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

say we're going to review nouns and pronunciation but I had promised all y'all guess the gender and so we're going to drop pronunciation in favor of guess the gender because that sounds like way more fun. So, quick review. The one thing that I would say is, I can guarantee you if you don't go back and review what a diphthong is and how to pronounce those various things and then say some of those words out loud, if you don't go back and do that, you'll lose it within two weeks. You'll be looking at, oh yes, it just won't make any sense. So do try to pronounce the words. Okay, so review from last week. pack a whole lot into one word.

They have gender and number. That's great. We have numbers. Sometimes we have gender. Remember, we typically refer to a ship as a she. But we don't have gender on everything, the Greek state. probably still do. The big aha is case. And the way to think about case is it tells you how to translate the word, how it's being used in the sentence, as well as possibly a gloss to put in front of it. Gloss is a fancy way of saying what's the helper word that you would stick in there. We talked about of, from, and with, and those sorts of things. And so in order to express all of that, nouns have a lot of form. So we talk about table, and with table, and on table, in table. It would be weird to be in a table, but if you're, say, a termite, probably not so weird. And nothing ever changes about the form. But with Greek, in order to get all of this information packed in, the spelling changes. The form changes. And so a couple of examples here, ongelou, ongelois, other ones would be ongelou, ongelontos, just all sorts of different endings that you can put onto these Greek words that tell you more about what's going on with that word. Quick review of case.

So nominative case is just a decorator that tells you that this is the subject. In the case where you've got an essence verb that's sitting in the sentence, so a verb like be or become, then both the subject and the predicate nominative will be in the nominative. Pretty easy to remember. Predicate nominative is nominative. So no heuristic needed for that.

Generative and oblative, I have these both colored in red to point out that they're going to be spelled the same in the Greek. So we have to differentiate which one of these is being used based upon the context. In the one case with generative, the helper word that we typically use is of. And so we can use that to show possession or association with. Oblative, the helper word is from, and so that's separation. So if the disciples are supposed to shake the dust from their shoes, they're separating that dust from their shoes. Next block, all in blue, because all of these are spelled the exact same, we require context to be able to differentiate between them.

We have dative. Dative, the gloss, the helper word, is to. And it's typically used to show the indirect object. For example, when we found out that Mr. Morton gave flowers to Pearl, if we were to write that in the Greek, we wouldn't write separate words for to and Pearl. We'd just spell Pearl's name so that we knew that it was in the dative. Locative. is telling us location. So locative, location.

The helper word there is in. Instrumental, just like a surgeon uses an instrument to do things, it's telling us that this noun is being used in an instrumental way. So the helper words can be by or with. Then accusative tells you this is the direct object. And vocative is the term of address. So if I'm going to yell, Claire, I would spell Claire's name so that we know that this is vocative. So all these different spellings tell us how to translate the word.

So let us play a rousing game of guess the gender, the purpose of which is to show you that It's absurd to try to be able to figure out gender. All right. So we've got three genders that are possible for us. So I'm trying to think. Let us be very pro-women this morning. So if you think feminine, that's a thumbs up. All right. If you think it's masculine, sorry, guys, that's thumbs down. And if you think it's neuter, well, that's in between. OK? Feminine, masculine, neuter. All right. What do we think?

Head. Looks like we're pretty evenly split, but a little higher to masculine. No. Turns out head is feminine. My head's masculine. Not when you talk about it. I'll tell you, you have to be secure in your masculinity to speak in Greek. I'm talking about your feminine head. All right, ear. Are we feeling, what do we think? Ear is, oh, we're pretty split again. Neuter?

So we have a winner. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Foot. Foot's got to be masculine, right? That's smelly. I had it right. So maybe we've got a heuristic. Smelly things are masculine. Heart. Is heart masculine or feminine? Strongly masculine. None vote in the back. Feminine. Hearts are feminine.

What about face? Your head's masculine. What do we think about face? Yes, we have two winners on this one. Face is neuter. That's stone. What do we think? It's a stone. OK, so we're going feminine on stone, more or less. Well, no. All right. We have? Oh, there we go. There you go. Stones are masculine. Keep that in mind when we get to rock. Maybe that will provide a hint. Stone and rock, those have got to be pretty similar, you'd think. Teacher. Teachers, yeah. I'm pretty convinced that teacher is masculine. Red ones are masculine.

Yeah, that makes sense. That one, you can actually figure out. Tongue. So yeah, I'm with Claire. My reasoning here is that women speak about two to three times more than men. Do you like how if I stand up here with a microphone, I can make absurd statements like that without citing a source? And people are like, yeah.

Sure. But it's true. I am right. OK. Eye. So we're thinking eyes are, oh, we're mixed pool again. Eyes are masculine. Hand. What do we think about hand? Hands are feminine. Mouth. Let's remember our heuristic. Tongues are feminine. What do we think about mouth? People are pretty convinced that that's going to hold, except it doesn't. Nope, that didn't work. Blood. Blood. I think we actually have zero people with the right answer, because blood is just, no, sorry, that's neuter.

OK, so stone is masculine. What do we think about rock? Feminine. Yeah, of course. That makes total sense. Stone is masculine. Rock's got to be feminine. Oh, and so Peter had to be very secure in his masculinity, because Christ said, it's on this rock that my church is going to be built. And it's like, OK, are you calling me a girl? No, that wasn't his problem. OK, so teacher is masculine. So what do we think about teaching? Yes, your confidence actually worked out. OK, more with the story.

Everything, every noun's got a gender in Greek. It makes absolutely no sense why it has the gender it has. Don't try to figure it out. Just accept that it's got a gender. OK. Does the gender matter when we're talking about it? Yes, it will matter. And we'll actually cover a little bit about why it does matter today. And it doesn't matter in the way that you think it matters. All right, so we are going to talk about prepositional phrases. Does that sound like an exciting thing for a Sunday morning? Yes. All right.

So prepositions are small words that just relate their object to another word in the sentence. So all prepositions have an object. And it's the noun or the pronoun that follows. And so some examples, the preposition is bolded. The object of the preposition is in italics. And so when we hear that Mr. Morton walked down the street, down is our preposition. It's relating street to the rest of the sentence.

Not always, but quite often. The prepositional phrase is merely describing things. And so you can pretty much cross it out and still get a sentence that makes sense. Not always, but generally. So Mr. Morton walked. That's great. That tells us information. But down the street just makes it more specific.

And that's typically what prepositions are going to give us. So Pearl replied in the afternoon. So Pearl replied, that's a prime sentence, but in the afternoon tells us when that happened. And so in is just relating afternoon to the reply. So in is our preposition. Mr. Morton knocked on her door. So on her door makes his knocking much more specific.

Randy had a junior high school teacher who told him that the definition of a preposition is anything that you can say about a doghouse. And the reasoning was, well, you know, Are you in the doghouse? Are you on a doghouse? Did you run around the doghouse? And so that can be sort of a guide of, oh, OK. So if it relates my position to a doghouse, it's probably a preposition.

So some examples. Prepositions can clarify time. So we went to the store at 5. You're coming over on Monday. I'll be done in half an hour. All of these relate. Put context to the sentence. And the context that they're putting in is time element. They can clarify position. And so this is the doghouse, right? So we went to the store. So to the store is position. At 5, that's time.

So two prepositional phrases in there. I rested my cup on the dresser. So a prepositional phrase is the preposition, together with its object, and anything that modifies that object. So that'll be our whole prepositional phrase. And the reason why we care about prepositional phrase I think it just got better. OK. So every prepositional phrase is going to have exactly one preposition.

It may have multiple objects. So I went to the store and home. would be a prepositional phrase that has one preposition, two objects of the preposition. So I'll be done in half an hour. So the object is hour. Half further qualifies that hour. So does the. And so object is hour. Preposition is in. Everything else is modifying hour. Where this gets interesting, I know that this is really abstract.

And so I want to reset why we're doing this. We're putting tools in your tool bag. And we're going to start pulling those tools out of the tool bag on the back half of this class. Not today, but on the back half of the year as we start going through and analyzing scripture. And sometimes people will get bent around the axle trying to take something that's merely describing real action, and they'll try to make it into something that stands alone. And it's going to be critical to be able to differentiate between those two so you know what the main point of a verse is saying and what is additional description versus additional stuff to do. So that's why we're going through this. So I hid under the blue and white truck. So our whole prepositional phrase is that which is underlined. But preposition is under. The object of the preposition is truck. Everything else is description.

So I don't know if the handouts got printed in color. It would be glorious if they had been printed in color, because Ernest Hemingway absolutely loved prepositional phrases that Duke could just describe till the cows came home. And so this particular passage is really good. You guys could just run through and do super quick underlining, or maybe make that as a lovely homework assignment for yourselves to do underlining, identify the prepositional phrase.

If you take all of the prepositional phrases out, then you get something like, the hills were long and light, there was no shade and no trees, and the station was. Close, there was the warm shadow and a curtain made to keep out flies. And so you see, it makes sense. But once you start throwing all these descriptors in, now you're starting to get something that's really rich. And you can sort of imagine yourself there. That's the purpose of a prepositional phrase, is to add additional context, additional content that describes what's going on. So it's not just that the hills were long and white. But they were the hills across the valley of the Ebro. And so now we're getting more and more and more specific. And that's what prepositions do for us.

Make sense? OK. Diagramming prepositions. So a prepositional phrase, since it is something that's a descriptor, will fall below the thing that it is describing, because it's secondary to that which is being described. So in two days, I will run. What's the important concept? I'm going to go run. That in two days is just a little bit more in the way of description around that.

So the way that we diagram it is it goes on a line below that which is being described. Preposition goes in what would ordinarily be sort of that subject place. And we get a direct object marker, and the object of the preposition goes after that. So that's the whole magic. Do you guys see how that works out? And it wouldn't matter.

One of the things that's nice about diagramming is if I say, in two days, I will run, or I say, I will run in two days, those look different, and we have to sort of decode them differently. The diagrams are exactly the same, because the diagram is trying to capture what exactly the sentence is saying, independent of word order. The point at the bottom is an interesting one, because when we are doing translation, we're going to be diagramming sometimes. And when we do that diagramming, where we put things matters tremendously.

So you see the sentence that we've got at the bottom. It says, I threw the ball in the bin. So the question is, and you can see it in the two diagrams, the question is, did I go and get the ball that was sitting in the bin and then throw it? Or did I take a ball from my hand right now and throw it into the bin? Those are two totally different things. So the diagram on the left. says that I went over and I pulled a ball out of the bin, and then I threw it.

And the way that you can see that it says that is because in the bin is describing ball. It's sitting below ball. So it's telling me the location of the ball that I threw. The second sentence puts that prepositional phrase underneath the verb. So that's telling me that it's describing that throwing action.

It's a little esoteric, but this is going to become critical when we're trying to understand scripture. Because there's a big difference between me going and picking up a ball from there and chucking it anywhere, and me picking up the ball and throwing it into the bin.

Well, like in this case, you can't tell the difference. Correct, you cannot. Is there scripture that's like that? There is scripture that is like that. And so our default is going to be to have it modify the verb, because that's the most common usage. But context is really important. So we have to look at the full passage in context. So that's the description. I'm sorry, can you repeat that? There must be some scriptures that are debated for centuries. Or scriptures that these side cults will just pull that one verse out.

There's a huge difference between exegesis and eisegesis. So exegesis, ek, from the Greek word ek, out of, It means I go to Scripture and I try to read out from Scripture what is being said. Eisegesis, from the Greek word eis, into, says I come to the Bible with an opinion and now I'm going to start looking in there to find something that says what I want it to say. Big difference between those two.

And so this is a reminder to everybody We want exegesis. We want to come to the word of God with humility and a desire to understand what God wants us to know from this. And so that requires more than, ha, I see a clever turn of phrase in this particular verse, and therefore I'm going to say this amazing thing that nobody has ever noticed. That's not quite what we're after. We want to look at it in the full context and rightly divide the word. All right, so Greek stuff. And now you'll find out about why we care about gender sometimes. So word order. So in English, word order matters tremendously.

Huge difference between the red panda licked Evie and Evie licked the red panda. In one case, you're kind of like, oh, that's cute. In the other case, you're like, do we need to get her some shots? Those are different. He gave the girl beautiful flowers different than he gave the beautiful girl flowers.

So word order matters tremendously in English. It's not true in Greek. Word order doesn't matter so much. Why would that be? Because you've got the case endings. And the case endings are going to tell you how a word is being used in the passage. So to look at these examples that we just talked about, if I could mark up and say Evie is the subject and the red panda is the direct object, then those two sentences would say the exact same thing. Because in both of them, I know Evie is the one who's doing the licking. The red panda is the one who's being licked. So in Greek, by being able to decorate these, in both cases, I know we need to go get Evie some shots.

Similarly, if I could somehow mark up the sentence so that I knew that gift and beautiful look the same, or that I knew that beautiful and flowers look the same, then I'd be able to differentiate those pretty easily as well. So let's talk about how we would do that. So if word order doesn't matter in that last sentence, the question that we're answering is, my goodness, how do I know what's beautiful, the flowers or the girl? I'm sorry? I said or both. No. In this particular case, it's only going to be one of them. I don't know which one I hope it is. Anyway, so yeah, I really don't.

So why would the Greeks pick one word order over a different word order? So one thing that they did a lot was take the most important concept and put it as the first word. And so the thing that's the most important thing in the sentence, they're going to talk about first in the sentence.

Well, here's tremendous insight that we can't get out of the Greek. So for example, when we read, the word was God, that's not what it says in the Greek. It's smoother for us. We understand that phrasing better. So that's why we translate it that way. But what it says in the Greek was, God was the word. And so that's to emphasize the deity, to emphasize the godness. That's why they've got that order. So Greeks get a little bit more flexibility, and they can now convey more information in a sentence than we can.

I am constantly amazed by how God used Alexander the Great of all people to spread this language across the entire Persian empire as a precursor for sending his word out in that language across the entire Persian empire, and that he chose a language that's so expressive and things fall together so perfectly. I mean, just that is smart. Shows why he was so successful so quickly. Alexander the Great?

Yeah, exactly. Word order can also just be chosen because they like the sound of it. So again, context, understand when you're looking and saying, this is the most important thing because it's the first word. Look at the rest of the passage. Does it feel like it's the most important thing given the context of the passage in the John 1-1 quote? Yeah. I promise you we will get back to that beautiful girl.

Adjectives carry more information in the Greek than they do in English. Adjectives also have case, gender, and number. Unlike nouns, adjectives can take on any gender that they want. So an adjective can be feminine. An adjective can be neuter. Adjective can be masculine. Same one. Why would that be a good idea?

To tell you which noun it's describing? Because it tells which noun you're describing. So a noun has case, gender, and number. Adjective has case, gender, and number. They've got to match. And so now we've got a really good way of saying this adjective is describing that noun. It's really clear at that point. But to be able to do that, adjectives have to be able to change their gender. So we've got these transgender adjectives.

The way that they do that is by changing the endings, which means that if you find yourselves taking a full-on Greek class, you'll spend about a third of your time working on, I guess, about a fourth of your time memorizing nouns and their endings, and about three-fourths of your time memorizing adjectives and their endings. Because as you see, for each gender, you're going to have a different set of endings.

So you see how the puzzle pieces start to get stamped out? So when I look at a noun, I know what its case is by the spelling. I know what its gender is because I just memorized that. I know what its number is by the spelling. And adjectives, I know what all three of them are simply by the spelling of the word. It's not remotely important that you guys remember any of these endings that you try to learn this particular material. This is just illustrative so that you guys can see, oh, OK, so I understand the mechanics of how the Greek language is working.

We've got these different endings. We've got these different endings. And I should be able to pair them up somehow. It's your only takeaway. All right, so, well, you guys were too smart. So we've ruined all the fun that's in this particular slide. Adjectives have case gender and number. Nouns have case gender and number. They've got to match, and so we're going to pair them up.

So let's revisit that beautiful girl and or the beautiful flowers. So the question is, does he gave a girl beautiful flowers in the Greek mean the girl's beautiful or the flowers are beautiful? That's our question to answer. So, first question, would it be helpful to know the gender of beautiful? Yes. Okay, why would it be helpful? Because it would neither relate to the girl nor to the flowers. Unless they're both feminine, right? Well, it's true though. In this case, they're not though. So a girl is feminine. Flowers is neuter.

So if we know the gender of beautiful, done. We already know which one it's describing. So it's completely unambiguous. We would draw it under this and not under that. Similarly, would it be helpful to know the number of beautiful? Because we've got one girl, we've got multiple flowers. So if it's singular or plural, I immediately know which one to stick it underneath. And the last one, would it be helpful to know the case of beautiful? This one's extra credit. Would it be helpful to know the case of beautiful? OK. And here's the extra credit question. Why?

Girl is a direct object. Yes, girl is a direct object. Flowers is a direct object. Girl is indirect object. So I would expect to see flowers in accusative. I would expect to see girl in dative, because dative is what's giving me that indirect object.

So if I know anything about this adjective whatsoever, and by the way, I can because I'm just going to look at the spelling that's immediately going to tell me, then I know exactly which thing it's describing. So that's why word order doesn't matter quite as much in Greek as it does in English. So just imagine being able to decorate every single word in the sentence to tell you this thing and this thing, they go together, And this thing's being used that way, and that one's being used this other way.

It's kind of like cheating, if you think. It would make diagramming so much easier. Right, it does. It makes diagramming way easier. It's like you've got this giant jigsaw puzzle, and you just sort of glance at it, and these two pieces start glowing. It's like, oh, those must go together. And then these pieces over here start flowing. OK. And then you look at it, and it's like one piece just starts pulling itself over this way. That must belong there.

That's how the Greek language works. And God is just so amazing to have chosen such a language to put the New Testament in. OK, prepositions. So good news and bad news about prepositions. Probably doesn't matter to all y'all, because right now you're not looking at going out and memorizing everything in the original Greek. This is Greek appreciation. But good news, there are way fewer prepositions in Greek than there are in English. So that's fantastic. We've got about 50. They've got 17. So that's awesome. All right, here's the bad news.

It's that depending upon the case that you're using with a preposition, the way that you translate it differs. So you've got meta down there. If meta is being used with a generative object, then you translate it with with. If it's being used with an accusative object, you translate it as after.

So the bottom line is, actually, it's about the same. So you have fewer words to learn, but those words are more versatile. So you have to learn all the different ways that they can be translated. And so you're kind of 50 here, and you're kind of 50 there. So there you go. I took your joy and just brought you guys down. Right. Lifted us up and brought us down. Just brought you straight down into the ground. All right, so question.

If word order doesn't matter, then how in the world are we going to match up a preposition to the object of the preposition? That's awesome. So when you go about the magic of memorizing the Greek prepositions, what you're also going to memorize at the same time is what case belongs with them. And so now you understand, oh, this preposition, it's got a case. This object has a case. Look, they match. And so you're matching up based off of case.

The other one that's super helpful for us is the Greeks weren't super adventurous with how they wrote prepositional phrases. They tended to keep the preposition and the object pretty close together. That's likely because they were human beings with brains that are limited, like our brains are limited. And so if I say, in, and then I start to describe a whole bunch of different things, the doghouse, it's kind of difficult for you to keep that concept in your head all the way from in to doghouse and know that those things belong together. So we don't do that because we like to communicate with the other human beings in a way that they can understand. So, it turns out Greeks were humans, and they were kind as a result. They want to express themselves.

So, a few examples. So we've got the word was with God. By the way, in our English translation, we drop out the the, but it's there in the Greek. So, it turns out the word was with the singular God. Prost, with, is an accusative preposition. Got, that on, is being used in the accusative case.

We know those guys just fit right together. All things through him became. Dia and autu are both genitive. So through and him are both genitive. We know those guys belong together. So the fact that we can actually mark up all of these words Helps us tremendously. And last one, in him life was. The in and the him are both locative. So we know that we pair those critters up. All right, guess what?

We blazed through today. It is my way of making up to you how many times I kept you all awake. We have more sentence diagramming, this time with prepositional phrases, but there are only three of them, so you guys should be in pretty good shape. We have bonus time.

I think I can pray and close this down. If you guys have any questions about any of the homework that you've been working through, if you want to take time to look at some of the Greek materials that are up here, finally I have left you with time to do so. So that's good. All right.

Father, thanks for this time that we've had together. Thank you that Here in this country, we can do this freely. Thank you for so many folks who are focused on getting the tools so that they can know you. And thank you for giving us scripture in a language that makes it so clear. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.