Unlike most classes in seminary there is no “off” week in Greek. Everything builds upon the prior week and the pace of the class is very quick. One topic this week is the prepositional phrase. Like most topics this requires understanding the English so that a student can understand the Greek.

School House Rock never disappoints:

Here is the lyric which says it all:

Nine or ten of them
Do most all of the work
Of, on, to, with, in, from
By, for, at, over, across
And many others do their jobs,
Which is simply to connect
Their noun or pronoun object
To some other word in the sentence.

The prepositional phrase contains the preposition and the object of the preposition (a noun or pronoun).

into the house

This phrase contains the preposition “into” and “house” functions as the object of the preposition.

In Greek this would be:

εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν

There are two keys to the Greek preposition:

• the meaning of the preposition depends on the case of the prepositional object
• the preposition is not inflected

In the phrase above the word for house (οἰκία) is in the accusative case and the preposition (εἰς) means in, into with the accusative case. Actually in this case the preposition only takes an accusative case.

A more interesting example would be using a preposition that takes different cases.

παρά τὴν οἰκίαν

Here the preposition (παρά) with a noun in the accusative case means “alongside the house”.

However if it was written like this (with house in the genitive case)

παρά τὴς οἰκίας

it means “from the house”. Notice that in these last two examples the prepositional object (house) changed cases but the preposition did not. However, how the preposition was translated depended on the case of the noun.

This worksheet can be used to practice learning the pronouns (at least those covered in BBG2 chapters 1-8).

Note: if you don’t have NA27 yet there is a good deal at CBD (only $19.99)

This semester I am starting to learn Koine Greek. As we progress through the class I will add an entry on what we have learned and upload practice sheets to share with anyone interested. If you already know Greek and have a tip to share or see something wrong let me know in the comments section.

The Greek language has a long history and has undergone variations over time. The Bible (as well as the LXX and the patristic writings) was written in κοινέ Greek (common), which was derived from the Attic-Ionic dialect made popular world-wide through the conquests of Alexander the Great. This form of the language was in use from approximately 300 BC to 300 AD.

I am using the 2nd edition of Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar. In class we have moved through the first 7 chapters in three weeks. The focus has been on the alphabet – because you can’t do much without that – and the definite article (24 ways to say “the”) and the cases for nouns.

Here is a link to a chart on the Greek alphabet (with pronunciation helps).

Since Greek is an inflected language, word order in the sentence does not matter. What matters are the endings of the word. So we have spent a lot of time working on recognizing these endings. For the non-grammar people like me another important thing to remember is that there are 4 cases for nouns and what they mean in the sentence structure.

Here is a sample sentence in English that uses the four cases:

He sent Paul’s message to them.

The four cases of the noun are as follows:

• nominative – the subject of the sentence (He)
• genitive – used to show possession. The key word is “of”. (Paul)
• dative – the indirect object of the sentence. The key word is “to”. (them)
• accusative – the direct object of the sentence (message)

and here is that sentence (I think) in Greek (minus the verb, which we have not covered yet):

ὁ αὐτός  (sent) τὸν λόγον τοῦ Παῦλου τοῖς αὐτοις

and here is that sentence in a different word order (this time emphasizing the message rather than the sender  since this word appears at the front):

τὸν λόγον τοῦ Παῦλου ὁ αὐτός  (sent) τοῖς αὐτοις

There are two charts which I have created to practice what we have covered in class so far – learning the noun endings and the definite article.

• The Noun endings and the Definite Article (empty charts)
• Practice Chart for declining the Greek words (λόγος, γραφή, and ἔργον)

If you want to type Greek characters a free Greek font is available for download from the Society of Biblical Literature and instructions on how to setup and type in Greek using the keyboard is available here.