The Greek Alphabet

This table gives the Greek letters, their names, equivalent English letters, and tips for pronouncing those letters which are
pronounced differently from the equivalent English letters.

Sigma (o, ):There are two forms for the letter Sigma. When written at the end of a word, it is written like this: . If it occurs
anywhere else, it is written like this: o.
Upsilon (u):In the above table, we suggest that you pronounce this letter like "u" in "put". The preferred pronunciation is actually
more like the German "" as in "Brcke", or like the French "u" as in "tu". If you do not speak German or French, don't worry
about it, just pronounce it the way the table suggests.
Xi (_): This is the same sound as "ch" in "Bach", which does not sound like "ch" in "chair". The same sound occurs in the
Scottish "Loch", as in "Loch Lomond", or the German "ach!".
Dipthongs When two vowels combine to make one sound, it is called a dipthong. There are seven dipthongs in Greek:

The "eu" combination is probably the hardest to learn for most people. It may help to take the "ow" sound and say it slowly: if
you notice, there are actually two sounds in "ow" - it starts out with "ah", then glides to an "oo" sound, "ah-oo". Try doing the
same with "e" (as in "edward") and "oo" - "e-oo". This is a little like the "e-w" in Edward, if you remove the "d".
Clip and save! You may want to print out this table and glue it to the inside cover of your Greek dictionary. If you are ever in
doubt about alphabetic order, this will help you look up words. If you have difficulty with pronunciation, you could also print it out
and glue it to the inside of your Greek New Testament.

Accents
Accents tell you which syllable is stressed when the word is pronounced. There are three different accents, but by the time of the
New Testament, they were all pronounced the same. Here are the three kinds of accents, with a Greek word to illustrate each:

Breathings
The rough breathing is pronounced like an "h", and looks like a backwards comma written over a vowel. The smooth breathing is
not pronounced at all, and looks like a regular comma written over a vowel. Note the difference between "en" and "hen":

There are two marks over the epsilon in "hen"; the first is the rough breathing, the second is the accent.
Iota subscripts
A vowel at the end of a word will sometimes have an "iota subscript" underneath it; here is an alpha with an iota subscript:

The iota subscript is not pronounced, but it can be helpful for identifying certain grammatical forms that we will learn about later
(especially the dative case).
Punctuation
The period and comma are the same as in English. The semicolon is a raised dot, and is also used as a colon. The question
mark looks like an English semicolon:


Vocabulary for this lesson:





Mnemonics for alphabetic order
Did you ever dream of working as a file clerk in ancient Greece? No? Well, did you ever dream of being able to look up words in
a Greek dictionary? In either case, you are going to have to learn the order of the Greek alphabet. I've made up a mnemonic
which may be helpful for some people:
o | o c
All Bigots Get Diarrhea Eventually
, q u i k
Zorro Ate THe Ice Kap(pa)
v o
Let's Munch Nuts EXcessively, Okay?
t o t
Pigs Really Stink Terribly
u | _ e
Under Five CHairs, PSychiatrists Wink
If you use this mnemonic, remember that "Chairs" is not really the way to pronounce _, which sounds like "ch" in "Bach". Some
people prefer to learn the order based on differences from the order of the English alphabet:
o | o c
Same as English, except for the gamma
, q u i
,qui means "live!" in Greek.
k v o
Same as English, except for xi.
t o t u
Same as English, but no "q"
| _ e
Memorize these, or use the mnemonic from the above table.

How to write Greek letters
The arrows show you where to start when you write Greek letters. Always remember to write the accents and breathing marks, as
well as the iota subscripts!


(back to text)
Footnote 1: Other pronunciation schemes
To be fair, we should mention that there are several different ways to pronounce Greek. We are teaching the Erasmian
pronunciation for now. At some point in the future, we may add pages to teach some of the other pronunciations. Here are the
main ways that Greek is pronounced:
- Erasmian pronunciation. This is the pronunciation used here, and is probably based on the pronunciation used by a
Renaissance scholar named Erasmus, who was the main force behind the first printed copies of the Greek New
Testament. The Erasmian pronunciation is probably different from the way Greek was pronounced at the time of the
New Testament, but it is widespread among scholars, and it has the advantage that every letter is pronounced, which
makes it easy to grasp the spelling of words.
- Modern Greek pronunciation. This is the way Greek is pronounced today in Greece. Some people prefer to teach this
pronunciation for New Testament Greek as well. I initially learned the modern Greek pronunciation, but had difficulty
learning to spell words, so I switched to the Erasmian. Modern Greek pronunciation is probably more similar to New
Testament Greek pronunciation than Erasmian is, but not identical.
- Reconstructed New Testament Greek pronunciation. There are some scholarly books which attempt to reconstruct
the original pronunciation of New Testament Greek, and they have reached the point that there seems to be fairly
widespread agreement on the original pronunciation. As far as I know, nobody ever teaches this pronunciation.
Incidentally, since there was a large variety of Greek dialects, there was no single way to pronounce Greek even in the
New Testament era.
- Fraternity, Physics, and Calculus pronunciation. This is the way your physics teacher spoke Greek, and he learned
this pronunciation in his fraternity. Next time you hear a physics teacher pronounce Greek, laugh and look superior.
Pronunciation practice: John 1
You can't read anything until you know the alphabet, so if you want to read Greek, the alphabet is a logical place to start. You
can learn the Greek alphabet in an hour or two, and if this is all you ever learn, it is enough to let you look up entries in a Greek
dictionary, pronounce Greek words, and feel a little less frightened by those weird looking squiggles.
We learn how to pronounce the letters by reading some verses from the Gospel of John. I have recorded these verses so that
you can read along with me and compare your pronunciation to mine. In the following table, the first row shows the capital
letters, the second shows the small letters, and the third shows their English equivalents:

Hint:You do not have to learn this table yet - the rest of this section will teach you how to pronounce these letters.
Hint:If you want to see tables with all the stuff we will be learning, look at the Tables and suchsection for this chapter.
In this exercise, you will learn to pronounce the first five verses of John 1. Below, you can see a phrase written in Greek letters,
and a transcription for the same phrase just below that. If you click on the Greek phrase, you will hear me read it out loud. Look
at the Greek letters and listen to me read; match it up with the transcription to make sure that you are hearing it correctly:
John 1:1a

En arch n ho logos
Read the above phrase several times, until you can look at the letters and pronounce the words correctly. Note that "" is
pronounced like "ey" in "they".
Breathing marks:
In the above text, note that in every word that starts with a vowel, the initial vowel has a mark over it that looks like a comma. If
the comma is backwards, it is called a "rough breathing", and the vowel is pronounced as though there were an "h" before it. If
the comma is not backwards, it is called a "smooth breathing"; a smooth breathing indicates that there is no "h" sound before the
vowel. Here are two real words that from the first five verses of John that differ only in the breathing:

Question:Which word in John 1:1a has a rough breathing? How does this affect the pronunciation of that word?
Accents
In the above text, accents are used to show which syllable is stressed. There are three accents in Greek, and they are all
pronounced exactly the same:

In the transcription shown in the bottom row, the accented syllables are shown in bold type.
Question:Which words in John 1:1a have accents? Read the phrase again carefully, and make sure that you stress the accented
syllables.
Now look at the words in the following table. The Greek words are shown on the left, the transcription in the middle, and an
English translation is given on the right. Read each Greek word out loud, then read the English translation. Repeat each word
pair three times out loud. Pay careful attention to the Greek letters as you read, and make sure you can identify the smooth
breathings, the rough breathings, and the accents:

Note:the word "the" does not occur in the Greek, but has to be added when translating to English. English and Greek think
differently.
Exercise:Write out the phrase, writing the letters as shown in the section on how to write Greek letters. Please write all the
accents and breathing marks. You will notice a little squiggle under the last letter of "o_q"; this is called an iota subscript. The
iota subscript is not pronounced, but it tells you something important about the grammar...and we won't tell you exactly what for a
few more lessons. Just write it, and don't ask any questions, OK?
John 1:1b

kai ho logos n pros ton theon
The "oi" sound in "koi" rhymes with "eye". This is a dipthong - a combination of two letters that is pronounced as one sound.
Continue as for the previous verse:
- Look at the Greek letters, and pronounce what you can.
- Play the recording several times, and read together with me.
- Use the transcription below to help if you are not sure how something is pronounced.
Read each Greek word out loud, then read its translation out loud. Repeat each pair three times:

Note:here the Greek says "the" God, but we would translate this "God" in English. The Greek word for "the" acts very differently
from the English word "the".
Now write out the phrase, writing the letters as shown in the section on how to write Greek letters.
John 1:1c

You have already encountered all of these words in the first two parts of this verse. Listen to the recording and speak along with
me, then write out the phrase.
How to do the rest of this exercise...
For each verse, do the following:
1. Play the recording several times and read along with me.
2. Take each row in the table beneath the verse, and pronounce each Greek word and its English translation three times.
3. Write the verse on a sheet of paper, and read it out loud one more time.
4. Please do not look up the meaning of the verses until you have finished the exercise. It is perfectly OK if you do not
understand exactly what a phrase means at first, and if you look up the English translation right away, it will take longer
to learn how to think in Greek.
When you have done this for each verse, you should be able to pronounce the entire set of five verses.
John 1:2


outocontains a dipthong - the oucombination is pronounced "who". The "h" sound comes from the rough breathing - without a
rough breathing it would be pronounced "ooh". Note that the breathing mark and accent are placed on the secondletter of a
dipthong.
John 1:3a


John 1:3b


There are two dipthongs here: "ou" is pronounced "ow"; "ou" occurs twice in this verse - do you remember how to pronounce
it? If not, look at John 1:3a again.
John 1:4a


The letter that looks like a "w" is an omega (e), and is pronounced "o", as in "toad". In our transcription, we represent this with
"".
John 1:4b


John 1:5a


John 1:5b


Oops, missing a few!
The first five verses of John do not contain the letters , , or the dipthongs cu, oi,or ui. Here is a table with words to help
you learn these sounds.

Can you pronounce it all?
Now try pronouncing the entire passage. If you are unsure about the pronunciation of any word, or if you are unsure about the
meaning of individual words, go back to the relevant section of this exercise. If you are unsure of the meaning of a phrase, but
understand the individual words, look it up in a Bible translation, preferably a fairly literal one like the King James, RSV, NASB,
or NRSV. Do not continue until you are very solid on this.

Remember these words!
In this course, each lesson builds on the vocabulary and syntax learned in earlier lessons, so make sure that you remember the
things mentioned in this section. First, make sure that you can distinguish these three words:

These are all extremely common words, which you should remember for future lessons. And here are some more common words
which you should remember:

Now let's start talking about that pesky word "the". There are three ways to say "the", depending on whether you are referring to
something that is masculine, feminine, or neuter:

In Greek, every noun is either masculine, feminine, or neuter. You should learn these examples, which appeared in today's
lesson:

The gender of a noun: The gender of a noun has nothing to do with whether it is a boy or a girl. In English, we refer to a dog
as "he" if it is a boy, "she" if it is a girl, or "it" if we do not know its gender (or if it has just returned from an unpleasant visit to
the veterinarian). In New Testament Greek, there is no direct link between the gender of a noun and male or female traits; e.g.,
a mother-in-law is neuter, both boys and girls are neuter, words are masculine, parables are feminine, and both male and
female horses are masculine.
The meaning of the article:The article is like a finger pointing; it says, "this one", and should generally be translated "the". For
instance, in our passage, o oomeans "the word".
What does the lack of an article mean?Many beginning textbooks suggest that a noun without an article should be translated
with "a", e.g. that ooshould be translated "a word" if the article does not appear. This is often a useful way to translate, and
a reasonable rule of thumb, but it is not always appropriate. Whereas the article has a clear meaning, the lack of an article has
no clear meaning. For instance, in John 1:1, o_qclearly refers to "the beginning", not to "a beginning":

John 1:1c contains another interesting example of a noun without an article:

Grammatically, there are three possible ways to interpret ucoin this verse:
- definite
"And the word was God" - the translation found in most traditional Bibles.
- indefinite
"And the word was a god"
- qualitative
"And the word was divine"
Since Greek grammar permits each of these meanings, you have to look at the context and the belief system of the writer in
order to understand which meaning is most likely. Given John's understandings of Jesus and of God, it is very unlikely that he
would have said that Jesus was "a god".
Verbs: present active indicative
The following tables summarize the information you should master in this lesson:
Conjugation of |cte:

Present active indicative endings applied to |cte, ce:

Conjugation of verbs ending in ce:

Vocabulary: verbs used in this lesson:


Verbs (present active indicative)
Verbs are the words that tell you what is happening. Here are some English verbs: see, smell, hit, walk, believe, grow, love,
hate, rub, die, snort, laugh. In the following examples, the verbs that mean "to see" are shown in bold type:
John 1:29
.
Matthew 22:16

Observe these verbs:Note that the Greek uses only one word, |ctci, to say "he sees", and only one word, |ctci, to say
"you see". The endings for these verbs tell you who is doing the seeing, so there is no need to add the words "he" or "you".
This is true to some extent for English as well; in the English translations: "he sees", but "you see". However, in English, many
verb forms are the same: "I see", "you see", "we see", "they see", so the verb form "see" doesn't tell you whether "I", "you", or
"we" is doing the seeing. Greek verbs have a unique ending for each, so you know exactly who is doing the seeing.
Words like "I", "we", "you", and "they" are called pronouns. Greek tends to leave out pronouns, since you already know who it is
if you look at the verb. When a pronoun appears in Greek, the sentence is emphasizing who it is that is doing the action.
|cte
Here are the forms for the verb |cte:

On the left hand, you see a Greek word, e.g. |cte. In the middle column, you see the English translation; the translation
for |cteis "I see". The third column gives grammatical terms like "first person singular".
Here are some things you should make sure you understand:
- The Greek ending tells exactly who is seeing.
- The same ending is used for he, she, or it.
- The first person is the person (or people) who is talking: "I" or "we". The second person is the person who is being
addressed: "you" or "you all". The third person is someone they are talking about: "him", "her", "it", or "they".
- Singular means one person: "I", "you", "him", "her", "it". Plural means more than one: "we", they", "you all".
- Modern English does not have separate form for the second person plural. We are using "you all" when we say "you"
to address more than one person as a group. This is the way the phrase is used in some dialects of English. (An
aside: the Little Greek lives in North Carolina, where "y'all" can be used to address one person in some local dialects.
In these dialects, "all y'all" can be used to address a group. Language can be confusing...)
- King James English used "thou" for the second person singular, and "you" for the second person plural. In general.
This distinction has been lost in modern English. Incidentally, "thou" was never a special form of address reserved for
God and for kings. The people who say that know neither Greek nor older forms of English.
Now I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is this: I've created a cute little flashcard toy which
will help you learn these endings. And the bad news? If you don't use this flashcard toy, but go on to the next section without
learning the endings, you'll be hopelessly lost. You won't know who is doing what. So please take the time to review these
endings until you know them perfectly.
And now for a few more verbs...
At this point, I would like to drill you on some other verbs, but you don't know any other verbs yet. Never fear, the little Greek
still has his flashcard i,owaiting, and he will use it to teach you some of the most common verbs in the Greek New
Testament:

Now we want to use these verbs together with the endings we saw with "blepw". For instance, compare the forms for "blepw"
with the forms for "legw", "I say":

You can apply these endings in the same way to any one of the verbs you have learned so far.

Real Bible texts
Up to now, this chapter has had only a few real texts from the Bible. In this section, we will present a Bible text that is missing
one word, along with an interlinear translation that will help you identify the word. For each text, do the following:
1. Write the text down on a piece of paper, adding the missing word. Remember to write accents, breathing marks,
and iota subscripts!
2. Read the entire text out loud. This is important, if you want to learn to think in Greek!
3. Think about what the text might mean. This may be difficult for several of these passages. That's OK, this is only your
second lesson.
4. Look up the passage in one or more Bible translations. Does the verse make sense now?
John 9:35
Note that this is a question, and read it as such! Also, remember that the pronoun "you" emphasizes who it is who believes. The
meaning of the whole is, "do youbelieve in the son of man?" Frequently, if a verb means "you believe" in a statement, a
question with the same verb form will mean "do you believe?". Add the Greek word for "you believe", then read the sentence out
loud several times, remembering that it is a question.

John 12:44
Add the Greek word for "he believes" and read this out loud several times.

ouis one of the "little words" you learned in the first lesson.
Matthew 11:4

koiis one of the "little words" you learned in the first lesson.
Luke 8:13

koiis one of the "little words" you learned in the first lesson. oukis a form of ou, another one of your "little words". outoiis a
form of outo, which is also on your "little words" list. And do you recognize the word to? It doesn't always mean "with"; in
this case, it means "for".
John 5:41

The present tense can be used to describe something some one does habitually; for this example, we have used the gloss "I do
accept" to mean "I am in the habit of accepting", which conveys the verb's meaning in this verse.
little word alert: ou.
Matt 9:28

John 8:48

little word alert: ou, koi.
John 8:49

little word alert: oukis a form of ou.
Matt 26:65

1 John 3:22

little word alert: koi.
Verbs ending in ce
In this section, we will introduce some verbs which have slightly different endings from the ones we have discussed so far. Let's
look at the endings for |ice, which means "to love" or "to like":

Except for the accents, which you can feel perfectly free to ignore at this point (as long as you stress accented syllables when
you pronounce them!), only two of these forms are different from the ones we have seen so far, the forms for "we" and "you all":

Let's get out our i,oagain and practice these endings:
Now let's learn some more of these verbs:

And now we'll do it again, translating from English into Greek:
Since the "we" and "you all" forms are the only forms that are new, let's practice those two endings for these new words. To help
remember the differences between these forms and the ones we learned earlier, the next flashcard exercise includes both kinds
of verbs.
Always remove the cebefore adding the endings! For instance, to say "we do", take the verb toice, remove the ceto
produce toice, then add oucvto get toioucv.
Now let's practice these endings with some real scriptures. Supply the missing Greek words for these scriptures, then read them
aloud several times, trying to get a feel for what they might mean. Afterward, you may look them up in your English Bible to see
how they are translated
(but not beforehand!).
John 8:37

2 Cor 4:13

little word alert: koican mean either "also" or "and".
James 2:8

1 John 1:6

Luke 6:46


Footnotes:
John 1:29

- The Greek literally says "he sees", but translations generally say "he saw". The translations are not wrong. The
grammatical form is similar to one used in informal oral English: someone telling a story might say,
"So yesterday a man walked into a store, and he goesup to the counter".
In writing, we would change that to say
"Yesterday, a man went into a store, and he went up to the counter."
In both English and Greek, the present tense ("sees", "goes up") is a vivid way to describe something that happened in
the past. This is quite common in Greek, and is called the "historical present". Much of the narrative in Mark is written
in the historical present, which gives the book a feeling of breathless urgency.
- The first word of the sentence, Tq, is another form of the word "the", and means "on the" in this particular sentence -
but the same form will be translated differently in other sentences. Are you beginning to think that there is a lot to the
word "the" in Greek? We will devote a large part of a chapter to this word.
- The word ctouiovmeans the same thing as the older English word "morrow", which is too obsolete to use in a
modern translation.
- The words and grammatical forms of one language do not translate directly into the words and grammatical forms of
another. You have to learn to think the Greek before you can know how to translate it into English.

Matthew 22:16

- Most English translations sound very different from the literal meaning of these words. This is an idiom, and a very
interesting one: God looks at our heart, not at the surface or at appearances. The word tooetov, which means
"face", can also mean "mask". In Greek plays, actors held masks before their faces to take on a particular role, and
the mask was not the same as the person behind the mask. In Galatians 2:6, a similar idiom is used in the Greek:
Gal 2:6 "who they were makes no difference to me, God does not accept a person's face".
In context, this "face" might refer to the roles these people played in the church, or to the image they put on. If I were
translating this verse idiomatically, I might render it,
Matt 22:16 "for you see beyond a person's face".
The standard English translations are not wrong; they are trying to convey the meaning for English speakers who are
not familiar with the Greek idiom.
- Recently, there has been a lot of controversy about translating the word ovuetevas "people". The King James and
other older translation translated it "men". The Greek ovuetevrefers to people, and can mean either groups
composed only of men or groups which also include women. The meaning of the Greek is clear; the real issue is
whether the English word "men" still communicates the concept of groups of people which may also include women.
Pronouns, subjects, objects, and owners
This chapter is about identifying who is doing what in a sentence. It is one of the longer chapters in this grammar, and there is a
lot to memorize, but it is an extremely important chapter for several reasons:
- This chapter introduces the case system, which is essential if you want to know how to interpret nouns and pronouns
when they occur in a sentence. There are very few sentences that can be understood without understanding the case
system.
- The pronouns introduced in this chapter make up about 8% of the text of the Greek New Testament; in other words, if
you took a New Testament and highlighted these pronouns, you would have highlighted 8% of the text.
- The endings that you will learn here are also used for articles and nouns, so learning these forms gives you a basis for
learning other crucial things.
Nevertheless, this chapter may be too long to swallow in one gulp. You may want to work through one section at a time, and
make sure that you master each section before moving on to the next. Here are some basic concepts that we will be discussing:
Nounsare words that describe people, places, or things. Here are some English nouns: book, person, chewing-gum, country,
county, city, road, field, justice, peace, language, concept, man, woman, god, programmer, linguist. We will actually postpone
nouns until the next chapter, since it is easier to explain certain features of Greek pronouns first.
Pronounsare words that "substitute" for nouns, referring to people, places, or things that are known in the given context. Here
are some English pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, you all, they.
Casesare the forms that words like nouns and pronouns take to tell you, among other things, who is doing what to whom and for
whom, and who owns what. We will be talking about the nominative, genitive, dative, andaccusativecases.
Personal pronouns (nominative)
Here are the Greek personal pronouns:

A few mnemonics may be helpful here:
- ceis the word from which the English word "ego" is derived.
- oumeans "you" when talking to one person. One way to remember this is to imagine looking at one pig and saying
"sooey, sooey". This mnemonic apparently does not work for many who did not grow up in the rural United States (so
how do you call pigs in London?).
- qci, uciA lot of people have a hard time remembering which is which. Make sure that your pronunciation clearly
distinguishes the two, and never mumble the first syllable when reading exercises that contain these words. The word
that means "you all" also starts with a "u".
Pronouns and gender
In the above table, we translated outo, outq,and outoas "he", "she", and "it". This is a useful oversimplification, but the
gender of a pronoun does not necessarily mean that a male, a female, or an "it" is intended. If you recall, in lesson one we
pointed out that every noun has a gender, and this gender is somewhat arbitrary:

In Greek, it would be quite normal to say something like, "the light shines in the darkness, and she has not overcome it";
because darkness is feminine and light is neuter, "she" would have to refer to the darkness, and "it" would have to refer to the
light. Naturally, we wouldn't want to use "she" and "it" in an English translation of this sentence! Whenever you see a pronoun,
you have to figure out what it is referring to before you can translate it. Therefore, "he", "she", and "it" are somewhat misleading.
It is more accurate to call outo, outq,and outothe masculine, feminine, and neuterforms.
However, in most cases, if we wanted to translate the English word "he" into Greek, we would use the wordouto, and if we
wanted to translate the English word "she" into Greek, we would use the word outq, and many times these Greek pronouns do
mean "he" and "she".
In Greek, the pronoun "they" also has gender -outoi, outoi,and outoare really the plural forms of "he", "she", and "it". In
English, we use one word, "they", when we refer to a group of "hes", a bunch of "shes", or a bunch of "its", but Greek has
separate forms for each. Once again, the terms "he", "she", and "it" are misleading - in Greek, a girl or a mother-in-law are
neuter, not because they are not female, but because that happens to be the gender of the nouns used to describe them. It is
always worth remembering that "it" can often be the best translation of a masculine or feminine pronoun. When translating into
Greek, remember that you do not know the right form for "it" or "they" until you know the gender of the noun. The following table,
suggested by Tony Prete, may help you keep this in mind:

Subjects and objects
In Greek, both nouns and pronouns take different forms to tell you whether they are being used as subjects or objects. In many
cases, the form of the noun or pronoun is the only way that you can tell who is doing something, to whom it is being done, for
whom it is being done, etc., so it is extremely important to learn these forms!
Before we discuss the Greek forms, it is important to understand how subjects and objects work in general, and we will start by
using English examples. Make sure that you learn any term that appears in bold face. Here are afew everyday English
sentences:
1. He hit me.
2. I hit him.
3. HimI hit!
4. Mehe hit!
5. He hit him.
The pronoun changes form to tell you who is hitting and who is being hit. In every case, "he" or "I" refers to someone who is
doing the hitting, and "him" or "me" refers to someone who is being hit. Sentences 3 and 4 may or may not strike you as weird
unless you grew up in a community where English usage was influenced by German, Yiddish, Norwegian, Swedish, etc., but the
meaning is still clear. (Where I grew up, about half the population was Swedish, but my wife cringes when I say things like this.
Nevertheless, she understands what I mean!)
The point that I'm trying to make is that these pronouns change form to show what function they play. The verb in this sentence
is "hit". This verb has a subjectand an object:
Verb hit
Subject I
Object him
Not all verbs have objects. "Jesus wept" is a complete sentence without an object. A verb which has an object is called
a transitiveverb. A verb which does not have an object is called an intransitiveverb. Some verbs can be used with or without an
object:
- transitive (with an object):I ran the marathon.
- intransitive (without an object):I ran.
There are actually two kinds of objects, direct objectsand indirect objects. Let's illustrate this by analyzing a sentence:
I gave her the book
subject verb indirect object direct object
The subjectanswers the questions "who gave" or "what gave"; the answer is "I gave", so "I" is the subject. In general, for a verb
V, the subject answers the question "who V?" or "what V?".
The direct objectanswers the questions "whom did I give" or "what did I give"; the answer is "I gave the book", so "the book" is
the direct object. In general, for a verb V with subject S, the direct object answers the question "whom did S V?" or "what did S
V?".
The indirect objectanswers the questions "to whom did I give", "for whom did I give", "to what did I give", or "for what did I
give"; the answer is "I gave the book to her", so "her" is the indirect object. In general, for a verb V with subject S, the indirect
object answers the questions "to whom did S V?", "for whom did "S V?", "to what did S V?", or "for what did S V?".
The passive transformis a useful trick you can use to see whether an object of a transitive verb is direct or indirect. If you
change the verb to passive, the subject becomes a direct object, the direct object becomes the subject, and the indirect object
remains an object. Consider these sentences:
Active:
I gave her the book
subject verb indirect object direct object
Passive:
the book was given to her by me
subject verb indirect object direct object
Because "her" remains an object when you change from active to passive, it is an indirect object. "The book" becomes the
subject when the verb is made passive, so it is a direct object.
Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive: subject, direct object, indirect object, owner
In Greek, the subject, direct object, and indirect object are identified by the case of the pronoun, and pronouns change their form
to tell you what case is being used. Let's explore this using a Greek sentence:

How do we know that this says "David called him Lord", and not "He called David Lord"? As a native English speaker, your first
instinct is probably to say that it is the word order, but we can change the word order around without changing the subject of the
sentence:outov cci outo Aouio kuiovwould mean "him called David Lord", which is very questionable English but
perfectly legitimate Greek. By putting "him" at the front of the sentence, the emphasis would be switched to "him", but David is
still the person who calls "him" Lord.
The word order does not tell us who was called Lord; the form of the pronoun does. outovmeans "him", outomeans "he". A
"him" can't be the person who is doing the calling, only a "he" can. Here are the forms thatoutotakes as subject, direct object,
and indirect object:

Why doesn't our sentence mean "David said tohim, Lord"? Because "said to" would require an indirect object, which would
be oute. David didn't say "to him" Lord, he "said him" Lord (direct object). In English, we would say that David "called him"
Lord.
There is one more case. The genitivetells us who owns what. If I say "his house", the word "his" is genitive, and tells me that
the pronoun is being used to tell me who owns the house.
Here are the Greek personal pronouns in all possible cases - there are too many to memorize all at once, so we will learn them
one step at a time:

Now let's explore these cases one at a time.
Pronouns as subjects: nominative
The forms of the pronoun that we learned at the beginning of this lesson are all nominative, which is the form that a pronoun
takes when it serves as the subject of a verb. For instance, here is a verse we have already encountered, John 9:35:

As we have mentioned before, the verb already states that the subject is "you", and does not really need the pronoun; when a
pronoun appears, it emphasizes the subject: "doyoubelieve in the son of man?"
Agreement:The subject of a verb must always "agree" with the verb. A pronoun and a verb are said to "agree" if they have the
same personand number. In other words, if both the pronoun and the verb are talking about "I", they agree; if they are both
talking about "we" they agree; if they are both talking about "you all" they agree; if they are both talking about "she" they agree,
etc. These tables, which we have already seen, show the person and number for the nominative pronouns and for the forms of
the verb |cte:


If a pronoun and a verb agree in both number and person, then they are said to agree; if they agree, they may betalking about
the same person or thing. If the pronoun is first person and the verb is first person, then they agree in person. If the pronoun is
singular and the verb is singular, then they agree in number.
Can you answer these questions?
- Which form of the pronoun agrees with |ctocv?
- Which form of the pronoun agrees with |ctci?
- Which form of the pronoun agrees with |ctctc?
- Which form of the pronoun agrees with |ctouoiv?
- Which form of |cteagrees with ou?
- Which form of |cteagrees with uci?
- Which form of |cteagrees with ce?
- Which form of |cteagrees with outo?
Using the forms we have learned, supply the missing pronoun in these examples:
Acts 2:8

"How is it that we each hear in our own dialect?"
1 Cor 7:12

"Say I, not the Lord". Note that the pronoun can occur before or after the verb. In English, word order is a very important clue to
finding the subject of a verb, but in Greek you can not rely on word order. If a pronoun located near a verb is nominative, and it
agrees with the verb, then it is likely to be the subject of that verb.
But also remember that the pronoun is often not stated. cemeans "I say" even without adding ce; the
phrase ce ceuses the pronoun for emphasis: "Isay".
Col 4:1
Now let's up the ante a little. In the following examples, both the verb and the pronoun are omitted; your job is to supply both:

kaican mean "also" as well as "and".
2 Cor 4:13

James 2:19

Mark 11:33

Note:Translate "do I say" the same way you would translate "I say". I added the word "the" to bring out the nuance of meaning
that it takes in this passage: "neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things." Note that even though the Greek says "in
what authority", we say "by what authority" in English.
John 4:20

Luke 10:24

Matt 27:11

Note: in the New Testament, Jesus is usually called "the Jesus". When we translate into English, we omit "the". We will discuss
this in more depth in a later chapter. For now, ignore that "the".
Pronouns continue in the next lesson...
Pronouns: accusative, dative, genitive
In the last section, we discussed the Greek cases, the use of pronouns, and nominative pronouns. This lesson continues our
discussion of pronouns, focusing on accusative, dative, and genitive.
Pronouns as direct objects: accusative
When pronouns are used as direct objects, they appear in the accusative form. Write the accusative forms from this table on a
piece of paper:

Now let's look at how accusative pronouns are used in various scriptures:
Mark 4:16
Before you translate this, you need to know whether "it" refers to a masculine, feminine, or neuter noun. In this case, they
receive "the word" (o oo), so it is masculine.

Notes:
- We would not translate this "they received him", because in English this would imply receiving a person, and in this
particular text, o oodoes not refer to a person.
- Note that a pronoun used as an object does notneed to agree with the verb. outovis singular and the
verb o|ovouoivis plural, but that is no problem because the verb agrees with the subject, not with any of the
objects. In this case, the subject is "they", and is part of the verb.
John 15:15
When you translate the following, use cefor the verb "to call":

John 5:43

John 16:27

John 21:15

John 21:17

Pronouns as indirect objects: dative
When pronouns are used as indirect objects, they appear in the dative form. Write the dative forms from this table on a piece of
paper:

Now let's look at how dative pronouns are used in various scriptures:
Matt 5:18

Matt 5:26

Matt 13:10

Matt 13:51

Matt 21:19
In this passage, Jesus is talking to a fig tree, which just happens to be a feminine noun. In the English, I have used the word
"her" to remind you to use a feminine pronoun; naturally, a real English translation would call a fig tree "it":

Possessive pronouns: genitive
The other cases all involve the relationship between a pronoun and a verb. The genitive involves the relationship between a
pronoun and a noun or another pronoun - the genitive pronoun indicates the owner of something else. When I want to say that a
book is "her" book, I use the genitive case.
Write the genitive forms from this table on a piece of paper:

Now let's look at how genitive pronouns are used in various scriptures:
Matt 1:18

I use the word "of him" in this word-for-word translation, but a real translation would say "his mother" - "His mother Mary was
engaged to Joseph".
Matt 1:19

Again, "her husband" is a better translation than "the husband of her".
Matt 1:20

Matt 1:21

Matt 2:15

Matt 2:18

Articles and Nouns
We have already defined nouns in a previous lesson, but let's repeat the definition here:
Nounsare words that describe people, places, or things. Here are some English nouns: book, person, chewing-gum, country,
county, city, road, field, justice, peace, language, concept, man, woman, god, programmer, linguist. In the first lesson, we
learned a few Greek nouns:

Articlesare those little words in front of the noun. In English, there are two articles: "the" is the definite article, and "a" is the
indefinite article. Greek has only one article - since there are 24 forms for it, they couldn't afford a second one. The Greek article
is definite, and it is often translated "the", but it functions very differently from the English "the". We will learn how the article
functions and learn how to recognize 8 of the 24 forms in this lesson.
Positionmeans just what the word implies, and refers to the position with respect to the article and a noun. In Greek, the position
of a word can drastically change its meaning, e.g. the word outo, which we have translated "he" in our earlier chapters, can
also mean "even" if it appears in the right position, so it is important to understand how position functions when you translate
some words!
Nouns
A full understanding of Greek nouns requires us to know some Greek nouns. Let's start by learning two sets of very common
Greek nouns. Here is the first set:

When you learn nouns, always learn the form of the article that goes along with it. Nouns may be masculine, feminine, or neuter,
and if you do not know the gender of a noun, you will not know what grammatical forms it will take. These nouns are all
masculine, because they take the masculine article.
Now let's learn a second set of nouns:

rticles and nouns are declined
Articles and nouns both take different forms to show the function that they play in a sentence. We are now going to discuss the
declension of nouns; we introduced essential concepts in the chapter on pronouns, and you will find it difficult to understand this
section if you have not mastered the concepts in that chapter. Make sure that you understand about subjects, direct objects, and
indirect objectsand that you remember how the Greek casesfunction with pronouns before you continue this section.
One of the big differences between Greek and English is that Greek articles and nouns take different forms depending on the
case. In English, we use word order to determine who is doing what to whom, and the form of an article or a noun does not
change when it is used as an object:
The Lord sees the son
Subject verb direct object
There is no way that I can think of to place "the son" first in this sentence without making "the son" the subject. In Greek, the
form of the article and the noun tells whether it is used as a subject, direct object, or indirect object, and word order is less
significant. Take a look at these sentences:
Subject first:

In each of these sentences, the subject is before the verb, and the object is after the verb. Note the following:
- In the English translation, the pronoun is "he" when used as a subject, but "him" when used as an object.
- English nouns do notchange form when they are used as object, only the pronouns do.
- Greek nouns, like Greek pronouns, change form to show whether they are used as subjects or as objects..
- For these nouns, the Greek subjects all have the nominative oending, just like the masculine pronoun does.
- For these nouns, the Greek direct objects all have the accusative ovending, just like the masculine pronoun does.
- Even the article takes the ovwhen used as part of the direct object.
Now let's look at some sentences that have the object first:
Object first:

Note that the word order does not determine which noun is used as the subject. There is no way to translate the last two
sentences into English without changing the word order around, which is unfortunate, because when the object is placed first in a
Greek sentence, it places emphasis on the object, and it is often difficult to convey this emphasis in an English translation.
Declension of the article
Except for four forms, the article is declined exactly like outo, which you learned to decline in the chapter on pronouns. For
comparison, here is the declension of outo:

And here is the declension of the article:

Except for the nominative singular and nominative plural forms, if you remove the oufrom any form of outo, you have the
corresponding form of the article. In fact, this trick works for the neuter nominatives, too. Another thing that will help you
remember these is that the dative forms all have iota or iota subscripts in the endings.
Note that some of the forms of the article are ambiguous. When you run into one of these, make sure that you consider all the
possibilities!
Ambiguous forms of the article
to
- nominative singular neuter (nsn)
- accusative singular neuter (asn)
to
- nominative plural neuter (npn)
- accusative plural neuter (apn)
tou
- genitive singular masculine (gsm)
- genitive singular neuter (gsn)
te
- dative singular masculine (dsm)
- dative singular neuter (dsn)
tev
- genitive plural masculine (gpm)
- genitive plural feminine (gpf)
- genitive plural neuter (gpn)
toi
- dative plural masculine (dpm)
- dative plural neuter (dpn)
The second declension
You have already encountered the Greek word oo, which means "word". Let's look at the forms it takes for the different
cases:

These forms are very similar to the forms that the masculine pronoun outotakes for these same cases. In fact, the masculine
article also takes similar forms:

Except for the nominative forms of the article, these all have the same endings, differing only in accent. Pay careful attention to
the breathing marks for the forms of the article - it will help you pronounce the forms correctly, and in some cases, these
breathing marks are the only thing that will distinguish the article from other common words.
Whenever a noun has an article, the article agrees with the noun in number, gender, and case:
- number: if the noun is singular, the article for that noun will be singular;
- gender: if the noun is masculine, the article for that noun will be masculine;
- case: if the noun is nominative, the article for that noun will be nominative.
When a noun is a subject, it appears in the nominative, and agrees with the verb in number, just as pronouns do:
- number: if the noun is the subject of a verb and the noun is singular, the verb will also be singular.
In the lesson on pronouns, we pointed out that, pronoun subjects also agree with their verbs in person, as in the English example
"we are". Nouns do not have person, so this is not relevant.
Let's practice by filling in the nouns in some verses:
Nominative nouns
Mark 12:9
In this verse, "the Lord" is the subject of the sentence. Add the Greek words for "the Lord" to this sentence and say it out loud.
Remember to use the nominative:

Remember that the subject agrees with the verb. What verb does "the lord" agree with?
Matt 4:4
In the following verse, "the man" stands for people in general. Add in the nominative form for "the man" or "the person":

Even though you do not know the word for "bread" or "alone", you should recognize the case that is being used for these two
words if you look at the ending. Which case is it?
What verb does "the man" agree with?
Matt 4:10
"Jesus" is the subject of this phrase; remember to add "the" as well as "Jesus" to this sentence:

Do you recognize the case of oute? In this sentence, cciis in the present tense, but is used as a historical present. See
the discussion of John 1:29if you have forgotten about the historical present.
1 John 2:14
"The word" is the subject of this sentence. Add the Greek. Where is the verb that agrees with "the word"?

Accusative nouns
Matt 10:21
In the following verse, the word "brother" occurs twice, once as a subject, and once as a direct object:

In English, there is no way to distinguish "brother" used as a subject from "brother" used as a direct object, but in Greek, the
forms of the nouns make it clear that ooc|ois the subject, the one who is betraying, andooc|ovis the direct object, the
one being betrayed. If you do not understand the function of the nominative and accusative cases for these two nouns, the
sentence would be completely unintelligible.
Matt 5:8
Use the accusative case for the following. Will God see them, or will they see God?

Matt 7:28
Remember to use the plural in this one:

Acts 2:32

Col 4:1

Gal 4:22

Dative
In the following examples, fill in the missing nouns, which are dative:
1 Thess 5:27

The gloss "have read" in this verse means that the recipients should have the letter read to the brothers, not that the brothers
have all read the letter. What case would be used for "the brothers" if the verse said that they have all read the letter? (Note: the
form of the verb would also have to change, but you don't know that yet...)
Matt 12:13

Matt 22:44

John 5:26

Genitive
Eph 1:1
In this verse, "Christ", "Jesus", and "God" are all genitive:

John 6:53

Matt 5:10
In this verse, note that the plural is used - "heavens", not "heaven". The article will also need to be plural:

Matt 5:14

Matt 6:26

Matt 7:3

cii, use of the article
This chapter is all about little words like "the", "is", and "this". You might think that this chapter is less important than the others,
but the material presented here is fairly crucial to understanding how Greek thinks. You will learn that the article in Greek
functions quite differently from the article in English, and that the verb "to be" is also used somewhat differently. A precise
understanding of these little words, which occur quite frequently, will help dramatically in your reading skills.
cii
The Greek verb ciimeans "to be", and like the English word "to be", it is one of the most common words in the language. In
an earlier chapter, we showed that both English and Greek words can take different forms depending on who we are talking
about, e.g."he is", "you are", "I am". In the chapter on verbs, we also introduced terms like "first person singular", which means
"I", and "first person plural", which means "we".
Subjects and predicates
In previous chapters on verbs, we have discussed subjects and objects. The verb ciidoes not have an object, it has a
predicate. Compare these sentences:
1. The boy hit a clown.
2. The boy is a clown.
The verb "hit" takes an object; it tells you who the boy hit. The verb "is", like the Greek cii, has a predicate, which tells you
something that is "predicated" about the boy. The predicate makes statements about the boy himself.
Predicates are nominative, just like subjects. Case does not distinguish the subject from the predicate. In general, the article is
used to distinguish them: the subject has the article, and the predicate does not. This is discussed in more depth later in this
chapter, in the section on the use of the article.
Conjugation of cii
The following table shows the present tense forms of eimi, the English equivalents, and the grammatical terms used to describe
them:

Note:in this course, we have not yet said much about accents, but the accent on ciis very important, because it is the only thing
that distinguishes it from the word that means "if". Consider the following sentence:

These are two different words, and both are quite common. The word that means "if" does not take an accent.
Now let's practice these forms using some examples. Supply the missing Greek word:
Matt 4:3

Translation: "if you are the son of God". In English, it is unusual to say "the son you are" rather than "you are the son", but this
is quite common in Greek. Word order frequently needs to be changed when translating.
Matt 8:8

Translation: "Lord, I am not worthy".
Matt 14:27

Romans 6:16

John 8:31

Rev 3:1

Mark 14:69

Matt 28:6

John 9:28

John 9:40

Luke 8:14

John 8:10

Matthew 18:20

Romans 6:15

Romans 8:9

Luke 20:36

Implied cii
To English speakers, the verb ciioften seems to be missing. Consider the following phrase:

This is translated "That Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father". However, there is no word in Greek that
corresponds to the English word "is". The verb ciiis often implied in Greek. In general, if a phrase seems to be missing a verb,
try inserting a form of cii.
Use of the Article
In the last chapter, we learned how to decline the Greek article:

Since learning the declension of articles and nouns is a lot of work, I decided not to go into detail on the meaning of the article in
that chapter. However, since the article accounts for 14% of the words in the Greek New Testament, and conveys a great deal of
meaning, it is worth spending some time now learning precisely how it is used and how it is to be interpreted - especially since
the Greek article is quite different from the English articles. Careful attention to the material in this chapter is important for a good
understanding of the Greek language.
As you work your way through this section, you may be surprised that a little word like the article commands so much attention.
The Greek article is very subtle, and difficult to grasp. As a matter of fact, the Little Greek still hasn't grasped some uses of the
article. However, a good understanding of the basic uses of the article will dramatically improve your ability to read Greek.
the meaning of the article
The Greek article corresponds roughly to the English word "the". A better way to understand the use of the Greek article, though,
is to think of it as equivalent to the gesture of pointing to something. Pointing to something distinguishes it from anything else; in
grammatical terms, it makes the thing you point to "definite". In English, "the" is called the "definite article" because it also makes
the thing it points to "definite", and the Greek article is often best translated with "the", as in these examples:

Oops, one of these examples doesn't work that way. In English, we do not say "the God", we say God, but Greek often uses the
article when referring to God, Jesus, or particular people. If you think of a finger pointing to God when you see the
phrase o oo, that will help you appreciate a shade of meaning that can not easily be translated into English. For instance,
consider this example from John 1:1b, which we saw in the first lesson:

In English, "God" is already definite without the definite article, and we would not say "and the word was with the God". If we
did, we would be implying that there is more than one God, which the Greek does not imply. The original Greek can best be
appreciated by imagining a few gestures:
"and (finger points to) the word was with (finger points to) God".
We have already mentioned that the English word "the" is the definite article. English also has an indefinite article, "a", but Greek
does not have an indefinite article. The Greek article is always definite, and it should not be translated with the indefinite article
"a". In the above example, it would be quite wrong to translate "a word was with God" or "the word was with a God".
nouns without the article
If a noun with an article is always definite, you might think that a noun without an article is always indefinite. This is not true.
Some beginners try to write "a" in front of any noun that does not have the article, and this probably works in the majority of
cases, but is drastically wrong in others. Here are some guidelines you should learn:
1. If a noun is clearly definite in the given context, Greek often omits the article, and in these cases the translation will
generally use the word "the". We saw one example of this in John 1:1:
John 1:1a

This does not mean "in abeginning was the Word", it means "in the beginning was the Word". The writer did not feel
the need to use the article, because he felt it was sufficiently clear that there was only one beginning. Of course, if we
knew that a particular writer believed that there were many beginnings, then we would be justified in translating this as
"a" beginning. The grammar does not clear up every possible misunderstanding unambiguously; if there were doubt
about John's beliefs here, it might be necessary to read more of John's writings to learn his views.
2. The article may be present or absent for abstract nouns like "love", "joy", "peace", etc., but the absence of the article
for these nouns does not cause difficulty for the English speaker, because English behaves the same way. However,
when Greek uses the article with abstract nouns, the English speaker may stumble. Consider this example from
Revelation:
Rev 5:13

In English, we would say "blessing and honor and glory and power", not "the blessing and the honor and the glory and
the power".
3. In Greek, the article is often absent in order to distinguish the subject of a sentence from the predicate. This deserves
a full explanation, and is discussed in the next section.
Articles and predicates
At the start of this course, we read John 1:1, which contains the following phrase:
John 1:1c

The subject normally has the article; the predicate does not. In Greek, as in English, both the subject and the predicate are
nominative, so the cases do not distinguish subject from predicate. Instead, the article is used to identify the subject: the noun
with the article is the subject, the noun without the article is the predicate. In English, the subject comes before the predicate, so
when we translate this we must change the word order:
And the Word was God.
Note that "the Word was God" does not mean the same thing as "God was the Word", so it is important to correctly identify the
subject before translating. In the following verse, "God" has the definite article. You should be able to supply the missing words,
remembering that they occur in the nominative case:
1 John 1:5

This means "for God is light", not "for light is God". Make sure you can answer these questions: What is the subject of this
sentence? What is the predicate? What grammatical feature is used to mark the subject and distinguish it from the predicate?
If both the subject and the predicate have the article, then they are equivalent and interchangable.
Matthew 6:22

In this verse, the Greek states that "the eye" is "the light of the body", and also that and "the light of the body" is "the eye".
Either "light of the body" or "eye" may be the subject of this sentence, and either may function as the predicate.
Consider the following examples - can you explain the translation for each Greek phrase?

Substantive-making power of the article
A substantive is a word or phrase that acts like a noun and has a meaning like that of a noun. In Greek, the article is able to
transform just about any part of speech into a substantive. This is also possible in some phrases in English; e.g. "good" and
"best" are both adjectives, used to describe nouns in phrases like "the good girl" or "the best sandwich"; however, in the proverb
"the good is the enemy of the best", both "good" and "best" are transformed into nouns by the use of the article. Luke 6:45 is a
good example of this in Greek. In English, the verse reads:
Luke 6:45 "The good person, from the good treasure of the heart, brings out the good (i.e. that which is good)"
In the first phrase, "the good person", the word used for good is the adjective oouo:

In the last phrase, "brings out the good", the article is added to the same adjective to make it a substantive:

The substantive-forming powers of the article are easiest to understand with adjectives, but in Greek, just about any word or
phrase can be changed into a substantive. For instance, the phrase ck vooumeans "of law"; in Romans 4:14, an article is
added to this to form a substantive that means "those who are of law", those who base their lives on law rather than grace:

In Matthew 5:15, the phrase cv tq oikiomeans "in the house"; by adding the article, this becomes toi cv tq oikio, "the
(plural) in the house", or "those in the house":

The substantive-making powers of the article also apply to verbs, as in this verse:
Matt 5:28

This means "everyone who looks at a woman". In context, it means "anyone who looks at a woman in order to lust after her,"
and applies only to those who look with that purpose in mind. Note how the verb |cte, "to see", becomes a noun, "one who
sees" or "one who looks at". This is very common in New Testament Greek, and is often used for phrases like "the one who
hears", "the one who asks", etc. When verbs are used this way, they take on special forms which will be discussed much later in
this grammar (participles and verbal nouns). For now, don't be surprised when an article turns a verb into something that looks
and acts a lot like a noun.
The article with cv, oc
cv...ocis often used to contrast different conditions. A good way to understand this construction is to think of a set of
conditions laid out in front of the speaker, with the first condition marked by cvand each of the others marked by oc:
Luke 11:48

In this case, cv...ocis not directly translated, except perhaps with a semicolon: "for they killed them; you build their tombs."
Some beginning grammars suggest that cv...ocbe translated "on the one hand"..."on the other hand", but this is generally a
bad translation.
By adding the article to cv...oc, the two words are transformed into substantives - "the one...the other". For instance, in this
verse, Jesus describes the different yields that may come when seed is planted:
Matt 13:8

One way to understand the force of the article in this sentence is to think of Jesus pointing to the different yields he envisions,
laid out in front of him in his mind as he speaks, first pointing to the one that yields 100, then to the one that yields 60, the the
one that yields 30.
The article as a demonstrative pronoun (with oc)
The Greek article is often used together with octo make a construction that is similar to a pronoun. For instance, this is a
common way to say "but he said", "but they said", or "but she said":
John 4:32

Translation: "but he said to them". The word oc, which often means "but", can never be placed at the start of a phrase in Greek
- it is always the second word in Greek, but is usually the first word in an English translation.
Although this looks a little like the cv...occonstruction we discussed in the previous session, it is actually completely
unrelated. In the previous section, the article was used to make cvand ocinto nominatives; here, the article is used as a
pronoun, pointing back to the person mentioned in the previous verse, and making that person the subject of the current verse.
Knowing this idiom can be very helpful when trying to figure out who is talking to whom - the word ocindicates that the subject of
the sentence is different from the subject of the previous sentence; in many cases, it indicates that the speaker has changed:
Luke 16:5

Translation: "How much do you owe my master? He said: one hundred measures of oil. He said to him: take your bills, sit down
quickly, and write fifty". The first speaker, the servant, asks the second how much he owes his master; in the next
sentence, o ocindicates a new speaker, so it is the second speaker, the debtor, who says "one hundred measures of oil". The
next sentence starts witho oc, so the speaker has changed once more, and it is the first speaker, the servant, who tells the
debtor to sit down quickly and write fifty.
The word ocindicates a change in speaker, it does not really mean "but".
Position
"Position" refers to the placement of the article in phrases that contain adjectives or other words that can be used to modify the
noun. The placement of the article affects the meaning of these phrases significantly. Compare, for instance, these two phrases:

Translation: "the good person".

Translation: "the person is good".
What is the difference between these two phrases? In the one phrase, the article appears before the adjective; in the other, it
appears before the noun, but not before the adjective.
Attributive position
When the article appears just before the adjective, it is treated as a true adjective. This is called attributive position, because
the adjective describes the attributes of the noun. There are two variations on attributive position. We have already seen the first:

In this position, the adjective receives greater emphasis than the noun.
The second position repeats the article after the noun:

In this position, the emphasis is on the noun rather than the adjective. In English, both of these phrases should be translated "the
good person".
The Lord's Prayer contains another good example of this in Matthew 6:9:

In this prayer, we pray to "Our in-the-heavens Father", which might be also be translated "our heavenly Father". The traditional
rendering, "our Father, who art in heaven", is also a good translation.
Predicative position
In predicative position, the article appears before the noun, but not before the adjective. In this position, the adjective "predicates"
something about the noun. There are two variations on predicative position:


Articles and genitive substantives
When genitive nouns or pronouns are used to modify a noun, the most common construction has the genitive article and noun
following the noun that is modified, as in the first four words of this verse:
Matthew 6:22

This construction is used in many familiar phrases in the Bible, e.g:
Matthew 5:10

Matt 5:13

Matt 5:14

All of these examples use genitive nouns, but genitive pronouns may also be used in this way:

In most cases, either both nouns will have the article or both nouns will appear without the article. Here is the same phrase with
and without the article, taken from two different papyrii readings for the same verse:
Matt 3:16


The genitive noun can also appear between the article and the noun that is being modified. The following is taken from 1 Peter
4:14, where it occurs as part of a more complicated construction:

The correct translation is: "the spirit of God". Here is a similar phrase from 2 Timothy 3:17:
2 Tim 3:17

The correct translation is: "the person who is of God". Here is one more example from John:
John 6:51

Translation: "for the sake of the life of the world". Note that the noun that is modified by the genitive does not always appear in
the nominative - it can appear in any case.
This construction can also occur with a genitive pronoun instead of a genitive noun:
1 Thess 3:7

Translation: "through the faith of you"="through your faith".
In this construction, the neuter plural article can be used without any noun to mean "the things of":
Matt 22:21

In the above verse, tois not associated with any noun; it means "the things of", as in "the things of God". Translation: "give that
which is God's to God". This same use of the neuter plural is used in phrases like "the things of man", "the things of the world",
"the things of my Father", etc.
The article of the modified noun may be repeated, and followed by the genitive article and noun:
Acts 11:23

The difference between this phrase and tqv _oiv tou ucou(without the repeated tqv) is subtle. In the translation given
above, I translated it with (point) to indicate the pointing nature of the article. To translate this into English, I might say "the
grace, namely (the grace) of God", or "the grace that is of God".
Here is another example:
1 Cor 1:18

For our last example, let's return to a phrase in 1 Peter 4:14 that we simplified in an earlier example. This relatively complicated
phrase nicely illustrates the subtlety of the Greek article:
1 Peter 4:14

Pretty scary, eh? Let's take this one piece at a time. The first tois neuter singular, so it must agree with a neuter singular noun;
the only one available is tvcuo, at the end of the phrase. So far, we have "the.....spirit". The two genitives tell us that this is
the spirit of glory and the spirit of God. The second toalso agrees with tvcuo. If the phrase said
merely to tou ucou tvcuo, we would translate it "the Spirit of God"; if it said merelyto tqo ooq tvcuo, we would
translate it "the Spirit of glory"; however, the two occurences of toboth refer to the same noun, so the two phrases describe the
same Spirit, namely "the of-Glory and of-God Spirit".