How to Study the Bible III - Introductory New Testament Greek IV

Vern is working with some subset of the folks in here, over in the office, with some simpler Greek material in there. So if at some point you find yourself overwhelmed, like this is way too much, Vern is teaching intensive version of what I'm teaching, and it's more about how do I use the aids that are out there to understand some of the Greek things when I have no clue what any of the Greek things mean. What we're working on in here more is, hey, let's teach you what some of the Greek things mean so that you can fish for yourselves. How many of the folks in here have had art appreciation or music appreciation or something of that ilk? Exactly one person, so the analogy is not going to carry over super well. Two people. OK, now people are fessing up.

In music appreciation or art appreciation, You don't suddenly learn how to be a gifted trumpeter. You don't become Picasso. You learn some of the techniques and the styles and the eras and all of those sorts of things so that when you come and you look at art or you go to the symphony and you listen to music, you can see the subtleties and appreciate and really enjoy the experience so much more.

Think of what we're doing here on Sunday mornings as Greek appreciation. You're not going to walk out of here with the ability to sit down with Greek in the original language and start translating. It's just not going to happen. But when you go to the Greek and you're wondering, Is it this way or that way? And you can sort of scratch in the back of your head and conjure up notes. And you're looking at the, oh, this is present active indicative verb. What was that about? I know what that was about.

And you can appreciate the insights that you're getting from the original language so much more. And you can start to do some of that fishing for yourself. The other benefit. of having an appreciation course is that some of you may find, yeah, that really scratched that itch and now I want to go deeper. And you'll know that. You'll have a bit of a framework behind you.

Lots of qualification this morning because I don't want people to be discouraged. Last week, verbs, by far the most complex Greek topic because there are a lot of tenses that we don't have. We don't know anything about mood and what's this voice thing. Today is going to be the second most confusing for folks. Once we get past today, we're in the home stretch. Things get a lot easier.

Today, we're going to be focusing on, we'll go back, we'll review verbs, we'll talk about some English concepts that I don't expect to be super complicated, but then when we get into Greek nouns, there will be intrigue. How many of you have worked with a case-based language before, like German or Czech? A few, sort of. Greek is a case-based language, and we'll learn what that means today, and there's just not a parallel over into English.

It's just a new concept to learn, and that's what can make it somewhat complicated. But again, you make it through today, we're in the homestretch. Life gets easier. So, let's start with a quick review of the verbs. So as you recall, you can pack a ton of information into a Greek verb. It can tell you who's doing the action. It can tell you the action that is happening. It can tell you to whom the action is happening. And so you can pack a full sentence into a single word. And the example here is one word, which translates as, he hanged himself. So all into one word. And how do you do that?

Start with mood. So mood is telling you whether the degree of reality associated with what's being said and the actual action. We'll walk through those in just a moment. Tense talks about both the kind of action and the time of action. So you'll recall time is just past, present, or future.

That's not a new concept. We have that. A kind of action is, are you in the middle of the fray? The example of that is, he was walking down the street. Well, I can picture him, and he's right in the middle of it. And we don't know when it started. We don't know when it ended. That's one kind of action. Another kind of action is just a summary view, where you're looking at it from the outside. He got to the end of the street. How did he do that? I have no clue whatsoever. What's he doing now? Might still be there. I have no idea. That's not the point. The point is the summary.

And then there's this other kind, which is there's action that's going on right now as a consequence of something that happened a while back. If you look at it as a parade. The parade happens. That's something that's over. And now you've got street cleaners that are very actively clearing the street. They're in the moment based on something that happened and completed in the past. So those are our different kinds.

Voice talks about the relationship of the subject to the verb that's going on. And so voice can be active. So I'm performing this action outward. It can be passive. We have this concept in English. The action is being performed toward me. I'm the passive recipient.

And then there's this middle voice, which we don't really have a great concept of in English, where I'm intensely involved in the action. I might be emphasizing that I alone am the one who can do this sort of thing. I might be emphasizing that the action that I'm doing is coming back and benefiting me. But there's an intensity of my involvement with the action that's being stressed. Person, we have this.

Is it singular? Is it plural? Are we talking about a whole bunch of folk? I'm sorry. That's number. And then person is first person. So that's I or we. Second person, that's you or all y'all. And Greek is actually really good about stressing that all y'all. We say you when it's one person or when I'm talking about you. Greek is more Southern. They would go all y'all.

So yeah. So if you have that word translated, he hanged himself, is the he, like the masculine, specific in that? Or is that just kind of like a person hanged himself? A person. Yeah. And third person, he, she, it, or they. So we're walking through these. Mood. I've put these in the order of relationship to reality.

So if you see something that's in the indicative mood, that means that the author is portraying it as real. Do we know for a fact that it is real, that it is true? No. No. Why not? Because if you're going to lie, do it as truth. Yep. So if you're going to lie, say it as though it's true, right? Don't say, it could be that. Say, yeah, it is that. Very effective way of lying. Author could also be wrong. They just might not know. Subjunctive is talking about could or should. Optative is talking about may or might.

You see how we're getting further away from something being reality? Imperative is generally viewed as the furthest away from reality. It's a command. Why is it the furthest away from reality? Because you're dependent upon the other one actually carrying out the command for it to become reality. So for example, if I say, clean your room, As a parent, I know that that's somewhat removed from reality.

Tense, you have present tense, which we also have. So we have present and future, and we have a form of the imperfect. So present is the default translation is continuous action right now. So action that's continually going on. When Christ says, my sheep know my voice, and I give life to them, that's present tense. I am constantly giving life to them. It's a perpetual sort of action. Imperfect is continuous action in the past. So the example I gave earlier about he was walking down the street, you're in that action constantly. Aorist is a past tense where the focus is not on continuous action. So he walked. That's not he was walking. It's he walked. It's a summary view. It's looking at it externally.

Perfect and pluperfect are those ones where you've got something that's completed. So perfect is, there's a past completed action. It's over. It's done. And based on that past completed action, there are consequences that are going on right now in the present. Plu-perfect is almost exactly the same. You've got a past completed action. It's done. There were ongoing consequences, and that's how you're looking at it. But those consequences themselves are also in the past.

Can I say that again so I really understand it? Perfect, there's a completed action, ongoing results. Pluperfect, completed action, ongoing results. also completed? Correct. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and the way that I look at it, plu is a word for more.

When you look at perfect, one translation of perfect is complete. So perfect, you've got something that's complete and there are ongoing results. How do you get more complete than that? Well, you've got something that was completed, there were ongoing results, and those are also completed, so you've got more complete, so complete perfect.

Let's see, if we walk through voice, person, and number on the last slide. Are we relatively comfortable with this? Any questions before I go on? Okay, that's awesome. So, English. I don't anticipate these being super tricky concepts. If they are, please don't hesitate to interrupt me and ask questions. My goal is that you would walk out of here knowing things and stuff, and if you're not getting it and you don't ask questions, then you're going to walk out not knowing things and stuff.

So, linking verbs. A linking verb connects a subject with what's called a subject complement. It can identify the subject, so it's further description of that subject. A linking verb can also be looked at as linking the subject to some other word in the sentence. So there are two different kinds of linking verbs, which we'll go over in a second. But the simple way to look at this is look at examples. So when we see God is love, our linking verb is is.

God and love, you can see how there's an equative relationship being set up. You could write an equal sign. and you'd be okay. God is. God equals love. So they're talking about the same thing. Love is further describing the subject. God's not very busy ising, and he's ising love.

It's a description. The word became flesh. Flesh is further description of the word in a transformative process. So we've got description going on. The sandwich tastes good. The sandwich, which is the subject of the sentence, is not busy tasting, is it? No, it's not busy tasting. That good is further description of the sandwich. Taste just gives us a little information about how good is describing sandwich. So that's a linking verb that's different from an action verb like walk or run or something like that. It's just tying the subject to the subject complement.

Yes, sir? Is love, flesh, and good direct objects then or not? They're not. And we'll go over exactly what they are here in just a couple slides. Good question. That should be at the back of your mind. What are those things? OK, so linking verbs fall into two different categories. They can be verbs of sensation. And so these are your five senses. So you've got feel, look, smell, sound, taste. That sounds appealing. The that is not busy sounding. That and appealing, they're descriptions of one another. They're tied together, but it's a sensation that's describing it. And then you've got these verbs of existence. Who had a question about essence verbs a couple of weeks ago? So that's what these are, these verbs of existence.

And so act, appear, be, become, seem, all of these are just things that you could either draw an equal sign between them or an arrow between them, that this is somehow becoming that. transforming into that, or behaving like that. Now, to confuse matters, words often have multiple meanings. And so, even though a verb can be used as a linking verb, does not mean that it's always being used as a linking verb. So, examples. Linking verb.

The sandwich tastes good. We went through that. The sandwich isn't busy tasting. He tastes sandwiches. Is sandwiches describing he? No, we've got an action verb. He's busy tasting these sandwiches. He's shoveling them right in there. Another one. He becomes more bald over time. That's a transformative process. He involves. There's an equivalence relationship between those. However, that dress becomes her. The dress and her, they're different. So just because a word can be used as a linking verb does not mean it isn't being used as a linking verb. So we're going to practice.

No fair looking at your handouts. There's another place later on where you don't get to look at your handouts either. All right. So Crystal's cookies were delightful. Is that a linking verb or not? Linking verb. All right. They became even better as they cooled. Linking verb or not linking verb? It is a linking verb. Yes. So when the word became flesh, Flesh is further description of word and talks about a transformative process.

Here we've got they, transformative process became better. I tasted the cookies. No, no, I'm busy tasting those cookies and I am not the cookies. They tasted delicious. Okay. I smelled peanut butter and chocolate while they were baking. No. I am not peanut butter and chocolate. We don't have a relationship. Some days I wish I had a relationship with chocolate. It smelled so good that I became hungry. Transformative process. The word became flesh. is linking, I became hungry is linking. Because that hungry is further description of me. It's tying the two of those together.

And what's great about Greek that we're going to find out, is these ones that are feeling really ambiguous to us, like I became hungry, maybe the action there is becoming, maybe I'm like trying to become hungry. In Greek it's going to be super clear because you have a way of decorating words. You can mark words and you know how they fit together. And so it's going to be really easy to see when we look at the Greek. Okay, to your question.

What are these crazy things? It's called a predicate nominative. Fancy word, which basically says God and love are connected. They're describing one another. And you know how that line right before love is slanted instead of straight up? That says this is a predicate nominative. Straight up would say that's a direct object. And so just looking at this diagram, I can say, oh, immediately I can see God and love are related. God's not busy doing things that result in love. God and love is what we're talking about. Are those always linking verbs with predicate nominative? Yes. In fact, they're always essence verbs. And the line that is goes that way.

And I always think about it because it's like shooting shots. Did you guys hear Crystal's observation? It's a really good way of remembering it. The line is slanting back toward the subject because the thing is describing the subject. Shooting back at it. Shooting that description back at the subject. And so you can see the word became flesh. Same exact thing. You've got that slanty line that's saying flesh. Shooting over and attaching itself to word. Predicate adjective. Exactly the same.

If it's an adjective, we want to make sure that we note that. So we just use two lines instead of one line on that backslash. So the cookies taste good. Good's not a noun. It's an adjective, and so we've got a double backslash. OK. Because you guys are going to get to diagram more of those this week. Oh, and...

Is it clear to everybody that nominative is a noun? And adjective is a descriptor in that way? Do we all know the difference between nouns and adjectives? We'll know the nominative, predicate, nominative. Sometimes that's for those people. Oh, I see. So what Crystal is pointing out is that if you have a noun, then you have a predicate-nominative construction. If you have an adjective, it's not a predicate-nominative construction with an adjective. It's a predicate-adjective. That's what you're pointing out? Okay, perfect.

If you guys look at your homework, either from last week or the week before, I gave you an unfair sentence to diagram, because you guys had not learned about predicate nominative yet. And there was a linking verb, and one of those was predicate nominative. So when you're looking at your answers, and you're like, why do you slant the line? Now you know why I slanted the line. Sorry.

That's one of your techniques. It actually is a pedagogical technique to give students a problem that they cannot solve so that they come in with all these questions in their heads. In that particular case, it was an attention to detail on my part. What does pedagogical mean? It's a good teaching tool. I'm not going to go into these a ton.

When you are looking at Grief Helps, you've got Olive Tree, you've got Blue Letter Bible, you've got one of these different tools. They are going to have a way of identifying how the word is being used. Last week, we learned all of the different properties of verbs. So you would like to be able to look at a word that you don't fully understand and know somehow that it's a verb, it's indicative, it's aorist, it's middle, it's third person, it's singular. You'd like to be able to identify all of those things. Different tools will have different ways of noting that. And the way that they note that are through parse codes. Some tools are really helpful, and they will say it's a verb, it's indicative, it's aorist, it's middle, it's third person, it's singular.

Some will give you V-I-A-M-3-S. And so just be aware that these parse codes are out there. And so when you are trying to dig in, using a tool to find out what the word is, how it's being used, what its parse is, go hunting for the key for that particular tool, and you'll be A-OK. If you're using Olive Tree or one of the other tools that are recommended, I think Blue Letter Bible does this as well, they'll actually expand all of that for you, and so you don't have to know what a parse code is, which is helpful.

Yes, ma'am. Okay, so I see that adjective is A, what's adverb? Uh, B. A, B. And I haven't seen it often, but some parse codes get, they get more nitty gritty, so it's A, B or A something. But, I mean, that's, and that's not that you have to know that, just be aware that some, like, most times it's A, B, but sometimes they get, like, I don't know, complicated. Yeah, and it ends with...

No, yeah, exactly. I did not include the part sheet because that's very specific to one particular tool and I don't want people to get tied into memorizing something that may not benefit them. You can always print it out. Yes, you can. And different tools will even give more information.

So take a word like that. So that. is a noun. And so you might get a parse that says it's noun, accusative, masculine, singular. I'm like, great. But others might say it's a noun, it's a pronoun, it's a demonstrative pronoun, it's accusative, it's masculine, it's singular.

So you can expand it just to your heart's desire. For example, in Zodiatus, he gives a handout with the book anyway, we got one, but it's in small print, small pie cut, and it's about that tall and about that wide on both sides for all the different options. But the wonderful thing about Greek is, once you have that parse, then you can start putting all of the puzzle pieces together. They start fitting right in place.

So today we're going to talk about nouns and what those parses look like for nouns, and I'll point out some interesting things along the way. Reminder, we're getting tools to put into the tool bag in this section of the class. In a few weeks, we'll start expanding that and looking at techniques using the tools. And then, round about mid-summer, we're going to switch and say, you know what? You guys have the tools. You guys have the techniques. Let's start looking at interesting passages using this stuff that we have just learned.

So we want to equip you and then bring it home for the back half of the class. Now that you're equipped, look at all the cool stuff that you can do to pull meaning out of scripture. Why would we want to do that? Why would we want to pull that meaning out of scripture? To know more about God. To know more about God.

To have that personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and fellowship with him. assumption that this is a little overwhelming now, but just kind of what you're saying here is that we're going to keep coming back to this, and it should begin to kind of solidify a little bit.

Is that correct? That is correct. It will solidify to some extent. Insofar as an art appreciation class would allow you to stand in front of a bonnet and say, hmm, this is an impressionist I don't quite remember how they painted their stuff or when he lived, and I don't know what his full body of art looked like, but I understand that style. So you should set your expectations accordingly. If you want to be able to look at the Greek and start translating directly from the Greek, that's a different class. high-level question, these parse codes, or just like the ways that we describe verbs, whatever, is that fairly objective? Yes.

So there's not much question about it. Scholars are not going to say, oh, no, that's actually middle voice. And other ones say, no, that's a different voice. No, there is some subtlety to that. And we're not going to be delving into all of that subtlety. But I can answer that question for you briefly, which is with the verbs, in particular, middle and passive in a lot of tenses look identical. So just to muddy the waters, the rest of you didn't hear that. are pretty unambiguous.

So if we look at a, this is how the word parses out, we don't have to, given the tools you've given us, we don't have to worry too much about, oh, maybe it's not that. We can just take that and then, using what we've learned, kind of derive what the word is saying from that. That's correct. Yeah. And a lot of the tools out there will help you with that. Like, how is this word being used? I click on it. Oh, it says it's got this sort of parse.

Therefore, I know it has to be the indirect object in the sentence. It can't be the subject of the sentence. You can make those sort of determinations easily. Is it such that, for the most part, it is really straightforward? It is. It's mechanical. The only subtlety when it comes to things like middle and passive.

If there is a question, then they have you, they have Vern, they have other people who understand that fine point that they could come to and just get clarity. Would that be fair? Perfect. You guys remember that whole list of resources we went through? We have elders, we have a lot of people in this church that have gone through the Greek materials. We have the vastness of the internet, which often helps with these sorts of things. So if you have confusion, feel free to reach out. We need to jump into nouns, because we are limited on time.

OK, so this gives you an idea of what we're looking at when we look at the Greek. you have a base word. The base word in this case is Angolos, which is messenger or angel. And as it's being used differently, the spelling on the end of it changes. And so you've got Angolou, which can be translated as from a messenger, or you've got Angolois, is to some messengers.

So you can already tell just looking at this that the way that the noun is being used is encompassed in that spelling. And the number represented by that noun, if it's singular or plural, is represented within that spelling. We don't do this in English. Number yes, how it's being used in a sentence, no, we don't. And it's interesting when you meet folks who are coming from a country where their language is case-based, their name changes depending upon how you're talking to them. So we have no concept of this whatsoever.

So when our friend visits us from the Czech Republic, Her name is Elishka. But that's what we're supposed to call her when we're calling out, hey, Elishka. But if we talk about her as Elishka picked up the fruit, actually the ending of her name is supposed to change. We just don't do that because it's weird to us. And if we say Crystal kicked Elishka in the shins, that's a third one. We should change the ending on her name for that as well. And so some of these concepts are a little foreign to us because we don't have a case-based language.

But these are normal things to Czech folk and German folk and all sorts. So any noun has a few characteristics. Number one is case. The case of a noun tells you how that word is being used in the sentence. So it can clue you in. Is this the subject? Is this the direct object? Is this something that's describing something else in the sentence? And if it's describing something else in the sentence, what's it saying about that thing? All of that is encompassed into case. We'll break it down. We'll look at examples. Gender and number, we have these in English as well, but not tied to nouns. How many of you have worked with a foreign language where nouns have gender? We have a few in English.

Like when you're talking about a ship, a ship is always a she. Why is that? Weird convention, right? But if you're talking about table, is that masculine or feminine? Neither. We have no concept. The Greeks, everything's got a gender. And if we get there in time, with motivation, we have another game which is called Guess the Gender. So try that. OK, so nouns have a number of different forms. I am going to spend a little bit of time on this slide, because it's important. There is this great debate among Greek scholars.

And the debate is, are there five cases, or are there eight cases? And the whole debate comes down to, should we count the cases by the different ways a noun can be used? Or should we count the cases by the number of distinct spellings that we have to remember? So if it's the number of distinct spellings, then we have five cases. If it's the number of different ways a noun can be used in a sentence, well, it's eight cases. And that's what this chart is here to show.

You can see that nominative, there's only one way to spell it because it's only one case, right? But genitive and oblative, they're both spelled the same way. You've got lagoon and lagu. So how do we differentiate between genitive and oblative? So some Greek scholars say, let's just not. Let's just not distinguish between those. Those would obviously be the five case camp. Dative, locative, and instrumental.

That's really a sad looking chart with that all on the end. Sorry about that. Did it print that way? It's terrible. All right. My apologies. You can see that those three are all spelled the same. It's important to be able to differentiate between these.

We'll see why here in a little bit. So that's where this debate is coming from, five cases versus eight cases. Now, why does it matter to you? It matters to you because when you're looking at a translation, there is a difference between saying something is data, saying something is instrumental. Those are different. You want to translate them different.

But your parse codes are only going to tell you it's dative. Because when you're looking at parse, it's going to look at it as a 5K system. So generative and operative, well, parse is generative. Dative, locative, and instrumental, parse is dative. And so you need to keep in your mind, oh, I see that this word is dative. That means I can translate it as though it's dative, or locative, or instrumental.

We'll explain what we, royal we, we'll explain what all of those mean. So that's why we care about 5 versus 8. We're going to be looking at things as 8 case, but you need to keep in the back of your mind that when you see parses, parses are going to be in 5 case. OK. Yeah. OK.

So if when you go up there to the parts, you have all these different codes and that's for birds. And if it says nominative, then that's making reference to the subject. Nominative will be subject. So when you went to the parts code for the bird. It's referring back to the subject. So a verb does not have case. So if you're seeing something that says nominative, it's a noun. And then that would be the subject. So these parse codes that you've got up above here, one of them does say nominative. The other one's genitive. So these are all nouns on these parse codes, right? Which parse codes are you looking at?

The third box on that page, up above. Which? Somebody have a hand? Are you on page two? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. So I gave multiple examples. We haven't seen all of these critters so far. So the first example is a verb. That's what that V is telling you. The second example is a noun. That's what that N is telling you. The third example is a definite article. That's what the D is telling you. It's a definite article. The fourth example is an A. It's telling you that's an adjective. So we'll get to all of those real, real soon. Skipping ahead just for time. So let's walk through the cases. I told you that case tells you how a word is being used in a sentence. So let's walk through the eight, and you can see.

Nominative, the subject of the sentence, is in the nominative case. So what's great is you might have two nouns in a sentence and a verb, and you're like, who's doing what to whom? We know that in the Greek language, word order doesn't matter very much. I'm like, who's doing the action? The answer is, whichever noun is in the nominative, that's the one that's doing it. So when I told you that Greek lets you color the words to tell you how they're being used, that's what I mean.

And it makes it possible to disambiguate situations that could be clumsy. So when you see, the Father fixed by his own authority, Christ was raised from the dead, by faith Abraham obeyed, Father, Christ, Abraham are all nominative. Because they're the subject of the sentence. When we talked about linking verbs and predicate nominative or predicate adjective, And I said, in English, it feels clumsy, like the word became flesh. Was the word actively going through the process of becoming? And so it's an action verb, and then flesh is that, or is flesh describing word? In Greek, it's completely unambiguous.

Word, God. Those are both in the nominative. Ha ha. We know we can link those up. We've got a predicate nominative. Word, flesh, both are nominative. Ha ha. They go together. They start to fit together like puzzle pieces. So we know those are predicate nominative. Yeah? So on the two sentences, the word was God. Could you do what you had said earlier, like an arrow or an equal sign with that as well? Yes.

That's what's being conveyed. Nominative equals subject. Generative is translated using the word of. It typically is a description. It's functioning. It's describing something else in the sentence. We have a lot of different uses for the word of. And Greek will let you do all of those with the genitive case. So it can be used to show possession. So his ear, his, is in the genitive case. I said that we could translate it using the helper word of. What would that look like? It is ear of him. It's clumsy, we don't talk like that. And so we smooth that out and we say, his ear. But ear of him, Greeks have no problem with that. So you've got ear, you've got of him that's slotting in underneath. Jim, you look like you were about to ask a question. No, I was just asking. Okay.

So Thomas said to him, my Lord, my God. But what he actually said was, Lord of me, God of me. Each of you says, I am of Paul. I am of Apollos. That is not two words in the Greek. That is Paulou. So it's just the spelling that tells me that's genitive. That's Apollou. That's just the spelling that's telling me Apollos is genitive. How do I translate that? I throw an of in front of it. So there's no I am, it's just of Paul, of Paul's? Oh, no, the I am is there. OK. Yeah. All right. So in the, OK. Thank you. It can also further describe a subject or a direct object.

So do not make my father's house into a house of merchandise. So we've got two generative words. You've got father's. We know that's generative, and we're throwing an of in front of it. So it's actually, do not make house of father of me. So it's my father's house. So my and father's, both generative. And into a house of merchandise, there aren't two words there in the Greek. It's merchandise spelled so that you know you throw an of in front of it. It's generative. And it depends on the letters they add to the end of the word, right?

Exactly. Yep. That's how it works. For you are all sons of light. In the Greek, that's one word. It's light, and it parses its genitive so we know we chuck an of in front of it. And this one is Interesting, if you want to forget any point about genitive, this would be the point to forget, but I want to put it there for completeness, which is there are rare cases where the genitive actually functions as the direct object of the sentence.

And we actually have a parallel in English. So if I'm telling you a story and you say, oh, I've heard of that. You see how you heard, what did you hear? You heard of that. So we're sort of treating the genitive as a direct object sometimes. It's not a common occurrence. It is for very specific verbs. If you want to forget anything on this slide, that's the one to forget. Oblative. OK. Spelled exactly the same as genitive. But we're going to use from as our translator word. So that's going to be the helper. It's going to be what's called a gloss.

And so ablative is the case of separation. And so example, is not your life worth more than food? So here's your life. There's food. And we're pulling those apart to show separation between those. That's food with a special spelling that tells you to throw a than in front of it. It's ablative. The father is greater than I. In the Greek, it's I, spelled in such a way that you know you throw a than in front of it. It's obligative. I'm going to try to get through this relatively quickly. I can already tell we're not going to get to play Guess the Gender. I promise you we will play Guess the Gender next week to start.

So shake the dust from your feet. That's one word. It's feet. It's spelled to tell us it's oblative, and we should translate it as from. And you can see, you've got dust on your foot. Now you're separating yourself from it. That's why oblative is the case of separation. Yes, ma'am? So the feet is the oblative? Yes. Yes. OK. Did. Now we're into a new spelling, new parse. Data is typically translated using to.

It's the case of personal interest. It also tells you often the indirect object of the sentence. So the one who's benefiting by the action that's going on. So example, he would have given to you living water. So that to you is just you, it's dative case. It's spelled so that we know that. So he is our subject.

What is he doing? He's giving stuff. So there's our verb. What's he giving? He's giving water. There's our direct object. Who's benefiting from that? You are. So that's how Dative is telling you that indirect object. A thorn in the flesh was given to me. It's kind of funny to think of Paul benefiting from that thorn in the flesh, but he was the indirect object of it. So that me is just spelled to say chukatu in front of it.

Yeah? In general, can you, based on what you've said so far, can you say the nominative is like the base word, and these other cases are like adding some preposition? Is that almost always going to be the case? Evocative, it's not going to be the case. Accusative, it's not going to be the case. We just haven't gotten there to find your counterexamples yet. All right. Dative makes sense? Try to blaze through a little bit. It was a sign of destruction to them. Again, it's them spelled in such a way that we know it's dative. Since it's dative, we're going to throw a to in front of it.

Locative. So locative sounds like locomotive, right? But you should think of location. So it's telling you where something is happening. And the most typical word to use as a gloss is in. So when something shows up, so an example, I baptize you in water. That's just water spelled such a way that we know it's locative. He allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. That's ways spelled in such a way that I know I throw an in in front of it.

It's locative. all these different spellings. And so much of learning New Testament Greek is memorization. I mean, just imagine for every noun, you now have to memorize 10 different spellings, and the right time to use all of those different spellings of things. With verbs, you end up spelling them, oh golly, 25, 30 different ways. And you get to memorize all of that.

Keeps the brain sharp, you will not get Alzheimer's if you are going through New Testament Greek. But position can be physical, so you've got in water. Position can be conceptual, so heal out the nation to walk in their own ways. Position can be temporal, so time-based. So in this night, your soul shall be required of you. That I'm now impervious to the second bell. I've become desensitized. Nobody's queued up. We're just going.

Instrumental. So instrumental, you think about what a surgeon does with one of his instruments or her instruments. They're going to be performing some sort of action using something. You can think of the same thing for instrumental. Good words to use are with or by. So, examples. He made us alive together with Christ. She wiped his feet with her hair. Took the hair, used it. Remember, dative, locative, instrumental. They're all spelled the same. They're all going to parse as dative. becomes very important to start correlating with other parts of scripture to be able to tease those meanings apart. It would be a completely different picture if I said, she wiped his feet in her hair. She wiped his feet with her hair. She wiped his feet to her hair.

So you have to start trying these on and looking at other parts of scripture to sort of figure out how to translate these words. Context becomes very, very, very important. You can't throw context out the window. Let me give you another example where it would matter tremendously. There's a big difference between us being filled with the Spirit. So how full are we? Are we like a fourth full or half full? Or are we filled by the Spirit? So the Spirit's pouring something into us. Or we're filled to the Spirit.

Those are very, very different translations, right? context matters tremendously. We can't tell which one of those it is just by the spelling. I think we'll go through that passage as one of our examples in the back half of the year. The NIV has a footnote that says, can be translated in, with, or by. It says that a lot of times. Right. That's good and bad. The good is they're making it known very clearly, this is ambiguous just looking at the Greek. You should be aware of that.

That's awesome. It's bad because they're punting. Hopefully something the Broncos don't do too terribly much today. And not because Manning's throwing the interceptions. OK, accusative case tells you the direct object. You get no helper word with this one, Jeremy.

So God loved the world. World is decorated as accusative. So it's spelled in such a way that we know it's accusative. So this becomes really easy. So God is nominative. Loved is a verb. world is accusative, they're telling you how to diagram this sentence without you having to know anything. They're like, this one goes here, this one goes there. Vocative. Vocative is used when addressing a person. So if you're going to holler out for somebody, Jeremy! I would spell his name with an ending that says it's vocative. And so when I talked about Elishka, that's the vocative form. We only get that right. We mess up everything else with her name because we don't know how to do all of those different spellings. There are examples that you can look at in your notes.

I don't think we need to go through all of them, and then we get to guess the gender. So we'll start with guess the gender next week, because it's lots of fun. You find out little Pebble is one gender, and big rock is a totally different gender. And you're like, really? The purpose of guess the gender is Separate yourself. I would say that in oblative Separate you from something And the thing that I want to separate you from is trying to attach any meaning to it whatsoever Because you will drive yourself mad Trying to make it have any meaning OK, so there is homework.

It's in the handouts. Answers for last week are also there. We have enough to teach that I don't want to take up class time going through the homework exercises. But if you're looking at the answers, you're confused why it's this and not that, I'm more than happy to field any questions you've got any time whatsoever. And just as one closing reminder, Yes, there is, and I'll bring it back to you just momentarily. There are all the Greek Helps that I talked about a couple of weeks ago still up here. You can use the next 15 minutes to come up and peruse them and see what sort of things are available to you.

All right, I'm going to pray and you all can hit me up with questions after, because while I'm impervious to a hard stop at that second, Bill, it starts to stress me after too many minutes. So, we'll close. Father, thanks so much for the enthusiasm and the attitude. in this class that people want to know you. And thank you so much for giving us the New Testament in a language that makes its understanding so much easier than it would have been in English. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.