Greek for Bible Readers

017

Our last lesson introduced the formation of the present and future active indicative of the Greek verb. It should be noted that the aspect denoted by the present indicative may be aoristic, though it is usually imperfective. Hence luvw may be rendered either “I loose” or “I am loosing,” depending on the context. These uses are called the simple present and the progressive present, respectively. The progressive present is frequently found in narrative material, as in Matthew 8:5: “Lord, save us! We are drowning.” One other use of the present tense deserves brief mention here. The historical present is used when a past event is viewed with the vividness of a present occurrence, as in Mark 1:40: “And a leper comes to him.” This usage is characteristic of lively narrative in general and is a special feature of Mark’s Gospel (151 times), where it frequently introduces new scenes or participants. Note that even when an action occurred in the past, an author may choose to depict that action in present time. Hence one must always carefully distinguish between reality (how the action happened) and depiction (how the author presents the action).

The future tense, as its name implies, is usually predictive in force, as in John 14:26: “He will teach you all things.” However, the future may also be used imperativally to express a command, as in Luke 1:31: “you will call [i.e., you are to call] his name Jesus.” Finally, the statement of a generally accepted fact is occasionally expressed by the future tense, as in Ephesians 5:31: “A man will leave father and mother.” This example is neither predictive nor imperatival; it simply asserts a performance that may be expected under normal conditions. This usage is sometimes called the gnomic future. It will be recalled that the kind of action in the future tense may be either aoristic (“I will loose”) or imperfective (“I will be loosing”). Its usual aspect in the New Testament is aoristic, with greater emphasis on the time element than the present. “I will prepare a place for you” (John 14:3) is aoristic, while “the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6) is imperfective.

When reading the Greek New Testament, pay close attention to tense and aspect. The descriptive force of the present tense is seen frequently. “Our lamps are going out” (Matthew 25:8) pictures the flickering, smoking wicks, while Paul’s “I am marveling” (Galatians 1:6) indicates his continual consternation at the behavior of the Galatians. With a series of historical presents, John describes the disciples’ excitement at the empty tomb: John “sees” the linen garments; Simon Peter “comes” and “gazes” at the linen bands (John 20:5–6). The future tense can be just as expressive.

As already observed, the most frequently occurring verb of the –mi conjugation is eijmiv (“I am”; see chart, above). Grammarians label eijmiv a copulative verb (from Latin copulo, “I link together”) because it links subject and predicate, as in 1 John 1:5: oJ qeo;~ fw~ ejstin, “God [subject] is light [predicate].” Since eijmiv expresses a state of being rather than an action, it has neither active, middle, nor passive voice. Note the movable v in the third person singular and plural.

The negative not is expressed in Greek by the adverb ouj. This word is used as the negative with verbs in the indicative mood. A different word, mhv, is used with all other moods. Both negatives precede the word to which they refer. Thus ouj luvw means “I do not loose,” ouj luvomen means “we do not loose,” etc. Before a word beginning with a vowel, oujk is used (e.g., oujk ajkouvw, “I do not hear”), and before a rough breathing, oujc is used (e.g., oujc eJtoimavzw, “I do not prepare”). (A rough breathing mark [’] indicates that the word is to be pronounced with an initial “h” sound.) In linguistics, all of these forms—ouj, mhv, oujk, and oujc—are considered allomorphs of the same Greek negative adverb.

Note that ; serves as the Greek question mark. Hence luvomen means “we loose” or “we are loosing,” but luvomen means “do we loose?” or “are we loosing?”

Learn the vocabulary in the chart below. This first vocabulary contains words 050that occur a total of 6,487 times in the Greek New Testament! The English words in parentheses are related to the Greek words and are given to aid memorization, while the symbol indicates the basic stem of the word in question. For example, the verb stem of didavskw (“I teach”) is not didask but didak, as seen in didactic (“intended to teach”). It is important to remember that Greek words (like English ones) have a meaning that is context-determined to a significant degree. For instance, the Greek of John 1:1a (“In the beginning was the Word”) could, in an appropriate context, be translated “The treasurer was in the midst of a body of troops”! Keep in mind, therefore, that the semantic field (area of meaning) of a Greek word is much wider than can be summarized here, and that the definitions given below represent only the most common meaning of the words as they are used in the New Testament.

Now translate the following sentences; answer will be given in our next column: (1) blevpei~. gravfei~. ouj pevmpei~ (2) a[gei. baptivzei. ouj luvei. (3) ajkouvomen. eJtoimavzomen. ouj pisteuvomen. (4) gravfete. peivqete. ouj swvzete (5) blevponsin. didavskonsin. ouj luvousin (6) baptivzei. didavskomen. oujk ajkouvousin. (7) swvzw; qerapeuvei; pevmponsin; (8) ei]. ejsmevn. ejstev. (9) ajkouvsei. baptivsei. e{xei (10) gravyomen. didavxomen. khruvxomen. (11) ouj luvsete. ouj doxavseiÓ. ouj peivsomen