New Testament Greek

9. First Declension Exercises; Lesson 6 Introduction

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Date:  071104G                                               Duration:  1:39:29 

1:1 VEn avrch/| h=n o` lo,goj( kai. o` lo,goj h=n pro.j to.n Qeo,n( kai. Qeo.j h=n o` lo,gojÅ 2 ou-toj h=n evn avrch/| pro.j to.n Qeo,nÅ 3 pa,nta diV auvtou/ evge,neto( kai. cwri.j auvtou/ evge,neto ouvde. e[n( o] ge,gonenÅ 4 evn auvtw/| zwh. h=n( kai. h` zwh. h=n to. fw/j tw/n avnqrw,pwn( 5 kai. to. fw/j evn th/| skoti,a| fai,nei( kai. h` skoti,a auvto. ouv kate,labenÅ

Today we’re going to go through the rest of the exercises of Lesson 5, and then I will introduce Lesson 6.

[ Lesson 5, Exercise numbers 6 and following, both sets ]

Lesson 6, in my humble opinion, is basically two lessons in one.

There should be one lesson just to introduce and practice the forms of the adjectives and the definite article, and use them simply.

Looking through Lesson 6 in our books, beginning with vocabulary and on through §68/67 is enough for one lesson, believe me!

I personally wish the next main heading were a separate chapter in the book, with exercises of its own. Maybe the same for §76/75 also. Or, at least make everything after §68/67 another chapter.

In a sense, the additional concepts after §68/67 are not a that huge an amount of material; it is just the issue of how many different concepts can we work with at one time, and keep track of them all at once. How big a team of horses can we manage? Haven’t I seen pictures of someone holding the reins a how big a team, a separate set of reins for each horse? How do they manage?

So, for this time, we will just deal with the mechanical aspects.

Remember your outline of grammatical terms that I went through?

That was terms for the part of grammar called accidence. And that, speaking of accidence, is what we are dealing with first.

Then, sections 67/66 and 68/67 begin getting into how these forms are used in Greek writing, and that is called syntax. That is also what the rest of the chapter after §68/67 deals with.

So, today I am going to do something I haven’t done before, that I need to this time, because the chapter doesn’t provide it, which is simple exercises on forms for you to do in the coming week.

We will only deal with the accidence, the forms of the words, and a very simple start on how they are used, and just practice those.

Then, next week we’ll go into uses that are characteristically Greek, where usage differs from how these forms are used in English.

In your outline of Greek accidence, on page 6, the substantives are nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives.

A substantive is an word that identifies something.

As we have seen, a noun is either masculine, feminine, or neuter; it is either singular or plural; and it is either nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, or vocative.

Nouns give names to the things they identify.

Pronouns identify by person, gender, and number; however, in first and second person (I, we, you), gender is not differentiated.

Articles identify things only by giving them definiteness, but articles also are specific to both gender and number.

Before I say more about articles, let me talk about adjectives a bit.

Adjectives identify things by describing, rather than naming them.

The name given by a noun certainly connects you with an image in your mind, and that might be considered a description.

But, an adjective narrows the picture, so that a named object is not confused with another object of the same name, but a different description. If you have several markers of different colors, and I ask, “Could I please borrow your marker?” you will not know which one to give me. But if I say, “Could I please borrow your green marker,” there is no mistaking what I am asking.

Now, if you think about it, since the noun itself already has gender, then an adjective is not needed for that purpose.

Don’t worry about special cases like animals, with arbitrary gender, but which might be male or female. Just things in general.

So, since gender is already specified in the noun, then an adjective does not have its own gender. Rather, each adjective has forms for all three genders, so it can match the gender of any object it is describing. To keep it simple, that all I will say for now.

For today’s lesson, I will only cover the use of adjectives that is like we use them in English. There are other uses, but we will come to them next week.

Now, back to the article. The definite article is all the Greek has.

Again, since gender is characteristic of the noun, the article must be able to cover all three genders, the same as the adjective.

Therefore, although the translation of the Greek definite article into English is only the word,“the,” it requires separate forms for all three genders of the substantive.

The upshot of this is that any adjective, or the definite article, must include all three genders in their declensions.

Let’s begin by going through the vocabulary, to see if we recognize any of these words as relating to English words we know.

There is one verb, and two second declension nouns (which means omicron endings), but they are feminine, so the article is hJ.

The verb is, ejgeivrw, and I cannot think of any English connection.

The second declension feminine nouns are e[rhmo", hJ and oJdov", hJ

Now, in referring to the adjectives, we won’t always have to repeat all three gender endings, such as to say, “ajgaqov", -hv, -ovn." We'll just say “ajgaqov",” “a[llo",” and so on.

ajgaqov", the female name Agatha (quality of character, nature)

a[llo", nothing I know of

divkaio", nothing I know of

e[scato", related to the term eschatology, doctrine of last things.

kakov", nothing I know of (bad in outward appearance)

kalov", calligraphy, beautiful writing (good in outward appearance)

kuvrio", not related to the English word “curious”!

mikrov", micro anything: microscope, microphone, micrometer

nekrov", necromancy, necropolis (sort of cemetery)

pistov", no English word connection I know of

prw'to", protoplasm, protozoa (first life)

The book starts with ajgaqov".

Notice two things: the accent is on the ultima, so it has to follow the usual ultima accent rule for substantives, A-C-C-A; and, for the feminine forms, the endings in the singular all use the h.

The book tells us to learn the paradigms across, not down. I do not see it as that important. Personally, I find it easier to learn them the same way as I learn nouns, one gender at a time.

The main thing is to be able to write out the paradigms correctly.

If you want to go straight across the nominative in all genders, both singular and plural, before you go to the dative, that's okay. Do it however it works best for you.

Or, you might learn all three genders at one time for each case, but going down through the singular before going to the plural. So, just do what works best for you.

The next adjective in the book is mikrov", which simply tells us that, if the last character of the stem is either r or a vowel, endings of the feminine singular forms are in a, which is long, instead of h.

Since this example is still accented on the ultima, there's nothing to add concerning accent. The ultima accent rule applies.

Now, I want to add another example, because the chapter does not give us an example of an adjective accented on the antepenult.

This will apply to both divkaio" and e[scato" in our vocabulary.

They do give the paradigm in the back of the book, page 294/231, paradigm 611/570. It just should have been in the chapter.

This is important, because it shows what §77/62b is talking about.

In other words, the feminine genitive plural does not follow the rule for feminine nouns, of a circumflex on the ultima, but goes with the usual rule of staying on the same syllable as the nominative singular, as far as the general rules of accent permit.

Likewise, this applies to adjectives accented on the penult, whether the penult is long, as in prw'to", or short, as in a[llo".

So, for homework, you should write out the full declension of each of the adjectives in the vocabulary.

I will also be giving you some other exercises, not in the book; but, before we do that, we need to cover the definite article.

The paradigm is §64/63, and how you choose to memorize it is up to you. You can see there are forms that are duplicated, but, in context, they will not be confusing. Just so you can use them in your English to Greek exercises, including the ones I give you.

[ Go over §65/64 to 68/67 ]

Note the first sentence of §67/66: “Adjectives, including the article” indicates that the article is actually a form of adjective. Its usage is not strictly descriptive, but only the specifying of definiteness; but in that capacity, it really is a kind of adjective.

Now, are there any questions at all about forms of the adjectives as well as the definite article?

[ Go over several exercise examples, both for Greek to English and English to Greek ]