctions are most clear in the non-indicative verbs, but they apply to the indicative also. Many grammarians would not agree with the emphasis expressed here, arguing that time is still a factor even in the indicative.

[16]. The study of how contextual factors affect our understanding of a particular verb form and in particular the statement in which it is used is called pragmatics.

[17]. Silva, God, Language and Scripture, 112.

[18]. Aspect is not wholly unrelated to temporal considerations, but it does not relate to when an event takes place (its location in time). The difference between perfective and imperfective aspect can be viewed in temporal terms: imperfective aspect views a situation as being extended in time (though just how long that may be varies enormously); perfective aspect views a situation as a whole without reference to any extent of time that may be included in the actual situation.

[19]. The same verb, βάλλω, is used seven times in Mark 12:41–44. Each time it describes people putting money into the offering box, but three different tense-forms are used: twice present, once an imperfect, and the others aorist.

[20]. Perfective aspect is defined as a complete event, not as a completed one—there is a significant difference. The most significant difference is that if we say “completed” we have implied past time, but perfective aspect does not require reference to past time. It often does refer to past time, but that is not invariable.

[21]. Although more clumsy English, “I am read” would be closer to what is expressed by the Greek stative aspect. We might use this phrasing in a statement such as “He is well read on the lore of Middle-Earth.”

[22]. Frequently you will hear some well-intentioned person who misses the point of the stative aspect and finds great exegetical ore in the fact that this state is the result of a past, completed act. Although there may well be such an act in the past (few states are eternal) that gave rise to the present state (“results”), it is invalid to prove it from the simple fact that the Greek verb has stative aspect.

[23]. Although it is true that this state came about as a result of a previous action and that it will have effects that continue into the future, that is not what this verb says. Jesus’ only point is to describe the state that pertained at the time.

[24]. The future tense-form is not listed here since scholars are not agreed about whether it expresses aspect. See the discussion in chap. 19.

[25]. You will remember that all finite verb forms in Greek have an inherent, back-pocket subject in the personal ending, and they may have a separate subject specified in the sentence as well.

[26]. See Conrad, “New Observations on Voice,” 7. The terminology “subject-focused” is Conrad’s; the parallel term “situation-focused” is my own coinage.

[27]. A subject may be emphasized in ways other than by the voice of the verb; for example, a first- or second-person pronoun may serve to emphasize the subject.

[28]. Bakker, “Voice, Aspect and Aktionsart,” 24.

[29]. In a few tense-forms the middle voice and the passive voice are distinguished morphologically; that is, they are spelled differently.

[30]. These dual-purpose forms are sometimes called middle/passive forms or mediopassives.

[31]. Notice that in this English example we must use a typographical feature to focus attention on the subject (italic) since English has no means to do this grammatically.

[32]. There are potentially more parts to a verb form. The explanation above gives only the major parts that every verb must have. In due time you will learn that there are several things we can prefix to the front of a word (e.g., a preposition, an augment, or reduplication) as well as insert between the stem and the ending (e.g., infixes called form markers).

[33]. The two component parts of the ending are optional in some verb forms (though all have one or the other and most have both); some have no connecting vowel, and others may appear to have no personal ending in some person/number forms.

[34]. A finite verb is one that has grammatical person, that is, it is limited to a particular subject doing the action. Later we will meet other kinds of verbs (technically, “verbals”) that do not have grammatical person. We call these forms non-finite forms; there are two of them: the participle and the infinitive.

[35]. The short-form abbreviation would be: 3SPAI ► λύω, “I loose.” (In this textbook the short forms are used in some charts and reference sections.) There are other abbreviation systems in use; some are variations on what is shown here, others are much more technical. Some teachers will prefer that you use a different pattern, but it will include the same information, just in a different order. If your teacher tells you to parse following a different pattern, then follow those instructions. It is very helpful to learn to parse in the same pattern each time, since it saves you from forgetting any of the pieces.

[36]. When you are writing by hand or typing a parsing formula, you can use a simple arrow: >.

[37]. Technically, neither infinitive nor participle is a mood; the name of their grammatical category is simply placed in the “mood” slot when parsing.

[38]. The single-letter abbreviations originated many years ago with the GRAMCORD database and are widely used, especially in Bible software programs.

Chapter 14

[1]. Some grammars call these primary middle endings. See the four-quad chart at §14.11.

[2]. Did I say, “It always does this”? Well, most of the time it does (and always in the present middle indicative). But one set of forms that you will meet later does not use a connecting vowel, so in that case the ending will be σαι. The forms that use the technical ending σαι are much less common than the ones that use the contracted form ῃ.

[3]. You will note that the diagram deliberately uses dashed lines for the various ideas since they are not distinct categories. Other concepts could be added, but the basics illustrated here are adequate to give you the idea. Also observe that the idea clouds overlap; that is because they are not always clearly delineated from other, similar ideas.

[4]. This holds true in other moods as well. In moods such as the subjunctive that never have augments (augments are an indicative thing), the tense-forms that use secondary endings in the indicative change to primary endings.

[5]. For more detail, see Wallace, Greek Grammar, 40–48, on which this summary is based; and McGaughy, Descriptive Analysis of Εἶναι, 23–65.

[6]. In addition to the three primary linking verbs listed above, there are a few others that sometimes take a predicate nominative. These include the passive forms of καλέω and εὑρίσκω, also λέγω, and sometimes μένω.

[7]. Except, of course, for the situation that a neuter plural subject may take a singular verb.

Chapter 15

[1]. I am assuming that you came up with these two sentences: (1) The woman threw the hammer. (2) The hammer was thrown by the woman.

[2]. Advanced information for reference: About the only time a passive verb will have a direct object is if the equivalent statement in active voice uses a double accusative. For example, active: Bill taught him Greek; passive: He was taught Greek by Bill. As a possible Greek example, see Heb. 5:1, Πᾶς ἀρχιερεὺς καθίσταται τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεόν (“Every high priest is put in charge of the things relating to God”). In the active this might be phrased, “He put the high priest in charge of the things relating to God”; both “high priest” and “the things” would be accusative. Wallace (Greek Grammar, 438–39) lists a number of examples, but they all use passive forms that you have not learned yet.

[3]. Greek would not use the verb κτάομαι to mean “I acquire/buy for someone else”; that would probably be expressed by ἀγοράζω.

[4]. There is a rare active form of this verb (never used in the NT and only once in LXX) that means “I give someone else a taste of something.”

Chapter 16

[1]. There is also a future tense-form, but scholars are not agreed about whether this expresses aspect. See the discussion in chap. 19.

[2]. Unrestricted refers to statements in which time is not relevant or those that relate to all times.

[3]. Be careful to keep these two words straight: imperfect refers to the tense-form (i.e., how the verb is spelled), but imperfective identifies the aspect. Remember that the present tense-form also expresses imperfective aspect.

[4]. If we keep the alpha from the form marker, the aorist uses B endings that look like this: α, ας, εν, αμεν, ατε, αν. If you compare the B endings as used in the imperfect, the similarity is obvious so long as you replace the alpha from the form marker with the omicron or epsilon connecting vowel: ον, ες, εν, ομεν, ετε, ον.

[5]. The form is technically middle. The passive voice is distinguished not morphologically but contextually. When middle forms are accompanied by passive markers in the context, we call them passive. Some prefer to call the endings middle/passive as a reminder of this dual function.

[6]. It has also been referred to as the augmented form of εἰμί in contrast to the unaugmented form (i.e., what this book calls the present [active] indicative).

[7]. Sometimes εὑρίσκω does not lengthen the initial vowel, so you will occasionally see εὕρισκον.

[8]. There are also a few instances in which ει lengthens to ῃ, but that is only with internal augments in compound forms of εἰμί (e.g., ἀπῄεσαν)—but those are odd forms anyway. (See the explanation in the text regarding augments that occur within a word.)

[9]. One of the more common verbs that begin with ευ is εὑρίσκω, but most of the augmented forms of this verb that occur in the NT and LXX are ones that you have not learned yet.

Chapter 17

[1]. Though you do not need to know why, if you are curious, it is often because the actual verb root ends with a delta.

[2]. In this case, possibly through an oversight, CL omits the note that meaning 2 is for middle voice. If you are using CL as your lexicon, you will want to add a note in the margin to indicate this.

[3]. The stem used for aorist passive forms is usually the same as the present stem. That is, the stem will be spelled the same as you find it listed in the lexicon. There are some words for which the stem of the aorist passive forms changes spelling. The change is often relatively minor. Your best friend here will be your lexicon, which will note any significant changes. You can also check the catalog of verb forms in app. B of this textbook.

[4]. This statement will be qualified in the Advanced Information for Reference section at the end of this chapter. Although these forms have traditionally been designated as passive forms, they can sometimes be middle. They are introduced here as simply passive because that is their most common use.

[5]. For those who are curious, the root of διδάσκω is *δακ, and the aorist passive stem is διδασκ- (formed with “iota reduplication” and the addition of σκ; the kappa from the root drops out when σκ is added). In the aorist passive form ἐδιδάχθητε, not only does the kappa combine with theta, but the sigma also drops out.

Chapter 18

[1]. Remember that it is only an analogy; do not think because of this illustration that the aorist is equivalent to the English past tense.

[2]. If it is important to indicate that a form is a first aorist form, the abbreviation “1aor.” can be used. These forms go by a variety of names. In some grammars the second aorist is called a strong aorist in contrast to a weak aorist (i.e., first aorist). In others this pair may be called irregular aorist (i.e., second aorist) and regular or sigmatic aorist.

[3]. A few verbs have both a first and second aorist form, but these are rare.

[4]. Technically, it is not the present stem that is being changed, but it is a different form of the root. The root of a verb is the simplest form of the verb from which all the various tense stems are created. In each tense-form the base form of the verb is called the stem. Many times the root is unchanged from stem to stem (i.e., the stem that you see in the lexicon never changes regardless of whether the tense-form is a present or an aorist or any other form). If any of the stems change the spelling of the root, it is more likely to be the present that changes rather than the aorist. That may seem counterintuitive, but it is only because we have traditionally listed the present tense-form as the main, alphabetical entry in the lexicon (and therefore what you learn as a vocabulary word), so it seems to be the more normal form. Determining the root and the various stems is not obvious in many instances and is a subject that goes well beyond the needs of a first-year student. Lexicons such as BDAG or CL will usually give you the information that you need to identify the various forms. Likewise the morphology catalog in app. B of this textbook will point you in the right direction. If you need more detail than these tools provide, the best recourse is an advanced reference tool such as MBG. Though very helpful in some specialized situations, it is not a tool that most students will use very often.

[5]. You will rarely see the imperfect of λαμβάνω; it occurs only one time in the NT (Acts 8:17). Even in the much larger corpus of the LXX, it occurs only 14 times (8 of which are the third singular form). The aorist of λαμβάνω, however, is very common, occurring 185 times in the NT (of which 68 are aorist active indicatives) and 895 times in the LXX (of which 520 are aorist active indicatives).

[6]. If you need a refresher on the term ablaut, see the sidebar “Ablaut” in chap. 7.

[7]. Verbs that use different roots may be called defective verbs (the individual roots do not occur in all tense-forms) or suppletive forms (the various roots supplement each other to enable a full range of tense-forms). Both defective and suppletive are larger category terms that may refer to items other than verbs having multiple roots.

[8]. The convention used here is to identify a root with a prefixed asterisk. You will never see any Greek text that is marked in this way appearing as a separate word; there will always be prefixes or suffixes added, and many times there will also be vowel ablaut (sometimes called vowel gradation) as well.

[9]. You do not need to do this for every verb, but the vocabulary in this textbook assigns only the most frequent words, so memorizing any unusual second aorist forms of these words has a significant payoff in terms of the frequency with which you will see such forms.

[10]. Danker’s Concise Lexicon is an exception; it gives no such morphological information under the main entry, though it does list most of these alphabetically under the inflected form. If you do not find a matching form in the lexicon, then consult the morphology catalog in app. B of this textbook. First aorist forms are usually not listed in lexicons, since they use the same stem as the lexical form, though if a particular verb uses both first and second aorist spellings, then both may be given.

[11]. BDAG also tells you that in the LXX there is a first aorist form, ἀπέλειψα, but this does not occur in the NT.

[12]. If the second aorist stem changes from a different root or due to ablaut, and so forth, it is listed after the root to show the spelling of the second aorist form, often with a note to explain the formation. There will be a few anomalies from time to time. For example, the second aorist of λέγω sometimes uses a first aorist ending instead of the usual second (see the sidebar “Second Aorist Forms with the ‘Wrong’ Endings” earlier in this lesson).

[13]. The number 1,605 is the total of figures in parentheses in this list; the number 2,041 is the total of figures in brackets. The entry for θνῄσκω is calculated slightly differently from the others due to the fact that there are no instances of an aorist of θνῄσκω in the NT (only perfects), so the main NT form, ἀποθνῄσκω, was used for the total in parentheses instead.

[14]. The root (and aorist stem) is *γεν, but for the present stem this undergoes ablaut and becomes γιν-.

[15]. The root (and aorist stem) is *λαβ, but the present stem adds both μ and αν ► λαμβαν-.

[16]. In the aorist form the tau drops out when the sigma is added, and the stem reduplicates by prefixing πι- (similar to iota reduplication in the μι verbs, which you will learn later).

[17]. The root *ευρ has the suffix -ισκ- added to form the present stem.

[18]. The root *αγ is reduplicated to form the aorist stem, αγαγ-, then the first alpha of the stem is lengthened by the augment, ἠγαγ-.

[19]. Some grammars use the term second aorist only for forms that have a different stem, not for those with the same stem but no theta. This grammar uses it for forms that have either characteristic.

[20]. The stem for second aorist passive indicative verbs is usually the same as the lexical form, but it can change. If it does change, it may be the same as the second aorist active stem, or it may be different altogether. (The verb λαμβάνω, e.g., has a second aorist active ἔλαβον but a second aorist passive ἐλήμφθην.) If it does change, the lexicon or morphology catalog (app. B) will tell you what you need to know.

[21]. The verb ἀνοίγω shows the variation that is possible in the aorist passive. (Most verbs consistently follow the same pattern; to have three different patterns in one verb as does ἀνοίγω is unusual.) It sometimes appears with a stem that is different from the lexical form and uses the full θη form marker: ἠνεῴχθην. Other times it uses the same stem as the lexical form with the θη form marker: ἠνοίχθην. Still other times it uses the same stem but drops the theta from the form marker: ἠνοίγην. There are also verbs that use a different stem and drop the theta (e.g., θάπτω, which appears as ἐτάφην in aorist passive).

[22]. Yes, ἀπεκρινάμην is an aorist middle. You would have expected -σαμην, but this is a liquid verb in which the sigma drops out following a liquid. (Do you remember liquid nouns from chap. 11?) We will study liquid verbs in chap. 21.

Chapter 19

[1]. It is possible that the English future should also be considered a mood rather than a tense. This is the analysis of Huddleston, Grammar of English, 133, 174; see also Huddleston and Pullum, English Grammar, 56.

[2]. This statement is quoted from the LXX, where it appears in Lev. 11:44, 45; 19:2; and 20:7.

[3]. The terminology aspectually vague is Porter’s (Verbal Aspect, 410); Fanning (Verbal Aspect, 122–23) describes it as “non-aspectual.” There is some disagreement among scholars regarding the aspect of the future, even among scholars who have worked in the area of Greek verbal aspect. The explanation given here represents one approach. An alternative is to define the future tense-form as having perfective aspect (i.e., its aspect may be similar to that of the aorist; cf. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 139, 159). The real difference at the functional level is minimal.

[4]. Temporally unrestricted forms are those that do not relate directly to time, either because a statement is true at different times (“God loves a cheerful giver”) or because a statement is one for which time is irrelevant (“God is love”).

[5]. This is true whenever a form marker is added in other forms also—for example, aorist forms that add σα as a form marker or perfect forms that use κα.

[6]. This is distinctive of particular words. Any given word will follow the same pattern, either always lengthening the connecting vowel (which most words do) or not.

[7]. Yes, the rough breathing mark on the future is correct. This word used to be spelled σέχω, and the rough breathing mark compensates for the sigma that dropped out. If you really want to know all the gory details about this form (and its compounds), see MBG, 260n10.

[8]. Some grammars list the future of εἰμί as simply “future indicative of εἰμί” rather than specifying the voice. The voice is included here for consistency in identifying the form, but your teacher may prefer that you describe it differently.

[9]. The single most common form is ἀποστρέφω, with 27 instances in the LXX. Other forms of στρέφω are compounds with ἀνα-, δια-, ἐκανα-, ἐπι-, κατα-, μετα-, and περι-. The only other words that have second future forms occurring more than 10 times in the LXX are compounds of τρίβω (20×) and κρύπτω (14×).

[10]. See Goodwin, Syntax, §§69–70; and Smyth, Greek Grammar, §§1917–19. These are Classical Greek grammars, and they cite examples from that corpus.

Chapter 20

[1]. Stative can also be used as a description of a verb’s Aktionsart, but when so used it is not an aspect statement. Both are similar categories, but they are determined differently (aspect is based on tense-form, Aktionsart on a verb’s lexis and the context).

[2]. There are actually three perfect tenses in English. The present perfect tense (sometimes called simply the perfect tense) may be illustrated as “I have come” or “I have been coming”; the past perfect tense (sometimes called the pluperfect) is “I had come” or “I had been coming”; and the future perfect tense is “I shall have come” or very rarely, “I shall have been coming.”

[3]. This is disputed by grammarians, and not all are agreed on the best way to explain the perfect. “The semantic nature of the perfect and pluperfect tense-forms is one of the great puzzles in Greek linguistics” (Campbell, Basics of Verbal Aspect, 46).

[4]. The perfect of γράφω uses “it” instead of “he” or “she” since it is difficult to think of an appropriate context in which a third singular form of γράφω would have a personal reference. In both the NT and LXX this form always refers to an existing written record (usually Scripture), never to the act of writing or to a person who writes.

[5]. It is probably best not to describe the perfect form as “completed action with continuing results” (a traditional definition), though that is tempting when the antecedent action is very obvious in the context.

[6]. Remember that the Greek present tense-form is usually the rough equivalent of a continuous present in English (e.g., “I am loosing”).

[7]. The stem is usually the same as that of the present, but it can sometimes change. If it changes, it will sometimes be the same as the aorist stem, or it may be an entirely different stem.

[8]. They conveniently ignore the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, to say nothing of their former domination by the Greek Empire (and its successors) and the contemporary Roman rule of Palestine.

[9]. The names of the columns (which you don’t need to memorize) are unvoiced (π, κ, τ), voiced (β, γ, δ), and aspirates (φ, χ, θ). What that means in regard to reduplication is that perfect verbs that begin with an aspirate reduplicate with the equivalent unvoiced consonant.

[10]. The stem is usually the same as the lexical form, but it may change in some words.

[11]. The category of “second perfect” applies only to perfect active forms, since the perfect middle does not have a form marker.

[12]. As would be expected from a larger corpus, the LXX has a wider range of these forms. Of those listed in the text from the NT, ἀκούω and πείθω have a full set of active forms. The verb ἀκούω occurs 33 times as perfect active indicative: ἀκήκοα, ἀκήκοας, ἀκήκοεν, ἀκηκόαμεν, ἀκηκόατε, ἀκηκόασιν. Likewise πείθω occurs 32 times: πέποιθα, πέποιθας, πέποιθεν, πεποίθαμεν, πεποίθατε, πεποίθασιν (and once as πέποιθαν). More numerous, but missing the second plural, is γίνομαι, 60 times: γέγονα, γέγονας, γέγονεν, γεγόναμεν, [γεγόνατε], γεγόνασιν.

[13]. Technically, οἶδα is an irregular μι verb that at one time was spelled ἴδοιμι. You will learn μι verbs in chaps. 32–33.

[14]. There is one future form, εἰδήσουσιν (Heb. 8:11; cf. Jer. 38:34 [31:34 Eng.]), and the aorist active infinitive, εἰδῆσαι, appears twice in the LXX (Deut. 4:35; Jdt. 9:14).

[15]. Your teacher may elect to skip this section, since it is a form rarely used in the NT.

Chapter 21

[1]. The full chart of all possible contractions is much larger. Some textbooks show a full-page chart. The abbreviated charts given here are adequate for the vast majority of such situations.

[2]. To illustrate with figures from the NT, there are 364 epsilon contract verbs, which occur a total of 3,951 times. By contrast, there are only 112 omicron contract verbs, occurring 611 times. There are only 102 alpha contract verbs, but these are more commonly used words, occurring 1,484 times.

[3]. Technically, liquid futures add εσ as a form marker, the σ drops out, and ε contracts with the connecting vowel (MBG, 92).

[4]. Although not common in the NT, according to Conybeare and Stock, Attic futures are more common in the LXX than they were in Attic Greek (Grammar of Septuagint Greek, §21 with a list of LXX examples). For a complete list of Attic futures in the NT, see MBG, 96, §43.7b.

[5]. The explanation given here is slightly oversimplified; there are other possible ways to explain the formation of the aorist stem of βάλλω. If you are curious, see MBG, 301n5.

Chapter 22

[1]. There are 1,242 aorist infinitives and 996 present infinitives in the NT. Of the aorist forms, 849 are first aorist (612 active, 66 middle, and 171 passive) and 393 are second aorist (347 active, 46 middle). In the LXX the pattern is as follows: 4,523 aorist infinitives (3,367 active, 416 middle, and 470 passive) and 2,208 present infinitives (1,690 active, 429 middle, and 89 passive). These statistics are more than trivia; they can help you envision what forms you will see most often.

[2]. This is a general principle that will be true even in other forms that we have not yet met. In the subjunctive mood, for example, both the aorist and present tense-forms use primary endings. In the participle, no personal endings are used, since it, like the infinitive, is a non-finite form.

[3]. The future infinitive was being replaced in Koine by μέλλω with the present infinitive.

[4]. Some grammarians have a delightful, though rather clumsy, name for these accusative subjects: the accusative of general reference, the so-called subject of the infinitive.

[5]. In the NT the infinitive always has the article when used with a preposition, though this is not the situation in other Koine texts outside the NT. For example, 2 Esd. 22:24 (Neh. 12:24 Eng.), οἱ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτῶν κατεναντίον αὐτῶν εἰς ὑμνεῖν καὶ αἰνεῖν ἐν ἐντολῇ Δαυίδ, “their brothers were opposite them to sing and praise by the command of David.” See also Sir. 38:27.

[6]. Here and in the following sections, “main verb” refers to the verb that the infinitive modifies, which may be a finite verb in the main clause or in a subordinate clause, a participle, or another infinitive.

[7]. A grammatical diagram is shown for only the first example, since all the infinitive constructions used to express time follow the same pattern.

[8]. The NT uses ἕως with an infinitive only once, though it is more common in the LXX. Although ἕως τοῦ is usually a temporal expression, ἕως + an infinitive (without an article) can be either spatial (e.g., Gen. 13:10, ὡς ὁ παράδεισος τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ὡς ἡ γῆ Αἰγύπτου ἕως ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ζόγορα, “like the garden of God and like the land of Egypt until one comes to Zoar”) or temporal (e.g., 3 Kgdms. 2:35c [1 Kings 3:1 MT/Eng.], ἔλαβεν τὴν θυγατέρα Φαραὼ καὶ εἰσήγαγεν αὐτὴν εἰς τὴν πόλιν Δαυὶδ ἕως συντελέσαι αὐτὸν τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν οἶκον κυρίου, “he took the daughter of Pharaoh and brought her into the city of David until he first finished his house and the house of the Lord”).

[9]. If spelling is not your strong point, then note that complement and compliment are two different words. Your spouse (or friend) gets the compliments, but Greek verbs get the complements.

[10]. This list sometimes includes δεῖ, but when this word occurs with an infinitive, it usually functions as the subject of δεῖ rather than as its complement. See the discussion below and Wallace, Greek Grammar, 601.

[11]. This is the phrase in Josh. 24:17, though there the context makes it clear that a definite reference rather than an indefinite, “a god,” is intended. Here in Acts 28:6, the context is clearly a polytheistic reference.

[12]. Cf. the statement of some of the Corinthians that Paul quotes using direct discourse: 1 Cor. 15:12, πῶς λέγουσιν ἐν ὑμῖν τινες ὅτι ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔστιν;

[13]. Apposition is a grammatical relationship that is normally between two adjacent substantives in the same case that define each other (see the sidebar near §8.8). Since the infinitive can function as a noun, it can also appear in apposition to a noun even though it does not have a case.

[14]. An alpha privative is the use of an alpha prefixed to the front of a Greek word to negate it; cf. “un-” in English. For example: unhelpful ► helpful; ἄγαμος, “unmarried” ► γάμος, “married.”

Chapter 23

[1]. This is the English present active participle; there are a few other less frequent participle forms in English, including past and perfect participles. We will simplify for our purposes and pretend that the English present participle is all there is.

[2]. In English, “eating” is a gerund functioning as the object of a preposition, not a participle, but in Greek a participle would likely be used here.

[3]. The general principle is that οὐ negates only indicative verbs. I have found only 21 participles in the NT that are negated by οὐ (out of 6,662): Matt. 12:4; 22:11; Luke 6:42; John 10:12; Acts 7:5; Rom. 9:25; 2 Cor. 3:3; 4:8 (2×), 9 (2×); 12:1, 4; Gal. 4:8, 27 (2×); Col. 2:19; Heb. 11:1, 35; 1 Pet. 1:8; 2 Pet. 1:16.

[4]. Adverbial participles are sometimes called circumstantial participles because they describe circumstances in/under which the action of the main verb occurs.

[5]. This is not a universal consensus among grammarians, but at the very least it is a general rule with a very high degree of reliability. The English translation of some participles may make it sound like some oblique-case participles are adverbial, but the point is not how they are translated but how they function in Greek. On this, see the important article by Culy, “Clue Is in the Case.”

[6]. “Participle” is not technically a mood (it is a part of speech parallel to “verb”), but it performs a similar function in terms of a parsing description.

[7]. There is a flow chart in app. C that will help you conceptualize the various uses of the participle as well as the options for adverbial participles. Most of that chart will not make a lot of sense yet, but it will in time. If you look at it now, pay most attention to the section in the lower right portion of the chart, which includes the four categories discussed in the text here along with other similar options.

[8]. If the participle describes the emotion or attitude connected with the action, it is called a participle of manner, not means. See the discussion in the next chapter.

[9]. This area is not yet resolved in grammar; a number of proposals have been offered. Some think that word order plays a role here also. Take all such claims with caution, and test every participle against the context to see if the assumed temporal reference actually makes sense. The context is a more reliable guide than any rule.

[10]. There is one other participle of εἰμί in the NT, and it occurs only once: ἐσόμενον is a future middle participle neuter singular accusative (Luke 22:49). There are also eleven instances of the future middle participle of εἰμί in the LXX, the most common of which is ἐσόμενα (neuter plural accusative; e.g., Dan. 2:45). These can be identified by the future form marker following the stem (which is only an epsilon), preceding the connecting vowel and participle marker.

[11]. Forms of ζῶ (ζάω) appear to be alpha contracts, but they are not (see the sidebar in chap. 21): ζῶντος (masculine or neuter singular genitive), ζῶντι (masculine singular dative), ζῶντες (masculine plural nominative), ζώντων (masculine plural genitive).

[12]. Modern English translations often use finite verbs to represent participles when they try to simplify long, complex Greek sentences into shorter English ones. Even formal equivalent translations (sometimes called “literal” translations) do this. That is fine for purposes of English style, but always base your study on the Greek text; do not depend on the secondhand perspective of a translation, which must also balance other factors, such as readability and style.

[13]. Here is the answer (but do not read this until you have tried it yourself first): there is one each in verses 6–10 and four more in verse 12 (ζητοῦντες, δυνάμενοι, ὁμειρόμενοι, ἐργαζόμενοι, πιστεύουσιν, παρακαλοῦντες, παραμυθούμενοι, μαρτυρόμενοι, and καλοῦντος). In this list, two of the participles function adjectivally (τοῖς πιστεύουσιν, “to those who believe” [v. 10], and τοῦ καλοῦντος, “the one who called” [v. 12]).

Chapter 24

[1]. Answers: λυσάντων, aor. act. ptc. masc. pl. gen.; λυσαμένοις, aor. mid. ptc. masc. pl. dat.; and λυθέντι, aor. pass. ptc. masc. sg. dat. Each of these three forms could also be neuter.

[2]. The feminine participle marker listed above as σασ was actually ντ originally. You do not need to know what happened to it. But if you are desperately curious for morphological trivia, see MBG, 155n2, §93.1. It is much simpler just to think of σασ as the aorist form marker and participle marker for feminine. If this sounds similar to ουσ in the present participle, you are right.

[3]. The aorist stem will always be spelled differently from the present stem, which appears in the lexical form.

[4]. There are only sixteen such forms in the NT: ἀποσταλέντι, ἁρπαγέντα, διασπαρέντες, διαταγείς, ἐμπλακέντες, ἐπιστραφείς, καταλλαγέντες, σπαρείς, σπαρέντες, στραφείς, στραφεῖσα, στραφέντες, συμφυεῖσαι, συνταφέντες, ὑποταγέντων, and φυέν.

[5]. The 2nd sg. pres. act. ind. form of στρέφω would be στρέφεις—the stem is unchanged from the lexical form.

[6]. Less than a half dozen of these forms occur in Koine Greek texts related to the NT, but seeing the overall pattern will help you understand the forms better.

[7]. See further Wallace, Greek Grammar, 622–50. See also the participle chart in app. C.

[8]. Wallace, Greek Grammar, 637, see also 638.

[9]. Wallace, Greek Grammar, 642.

[10]. Aorist participles: εἰσελθών, ἐξορύξαντες, ἰδών, ἐπιγνούς, ἄρας; and present: φέροντες, αἰρόμενον, δυνάμενοι, καθήμενοι, διαλογιζόμενοι, λέγοντας.

Chapter 25

[1]. You will remember that to function as a conjunction, καί must have two equal grammatical units on either side of it (i.e., it can connect two nouns, two verbs, two phrases, two clauses, etc.). When this situation is not present, καί is most likely an adverb and is often equivalent to “even” or “also” in English.

[2]. There are some exceptions to this rule, but it holds in the vast majority of instances. Not all grammarians are willing to state the principle as bluntly as it is above, but all would agree that it is certainly a general principle. Most such exceptions are a recognized construction (the genitive absolute) that you will meet later.

Chapter 27

[1]. This illustration is adapted from Voelz, Fundamental Greek Grammar, 149–50. The sentence used is not from any Koine text; it is an artificial, but very helpful, example.

[2]. In John 13:2 two genitive absolutes occur together at the beginning of the sentence.

[3]. You will remember that anarthrous means without an article.

[4]. In most (but not all) cases the genitive subject of the participle is not referenced at all in the main statement, not even as the object.

[5]. This is sometimes described as a “switch reference device.”

[6]. The English word periphrastic = περί, “around” + φράσις, “speech, a way/style of speaking.”

[7]. Some languages, such as English, use the periphrastic construction as the predominant verb form. For example, the phrase “I was eating” consists of the linking verb “I was” combined with the participle “eating.” And you thought that “periphrastics” were some strange-sounding phenomenon unique to Greek—you have been using them in English for years without knowing it!

[8]. Lexis, you will remember, is what the word means; it is shorthand for “the lexical meaning of the word.” In a periphrastic, this comes from the participle, not the linking verb.

[9]. This basic parsing system accounts for all imperfective periphrastics (the most common forms) and rare perfective periphrastics. For stative periphrastics with an imperfect or future form of εἰμί, see the table in the text.

[10]. The future-perfect is not equivalent to a future tense-form; the compound future-perfect elements refer to a state or condition (stative aspect) that will be true in the future. In a particular context you may be able to express this idea in an English equivalent, but to say “he will be in a bound state” is very clumsy English.

[11]. There are at least four such forms in the LXX: κεκλήσεται (Lev. 13:45; Hosea 12:1), κεκράξομαι (9×; e.g., Ps. 21:3 [22:2 Eng.]), εἰδήσουσιν (Jer. 38:34, quoted in Heb. 8:11), and ἀνακεκράξεται (Joel 4:16).

[12]. A periphrastic sometimes has a “certain emphasis” (Blass, Debrunner, and Funk, Greek Grammar, 179, §353.1; see also BDAG, s.v. εἰμί, 286.11.e, f). In Classical Greek this “emphasis” was often a matter of duration of time, but such usage is not usually present in the Koine. There are about a dozen periphrastics that may have some emphasis in the NT, most often in Paul. For a detailed discussion, see Green, “Understanding ΕΙΜΙ Periphrastics in the Greek of the New Testament,” 261–332.

[13]. An alternative is to use a present tense-form if the context makes the future reference clear.

[14]. See Luke 23:19, ἦν βληθείς; and 2 Cor. 5:19, ἦν θέμενος.

[15]. Some suggest that the only basis is “appropriateness in the context” (Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 311). Others propose more-specific guidelines, such as denying as periphrastics any constructions with words intervening between the verb and the participle except conjunctions and words that explicitly modify the participle (Porter, Idioms, 45–46; see the more extensive discussion in Porter, Verbal Aspect, 441–86). For a careful analysis of this question, see Green, “Periphrastics,” 176–238.

Chapter 28

[1]. Pence and Emery, Grammar of Present-Day English, 257. The traditional English examples given in the text have been selected from this grammar.

[2]. This redefinition is most clearly articulated by Huddleston and Pullum, Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 993–94. The functional examples cited are from this grammar.

[3]. This is probably because the subjunctive requires the presence of the connecting vowel to identify the form, but that means that two vowels in a row (i.e., the alpha from the usual aorist form marker σα and the connecting vowel) are redundant, to say nothing of hard to pronounce. So one of them has to go—and only the alpha is dispensable if the form is to be recognized as a subjunctive.

[4]. Λύω can be 1st sg. pres. act. ind. or subj.; λύῃ can be 2nd sg. pres. mid. ind. or subj., or 3rd sg. pres. act. subj.; and λύσω can be 1st sg. fut. act. ind. or aor. act. subj. If the verb is a liquid, the -ῃ ending could also indicate a 2nd sg. fut. mid. ind. (e.g., μενῇ).

[5]. There are ten perfect subjunctives of οἶδα in the NT and seven in the LXX. The perfect active subjunctive forms attested are 1st sg., εἰδῶ; 1st pl., εἰδῶμεν; 2nd sg., εἰδῇς; 2nd pl., εἰδῆτε; 3rd pl., εἰδῶσιν. There are also perfect subjunctive forms of ἀποκληρόω, ἐνέχω, ἐφίστημι, θνῄσκω, μέλει, πυργόω, σύνοιδα, and τυγχάνω in Koine texts outside the NT, but such forms are quite rare. They are readily recognizable with reduplication and the same endings as seen on the present subjunctive in the NT.

[6]. In the example from Exod. 34:20, the first and third instances of λυτρώσῃ are both 2nd sg. fut. mid. ind. God is speaking to the people (εἶπεν κύριος, v. 10) giving them laws to obey; thus second-person future is appropriate (imperatival futures). In other, nonlegislative contexts, a subjunctive might be correct. The legal context, however, points to an imperatival statement: you must, not you should. The second instance is 2nd sg. aor. mid. subj., as clarified by the use of ἐάν. In English this verse would say, “The firstborn of a work animal you shall redeem with a sheep. But if you do not redeem it, you shall give [i.e., pay] a price. Every firstborn of your sons you shall redeem.”

[7]. The conjunction ἵνα can also occur with a form that is dying out in the Koine: the optative mood; though not so used in the NT, it is elsewhere in Koine Greek. There is one instance in the LXX: 4 Macc. 17:1, ἵνα μὴ ψαύσειέν τις τοῦ σώματος αὐτῆς, ἑαυτὴν ἔρριψε κατὰ τῆς πυρᾶς (“So that no one might touch her body, she threw herself into the fire”).

[8]. Just because a subjunctive verb is first plural does not mean that it must be a hortatory subjunctive.

[9]. BDAG (s.v. τέ, 993.2.b) gives the more technical, precise translation for this verse: “For just as when we live, we live to the Lord, so also when we die, we die to the Lord. . . . So, not only if we live, but also if we die (i.e. whether we live or die) we belong to the Lord.”

[10]. See the note on οὐ μή in §29.15.5.

Chapter 29

[1]. Huddleston and Pullum, English Grammar, 32.

[2]. Third-person imperatives are uncommon in English (some grammarians reject the category altogether), but they may occur in statements such as “Somebody shut the door.” The alternative explanation in English is that “Somebody” is a vocative and the sentence should be punctuated, “Somebody, [you] shut the door.”

[3]. In a statement like, “Tom, shut the door,” the word “Tom” is not the subject of the verb; it is a vocative. There is not an explicit subject in the imperative clause.

[4]. There are 870 present imperatives in the NT (of which 602 are active voice) and 762 aorist imperatives (of which 609 are active voice). In the LXX the aorist dominates, with half of all imperatives being aorist active second-person forms (ca. 3,300/6,650).

[5]. Πεφίμωσο (2nd sg. pf. mid. impv. ► φιμόω), ἔρρωσθε (2nd pl. pf. mid. impv. ► ῥώννυμι), and ἴστε (2nd pl. pf. act. impv. ► οἶδα). The LXX shows only two verbs with more than a single perfect imperative form. One is ἔρρωσθε (the same as the NT form), which occurs five times. The other is πεποιθέτω (3rd sg. pf. act. impv. ► πείθω), which occurs six times.

[6]. See the possible example cited at the beginning of this chapter.

[7]. The strength of οὐ μή with the aorist subjunctive should not be overemphasized. See the discussion in MHT (1:187–92) and Lee (“Some Features,” 18–23); a summary may be found at Mark 9:1 in Decker, Mark.

[8]. There is a later resurgence of the optative under the influence of Atticism (an artificial revival of Classical Greek modes of expression) in some of the later patristic writers such as Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa (both fourth century AD).

[9]. This is what the name optative means; it is from the Latin opto, “I wish.”

[10]. In Classical Greek the optative was one means of expressing indirect discourse (which is a past-time use), but that use is rare in Koine. In the NT it occurs only a few times in Luke’s writings.

[11]. You will find helpful discussion of the optative in Goetchius, Language of the New Testament, 310–13, §§383–88; Porter, Idioms, 59–61; Wallace, Greek Grammar, 480–84; and Smyth, Greek Grammar, 406–9, §§1814–34.

[12]. As you might suspect, it is more complicated than I have described above, but the simplified discussion and the charts for reference are adequate for now. For the details, see MBG, 135–43.

[13]. There are five future optatives in the LXX; they look like the present forms above with the usual future form marker (sigma). Perfect optatives are not found in the NT or LXX, but they do appear in Josephus.

Chapter 30

[1]. Technically, English also has several types of conditions, though the distinctions are not conscious ones to most English speakers and are not often discussed in English grammars. In English it is possible, for example, to distinguish between open conditions and closed conditions. The first leaves open the fulfillment of the condition. The second assumes lack of fulfillment: that it has not been fulfilled (a past condition), is not fulfilled (a present condition), or will not be fulfilled (a future condition). For a grammatical discussion of the English constructions, see Greenbaum (Oxford English Grammar, 340–41) or, in greater detail, Huddleston and Pullum (Cambridge Grammar, 738–65).

[2]. For purposes of English grammar, if the protasis precedes the apodosis, the two clauses are separated by a comma. No comma is used if the order is reversed.

[3]. For further reading on first-class conditions, see Boyer, “First Class Conditions.”

[4]. Not every instance of εἰ involves a conditional statement. One instance that may initially puzzle you is the use of εἰ to introduce either a direct or indirect question instead of a conditional statement (see CL, 109.2; BDAG, 277.5). This use is seen in both the NT and the LXX, perhaps more commonly in the LXX; εἰ is not used to introduce direct questions in Classical Greek.

[5]. Boyer, “First Class Conditions,” 76.

[6]. For further reading on second-class conditions, see Boyer, “Second Class Conditions.”

[7]. Secondary tense-forms, you will remember, are those that have an augment and use the second set of verb endings (B and D): aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect.

[8]. The particle ἄν is omitted in a few rare instances (e.g., Num. 22:33 and John 15:22). In such instances the second-class condition can be distinguished from the first-class condition only by the sense of the context. See Robertson, Grammar, 921; Conybeare and Stock, Grammar of Septuagint Greek, §76.

[9]. If what Jesus “believes” to be true or false is always factual (a theological assumption that was disputed then as well as today), this is a much stronger statement as it stands in the biblical text than Jesus’ first hearers would have understood, since they did not accept his claim to truth—the whole point of this episode.

[10]. For further reading on third-class conditions, see Boyer, “Third (and Fourth) Class Conditions.”

[11]. If you want to read the LXX and other Koine material outside the NT, you may want to review the material on the optative mood at the end of chap. 29, especially if it was skipped in your initial study of that chapter.

Chapter 31

[1]. This use of the participle is often discussed in NT grammars, but I am not aware of any similar discussion in LXX grammars, so here are a few additional LXX examples that I have noted: Num. 35:30, πατάξας; 2 Esd. 19:29 (Neh. 9:29 Eng.), ποιήσας; and Prov. 23:2, εἰδώς.

[2]. Neither here nor in the examples that follow would the imperative be translated with an explicit if statement. These are imperatives. The equivalent if statements given in the text are intended to help you understand the meaning of the sentence.

[3]. E.g., NIV, “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise” (see also NRSV, ESV). For a translation that does not punctuate as a question and that recognizes the condition implied, see CEB, “If any of you are suffering, they should pray. If any of you are happy, they should sing.”

[4]. Technically these are verbs of perception and include words that refer to speaking, thinking, seeing, hearing, knowing, remembering, believing, and so on.

[5]. Technically this is true only if the introductory verb of speaking is an English past tense (as is most commonly the case since discourse normally recounts previous statements). In some contexts, however, the English statement of indirect discourse may be phrased in a present or future tense (e.g., “He says that . . .” or “He will say that . . .”), in which case the tense of the original statement is retained.

[6]. Less commonly a participle may be used (e.g., 1 John 4:2); that situation is not developed here. In Classical Greek, the optative mood was sometimes used in indirect discourse as a substitute for a secondary tense indicative verb in the direct statement. This occasionally is seen in Koine as well (e.g., Luke 8:9).

[7]. Direct questions may also be introduced with the same interrogatives. You are familiar with the use of τίς in this way. For an example of εἰ in a direct question, see Matt. 12:10, ἐπηρώτησαν αὐτὸν λέγοντες, Εἰ ἔξεστιν τοῖς σάββασιν θεραπεῦσαι; (“They asked him, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’”).

Chapter 32

[1]. Actually that is not quite true. You have already met two μι verbs: εἰμί and οἶδα (formerly spelled ἴδοιμι), but they do not follow the usual μι verb patterns. We learned them early because they occur so often in the NT.

[2]. Some grammars call these two conjugations the thematic (= ω) and athematic (= μι) conjugations. The terms come from the fact that the ω verb system uses connecting vowels, also known as theme vowels, whereas μι verbs do not use them, thus athematic.

[3]. In Modern Greek, δίδωμι appears as δίδω, ἵστημι is now στήνω, and τίθημι has become θέτω. A few middle/passive forms of τίθημι and some compound forms of ἵστημι have been reintroduced in Standard Modern Greek since 1976, though they disappeared from the Demotic form of Modern Greek long before (Horrocks, Greek, 463).

[4]. For example, the stem vowel may undergo ablaut in μι verbs just as it sometimes did in ω verbs. The stem δο- lengthens the stem vowel (omicron) to omega in the first singular form δίδωμι.

[5]. The variation in the reduplication is also similar to what you have seen in the perfect tense-form. Since the stem of τίθημι begins with the compound sound theta (θε-), it reduplicates with a tau (τιθε-). For ἵστημι, the stem, στα-, begins with a sigma—a known trouble maker—so it reduplicates with a rough breathing mark, thus ἱστα-.

[6]. The figures for the most common forms of ἵστημι in the NT may not seem very high (only 16 forms), but all forms of ἵστημι occur 154 times in the NT. There are also about 20 compound forms, such as ἀνίστημι and παρίστημι, which occur about 300 times; altogether there are about 450 forms of ἵστημι in the NT. In the LXX there are about 700 instances of ἵστημι, plus nearly 30 compound forms, for a total of 2,165 occurrences.

Chapter 33

[1]. The first aorist forms of δίδωμι use a form marker and connecting vowel, so they follow the same pattern as the ω verbs.

[2]. The proportion between first and second aorist forms in the LXX is more evenly divided, but the second aorist is still the most frequent, accounting for 13 of 23 forms.

Epilogue

[1]. You might find it helpful to use my Koine Greek Reader: Selections from the New Testament, Septuagint, and Early Christian Writers (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007). It picks up where this book leaves off and allows you to develop your reading skills while also extending your vocabulary in context, reviewing basic grammar, and inductively expanding your understanding of grammar and syntax beyond the level of this book.

Appendix B

[1]. “Principal Parts” is a traditional system for identifying the various inflected forms of the verb. The system typically lists verbs in six columns in a fixed sequence: pres. act. ind., fut. act. ind., aor. act. ind., pf. act. ind., pf. mid. ind., aor. pass. ind. Reference is then made to these by their position in the list: for example, the “fourth principal part” is the pf. act. ind.

Appendix D

[1]. There is an old debate regarding the number of cases. Some older grammarians argue for eight cases, and some even think that it is impossible to understand Greek with only five cases. (The other three that some add are the ablative, locative, and instrumental cases.) This has been pretty well settled nowadays. I know of no major Greek scholar today who uses eight cases and no recent intermediate or reference grammars that do either. In some ways you can simply ignore this debate, but if you are interested, here is the basic issue. There are only five sets of case endings that have distinct forms (i.e., that are spelled differently). But it is thought that in older Greek (and it would have to be very old Greek, since it never occurs in any known Greek literature) there used to be three additional cases. The evidence for this comes, not from Greek, but from Sanskrit—a related language that is also descended from Indo-European. Sanskrit does, indeed, have eight cases. To make an eight-case system work in Greek, these older grammarians divided the genitive endings into genitive and ablative, and the dative into dative, locative, and instrumental. Of course the Greek forms are all spelled exactly the same, so this division must be on the basis of function rather than form. As a number of scholars have pointed out, however, if the basis for this distinction is function, then we ought not to stop with eight but ought to have twenty or more cases to describe the ways in which the five case forms actually function. If you want to read about this discussion, see Silva, God, Language and Scripture, 102–11; and Wallace, Greek Grammar, 32–35.

[2]. The frequency figure includes both singular and plural forms, though only the singular is indicated. (You will remember that the vocative plural is always the same as the nominative plural.)

[3]. LXX vocative adjectives with alpha or eta endings (nominative, vocative): ἀδάμαστος, ἀδάμαστα; ἐμός, ἐμή; ἱερός, ἱερά; μονογενής, μονογενή; μόνος, μόνη; ποθεινός, ποθεινοτέρα; τέλειος, τελεία; τίμιος, τιμία; φίλος, φίλη; ψευδής, ψευδής.

Appendix E

[1]. The UBS text omits the number mark; the NA text includes it. These numerals are used for chapter and verse numbers in Greek Testaments printed in Greece (Modern Greek or Koine) as well as some from the Eastern tradition, but the scholarly editions used in the West do not use Greek numerals.

[2]. The archaic letters used for 6, 90, and 900 are explained in the next section (§E.2). For further information on Greek numbers and numerals, see Goetchius, Language of the New Testament, §§289–92; or for an even more detailed discussion see Smyth, Greek Grammar, §§347–54.

[3]. For more details about the digamma, see Smyth, Greek Grammar, §3; and MBG, §27.

[4]. See further MBG, §11.22, §26.