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

Today we're going to talk about just a broad overview. Why are we doing this? Why are we going to be studying the Greek language for nine weeks? We'll talk about the history of the Greek language. And just because we're learning about Greek doesn't mean that we get to escape English grammar as well. I'm not going to be making assumptions about what people are bringing to the table in that regard. So in order to understand Greek grammar, we need to make sure that we understand English grammar. We'll be going over those at the same time. So let's start out with our objectives, motivations. Why are we doing this?

So what you all should expect After having gone through nine weeks of Greek here at Holly Hills, it's not that you can whip open the inner linear Bible in front of you and make really deep observations. We're going to be going through a high level survey of the Greek language.

But you should be able to come out with a few things. So first, an understanding of the breadth of the Greek language and what it can bring. a familiarity with the concepts in the Greek language that are different from English, and you should be able to have a solid appreciation when somebody is presenting insights that are based upon the Greek language.

You'll understand what they're talking about. And maybe one or two of you will be excited enough by this process that you'll want to go and take a more in-depth Greek class. In this class, Kaylee, Tristan, Crystal, Morgan have all been through the equivalent of a four-term Greek seminary class. I see that younger Petermens have not shown up yet, but they've been through the course as well. So that's what you should expect in terms of Greek concepts.

We will also be going deep into English grammar and everybody's favorite from junior high school, sentence diagramming. And I will walk through why we would want each one of these things and what sort of insights we can glean. So why would we do this?

Vern introduced the steps for how to study the Bible last week. We start with observation. Based upon the observations that we're making, we can then have an interpretation. There is exactly one, because God intended scripture to mean one thing. But it may apply in many areas of our lives. And then we appropriate it for ourselves.

Scripture was written in a time that had a culture using a language. And so all three of those elements are critical to understanding the scripture as it's written. It was written to people who understood the culture of the day using a language that made sense to themselves.

And I think that one thing that's super exciting about Greek in particular, as we'll discover, it's a great language for clarity. It doesn't leave a lot of ambiguity. And so being able to appreciate the language as God God took the New Testament, threw it into a language that made it extremely clear for understanding, and then spread it across the world. And so it's great to be able to go back and look at it in that language.

Okay, so Greek versus English. Greek has more verb tenses than English, almost two times the number of verb tenses. So we've got past, we've got present, we've got future, but we don't have this thing called aorist. We don't know anything about an aorist tense. Greek does. And so it's helpful to be able to understand what's being expressed in an aorist tense because there's not a direct translation over into English. Word order in Greek is really interesting. In English, typically, word order matters. There's a big difference between John hit the ball and the ball hit John. Those are different things. John would be happy in the first case, unhappy in the second case. In Greek, it's possible, because of the way that nouns decline, to mark up those words to say, this is the subject. and this is the direct object and so you can mix the words around however you want. What the Greeks did was exactly that.

And then quite often they would take the most important thing in that sentence and they'd throw it up front because that's where you want to talk about the most important thing. And so having those insights can tell us what is being emphasized within scripture.

Greek can pack an entire sentence into a single verb. And when we go over verbs, you'll see that. So you've got subject and you've got the verb all together in one place. So when, in the Greek, they use an explicit subject and the verb together, it means something. It's there for emphasis. And the nice thing about Greek is the pieces parts match up.

So when I told you about how you can mark up the language to say that this is the direct object, and this is the subject of the sentence, you can mark up the adjectives as well in the same manner. And so you know, no matter where they are in the sentence, this adjective is describing this subject, not that direct object. And we'll go through examples so you can appreciate how exciting that is, because it's super interesting.

Let me give you a few examples. And for those who were here earlier, you already heard this warning. If you are the sort that likes to do crossword puzzles by flipping to the back of the book continuously and looking up the answers, and then going back and writing the answers into the crossword puzzle, absolutely follow along with your handouts, because the answers are all there. If you would prefer to have a challenge and be engaged, my recommendation would be to have your focus up here, because there are a lot of spoilers in the handout, so you can look at those later.

So, let's start super simply. Why learn Greek? So, Ephesians 2.8 says, For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

And the question which has spawned entire denominations is, what is it? It is the gift of God. Start looking around in the sentence, and you say, maybe it is grace. Grace is the gift of God. And some others might say, faith. Faith is the gift of God. They might say, oh, well, you have to be given this gift. And without the gift of faith, then you can't believe. And so we've got this whole branch that's focused on, ah, God just makes it happen. We're powerless to believe, not believe. And we just sort of magically get this wand waved, and then we become believers.

Which is it? Trick question. It's neither. So let me give you some insight. If I were to say, Crystal went to the store and he got some bread, you'd be confused. Who's this he? He doesn't match Crystal. We have the same concept in Greek, but we pick up an extra one so that they have masculine, feminine, and neuter. And yes, the pronoun, he, or in this case, it, has to actually match up to the noun.

Well, what we've got is number one, interesting, there is no it in the verse. So that's not there, it's implied. And so it really reads, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, the gift of God. So the pronoun that we've got in this is that. So the question now is, same question, what does that line up to? Is that grace, or is it faith?

And the answer is, it can't possibly be either one of them. because that is neuter. Grace and faith are both feminine nouns. You absolutely cannot match these guys up. Those who say faith is the gift of God, they're matching up where there's no match. So the gift of God is neither faith nor grace. That's interesting. So what is it? You have to have more context, so let's go back a verse.

So that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Well it turns out surpassing riches, singular neuter, which matches our that. And so let me read the richness that comes out of this, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And those surpassing riches are not of yourselves. They are the gift of God. It's awesome, right? Fantastic. And we don't have to have a magic wand waved over us to believe. We get these surpassing riches. That's awesome.

I'll give you another example. So, Romans 7, 8, and 9, you'll see sin mentioned here three times. When I read through it, we know that sometimes sin means just the principle of sin, the concept of sin. We know that sometimes sin refers to our sin nature. Which is it? But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. Is that sin nature? Is that the principle of sin?

Trick question again. It's both. So the markup here shows where there's a definite article in the Greek and where there's not. So what I have done here, if the words are in the Greek but not in the New Testament, not in the NASB, then I've marked them in brackets. If it's a smaller prompt, then the word just isn't even there in the Greek.

So you've got but the sin, i.e. the sin nature, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from law, not the law, principle of law, not the mosaic law, sin, the principle of sin, is dead. I was once alive apart from the principle of law. But when the commandment came in, the sin nature became alive and I died. It's more clear. We understand what's going on. That's why I learned Greek. Next one. Why learn English? Why would we care about English grammar?

So here I've got James 1.21, both from the NASD and from the King James, and they're saying vastly different things. It's important to realize this.

So 1.21 in NASD says, therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. In the King James, it says, wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. So I want to point out the subtlety of what's being said here. In the NASB, it is saying, in humility, receive the word implanted. That's what we get to do. Putting aside all filthiness is something that falls out of that. Does that make sense? We do one thing. We receive the word implanted. Putting aside all filthiness is something that falls out of that.

The King James is saying we need to lay apart all filthiness and receive the word engrafted. And ASB is saying one thing, receive the word, everything else falls out of that. King James is saying, number one, receive the word, and number two, lay apart all filthiness. That sounds like we've got more work to do in the King James. The question is, which one is it? Should we get busy laying aside? Is this something that we need to actively do on a day-to-day basis? And if so, how? Because by gum, we better do it, so we better know how to go about it.

But it turns out that putting aside all filthiness is epiphtheminoid, which is a participle. Understanding participles, we can figure out from the way that it's being used how it fits grammatically. And in this particular case, it's a participle that's functioning as an adverb.

Well, that sounds very, very technical, right? You guys will be able to understand this. If you don't today, you will at the end of nine weeks. And the interesting thing about that is an adverb, it modifies a verb. It describes a verb. Which means the NASB is right.

We don't have two things to do. We don't have to go run out and start laying aside all filthiness. Our job is to receive the word. The rest of that falls out. So we get to receive. Why learn a diagram? Because it makes it really clear. What do we have to do? We receive the word. Everything else falls off of that. We don't have two things to do.

Not everybody is visual-spatial. I am one of those people. I tend to think in concepts. For those people who are visual-spatial, who understand the world around them in pictures, sentence diagramming can be a very valuable tool, because it does make it really clear. We do the stuff on the top. The rest of it is descriptive. That make sense? Are you excited about learning some of this stuff?

Some things that might get in your way. As we go through this process of learning Greek concepts, of learning English, of learning sentence diagramming, various things can happen. A number of the points are technical. And so you can start thinking, oh, you know, I didn't end up with a doctorate in college, and this stuff seems kind of complicated. I don't know if I can actually learn the material. It's just too hard.

I've taught the full Greek class twice now. We spend a year and a half going through to be able to get to the point where we can sentence Diagram in the New Testament and the original Greek. To date, the best student in either of those two classes has been a 12-year-old girl, probably because she came in assuming she could learn the material. Another common problem is that the notion of looking into the Greek, oh, I now have this special knowledge, I've got extra abilities, I'm now becoming sort of a superhero, I'm not made of adamantium, but I know Greek.

And so you can start to puff up a little bit and think, I've got the inside track. Nonsense. Another one is you can end up focusing on the Greek and the intricacies of the language and miss the person of Christ. You exchange the life for academia. That's a common problem in seminaries across the world. It's all nonsense. Let me tell you about some of the resources we've got available.

1. First and foremost, we have the mind of Christ. Paul promises us this. We have the mind of Christ. We have the Holy Spirit of God whose job is to reveal Christ to us. Who can know the mind of God but the Spirit of God who dwells in us? We have our elders.

I go to Vernon myself for Greek insights. He set me straight on a concept just last month, which was great. Me, I've taught a few times. I'm happy to engage and help you if you're having problems with some of the concepts. Each other, like I said, there are others in this class who have gone through the material before. The vastness of the internet, it turns out that Google is smart often. And so you can just ask the Google, and the Google will tell you. So that's it.

Teaching style. What I do. I provide a lot of detail. We are going to go into a lot of nitty gritty so that you guys can understand the full spectrum of what the Greek language brings to the table. This morning, I'm speaking relatively slowly. We can hope that that happens. As I get more excited, I start to talk a lot faster. So I'm going to provide you with a lot of information. I'm going to do it really fast.

So you have two countermeasures against this. Number one, don't sweat the details. Remember, you're taking a survey class. You're trying to understand and appreciate the concepts so that you can apply them later. There's always time for further research and understanding. Don't sweat the details. You're like, oh, my gosh, I don't understand what the ingress of blah, blah, blah means. Don't worry about it. Next one, interrupting with questions. So I do speak quickly. I can get into a monologue. I'd rather engage in a conversation. So if you guys have questions as I'm going through the material, stop me, please.

Those are your countermeasures. You will get out of the next nine weeks what you put into the next nine weeks and that's not a threat. That is, honestly, I think that for some of you, you're going to be perfectly content understanding some concepts, getting a little bit of familiarity with things so that when you see terms later, you're like, I'm not quite sure what that is, but I remember hearing about that. I know it's not so daunting.

There's value in that. If you want to be able to study Greek using some of the helps that are out there, then you're going to actually want to do the homework. So what you put into the class is what you'll get out of it. So gauge what you want out of the class, and then set what you're going to put into it accordingly. I will say that for things like learning the alphabet, you will derive far more benefit from putting 15 minutes every day in than you will from jumping in with two hours on a Saturday. because it just sort of needs to get into the way that you start thinking about things. Do they have a software for their own agency stuff? Do they have an agency stuff? I've run across one. You have? Yeah, but I cannot remember where. I have never leveraged one, but if somebody would like to use the Google and find such a critter, I bet the Google would tell you of one. The YouTube might also tell you of one. All right.

Language evolution. Let's talk about how we got to this point. So the Greek language was around for a long, long, long time before the New Testament was ever written. There were a lot of different dialects. And one dialect may not necessarily be recognizable by folks who understand a different dialect, and they evolved over time. So as you can see, there were four main dialects through history.

You don't actually need to know very much about this, except Ionic is what we've got for, in particular, Homer, Iliad, and the Odyssey. I think second to the Bible is the one that we've got the most copies of from that era. By the way, it's like orders of magnitude fewer copies.

That was written in Ionic Greek. Attic Greek is the Greek of the academics. It was popular right about 400 BC, and it was complicated. I mean complicated. So Socrates, Plato, those guys were writing their stuff using Attic Greek. And it was involved. So if you hear classical Greek, I've worked with somebody who had his college degree in classical languages, Greek and Latin, so he would have learned Attic Greek. So Attic Greek is different from New Testament Greek, which is called Koinic Greek.

So you should have in your handout, and it's totally OK to jump there right now, You should have in your handout a map that shows the conquest of Alexander the Great. The big takeaway from that is he was everywhere. So he started up in Europe and Macedonia, around where modern day Greece is, and came down around into Egypt. From Egypt he went all the way over into India before he came back. He managed to conquer the entire Persian empire along the way. So he just amassed this huge amount of land.

Well, the cool thing that he did, the Babylonians, and we will go into this in more detail in probably about three months when we talk about what happened between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but the Babylonians, what they would do when they conquered a people is just pluck them out of where they were and bring them back to the mother ship.

What Alexander the Great did when he conquered was he left them there, and while some of the cities he would just go and wipe out the military-aged men, other cities he would give an option. And the option sort of looked like, hey, would you like to come and join my army and fight with me, or would you like to have a really unpleasant death? And it turns out a lot of people presented with these options would say, I would love to fight for you. I'm going to go do that now.

But as he's conquering through all these different regions, they speak different languages. That's a problem. And so he needs a common language that's going to go across all of the people under his control. And another interesting thing is For people who have learned English as a second language, you understand their vocabulary is not tremendous. They've learned enough English to be able to get by within the culture. Kaylee has a friend named Ganga who struggles in English, but he can communicate.

And all verbs are have to. So noun, noun, noun, have to. And you kind of piece together. Well, when you have all of these military people who are all trying to learn a language, you have to simplify the language. You're not going to teach them a very complicated, intellectual, academic language that Socrates and Plato used. So the language got dumbed down. It got simpler. It became common. It's koine Greek. Koine is Greek for common. So we've got a simpler Greek, and now we spread that language across this huge area that you see on your map.

How amazing that God used a warrior who probably did not know him to centralize on a language, establish pathways across a gigantic region, Write his scripture using that language and spread it across. God uses all things. Fun facts about Alexander and I apologize for the bilge. He was tutored by Aristotle, so he certainly understood Attic Greek. It wasn't because he didn't get it that he didn't spread it to everybody. He played a mean lyre, so he was a musician. A good portion of my family is following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. Waged his first battle at 16, and he had conquered the entire Persian empire by the age of 32. Incredible military strategist.

Died young of illness or poison, we don't know which. What we know is he got sick, he was feverish, died over about a two-week period. Poison assassination was very common at the time. It's quite possible that he was poisoned. There's debate because it was such a slow-acting poison, if it was. Another popular view is that what he actually died of was malaria. I think people appreciate the irony of having a great warrior who's conquered all of this taken out by a mosquito. We don't know. We know he died. He's no longer with us.

When he died, though, interesting, he gave no thought whatsoever to succession. It wasn't about building a kingdom that was going to last. For him, it was all about conquest. So when he died, he had a bunch of generals that were then saying, OK, now who picks up the mantle? And his answer is, the strongest. So it turns out there was some battle and warfare and splitting up the kingdom, and it really didn't last. He named 20 of the conquered cities Alexandria, so he was not a humble man. He named other ones after his horse, a bunch of cities after his parents. So he really was conquest-focused, and it's all about me, me, me. And God still used that to spread his word. manage to cover all of that.

Common Greek. What's easier about it than Attic Greek? Subtlety fell out of favor. Everything became more explicit. We have a lot of euphemisms in English. We try to say things subtly sometimes so as not to upset people. same was true in Attic, less so in Koine Greek. In Attic, it's possible, just by changing the spelling on individual nouns, to say how they're being used. So by changing the spelling on a noun, you can say, in this thing, or from this thing. And so that was the common way. By the time we got to Koine Greek, people had explicit words for those things. because it was too complicated to keep track of all of this other stuff. Vocabulary, like I said, shrank. Makes sense. You're teaching a bunch of military people a common language. They're not going to be burning all the academia. Sentences became shorter. And interesting, the dual drops out.

So in English, we have singular, I. We have plural, we. Well, in Attic Greek, they had another one, which was dual, which is two. So you could talk about one person, you could talk about two people, or you could talk about lots of people. Well, when you start to think through all of the different permutations that you use those words in, he just cut out literally hundreds of things that you have to memorize just by lopping off the dual. So yay, simplification. Good job, Alexander.

Around about 250 BC, because Alexander had come through especially Egypt and conquered, and they were now speaking Greek, the Jews in that region were losing touch with their mother tongue. And so some of them were now starting to speak Greek as a primary language. So they needed their scriptures in Greek.

And so a translation was commissioned at the time. It's called the Septuagint 70 because there were 70 translators involved in the process. There is a bias toward Greek culture that includes some measure of interpretation in some places, so we still like to go back to the original Hebrew when we're studying, when we can. And the translation itself, interesting, is translation Greek. So the dialect is actually a little bit different.

So fun facts about the Septuagint. So we now, today, we've got a Greek New Testament. We track that way back close to the time of Christ. We've got a Greek Old Testament, which we can track back to about 250 BC. be worth pointing out, often the Septuagint is abbreviated LXX for 70. So if you're reading commentaries or other stuff and you see LXX, that's referring to the Septuagint. Sure. So I will say that so it gets recorded. Jeremy wants future generations to know that the Septuagint is often abbreviated LXX, because we like Roman numerals. So thanks.

Greek versus Hebrew. So what do we get out of Greek? Hebrew is a very pictorial language. Concepts of time and relationship, pretty fuzzy. When you look at descriptions, you don't look at them literally, you look at them for what they would mean. So we're going through Revelations in a Bible study on Thursday nights. You start looking at the descriptions of Christ as he's coming, and he's got this long sword tongue and all sorts of crazy stuff. They're talking about what it means. not about what he's physically going to look like.

Greek? Very concrete. Tenses allow greater precision when talking about time and type of action. Nouns decline and adjectives decline. Meaning, you know how we change verbs as we change use of that verb. So we'll change the spelling to talk about future or past tense. We'll change the spelling, we'll conjugate it for each one of the different persons.

In Greek, you end up doing the exact same thing for nouns. So you can match them up and you can see precisely how they're being used. When we get to the verbs, I'll remind you guys of this, but something that is very exciting for musicians is that in Greek, you indicate the way that a word is being used by changing the ending. So if you want it to be a direct object, that's going to have a very specific ending. for those without a ton of English grammar experience, direct object just means the thing that's probably sitting at the very end of the sentence. Okay, so the thing that's sitting at the very end of the sentence has the same ending, which means if I wanted to be a Greek hip-hop artist, It would be very simple, because pretty much every sentence I'm coming up with is rhyming as I'm going.

So, pretty cool. Alphabet. Let's see how we're doing on time. Why would we bother to learn the alphabet even though we're only understanding the concepts of Greek? Two stories. Two reasons. One is story. Reason number one, if you are studying and you're looking in the Greek and you find the word Anthropos, and you don't know what Anthropos means, and you would like to look it up in a dictionary, you're going to struggle if you don't know the alphabet. So just being able to look up words you need to understand the alphabet in order so that you can actually alphabetically look it up in the dictionary. Another reason why you would want to know the alphabet, and this goes back to a story when I was traveling in Moscow in 2006. Russian is a Cyrillic language, so the letters don't make a lot of sense in a lot of cases.

And I was traveling about on the subway. I needed to be able to get back to my hotel at night. So those were the constraints. I need to get back to my hotel at night. Which is going to be easier for me to remember? Funny, crazy symbols that don't quite make sense. That's my stop. Smolienka. I need to stop at Smolienka.

So simply being able to pronounce a word means I can now remember the word, and so it's mine. So understanding the alphabet will allow you to be able to pronounce the words that you're seeing, and if you pronounce the words that you're seeing, now you can talk to one another about it, and you can also remember. So that's why we would care about the alphabet, even though we're only talking concepts in this class.

Just running through them really quickly so you guys can hear how it's said. Alpha, Theta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta. So that's kind of d-zeta. And you can see words that are telling you how to pronounce these things. It would be useful to walk through this this week and try saying these things out loud. Said differently and perhaps with more motivation, Next week, when we're together, we will be walking through at this level and saying, together, Alpha, Theta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, and you can join in.

It'll be fun. We'll follow the bouncing ball. So, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Moon, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, which is complicated for those of us with math backgrounds, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Ki, Xi, also complicated for those of us with math backgrounds, and Omega. Really quick, immediate insight.

When we know that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, how is this alphabet put together? Alpha is the first, Omega is the last. When we say that that store's got everything from A to Z, they've got the whole kit and caboodle. When Christ says, I'm the Alpha and the Omega, here's the whole kit and caboodle right there. We're actually doing great, I'm proud.

OK, so let's talk English. Subjects and predicates. And we're going to start really simple. So we're going to start, sentences only have two things, as far as we're concerned. They have subjects, and they have predicates. That's it. Subject is who or what the sentence is about. The thing that is doing the action. That's the subject. Predicate, what they're doing.

There's a song, you guys can go to YouTube, it's an appropriate song, and look for The Tale of Mr. Morton. Specifically the one by Stilo, I think is good. But the tale of Mr. Morton was part of the Schoolhouse Rocks, for those of you who are old enough to remember that. And the main chorus is, Mr. Morton is the subject of my sentence, and what the predicate says he does. Great song to sort of reinforce it. So, the subject of my sentence? who this thing's about, predicate what they're doing.

And so here are examples. I'm so disappointed young Evelyn is not here, because here are some examples. So we have the red panda. So that's our subject. Now what did they do? The red panda licked Evie. So that's what the red panda did. Next sentence. Evie is our subject. What did Evie do? She licked the red panda. Do you see how word order matters sometimes in English? Those are different things. One is kind of cute, and the other one's kind of gross. Next one. Evie ran away. Makes sense. Red pandas are licking her. Away ran Evie.

Oh, that's interesting. Word order doesn't always matter in English. So our language is a little bit complicated, too. Anyway, so in the second two, EV is our subject, even though EV is not at the front. Does that make sense? OK. Now, how are we going to diagram this mess? So, diagramming this little bit is a piece of cake. We'll add all sorts of complications along as we go. Start with a baseline.

So you've just got a line that you're going to put all your words on top of. Then you're going to put a subject. You're going to put whatever the subject is doing, and just draw a line between them. On one side is your subject, and on the other side is your predicate. That's all we're going to worry about this week. So, concrete examples.

The red panda licked Evie. You see, we've got the red panda. The red panda is over on the subject side. And the predicate side is that licking of Evie over on the other side. Similarly, when Evie licks the red panda, Evie is the subject. Evie is on the subject side. The predicate is lick the red panda. So we're just going to shove all of that over on the other side of the line.

And those last two sentences, where word order turns out not to matter, Evie was the subject in both of those cases. We identify that because Evie's the one who's doing the action. So the sentence diagrams are absolutely identical, despite the sentences looking different. That make sense?

You guys can do this much. Homework should take you roughly five minutes to run through. And with some clever reuse of the text that I've got on that homework sheet, you might even just be able to draw lines and you've diagrammed those sentences. So what would be good for you all to do for next week if you want to start ingesting this?

Memorize and practice writing the alphabet. And folks who have gone through that introductory Greek class They have filled notebooks with writing letters. It's kind of fun. You're learning a new thing. It's a new skill. By writing that alphabet out, you're going to remember it. So just alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha. You'll feel like you're back in elementary school. It'll be great. Without all the awkwardness of being back in elementary school.

And memorize the order and how to say the alphabet. So just go through and practice. If somebody would like to ask the YouTube for an alphabet song for Greek, I would welcome that information. And then diagram just subject and predicate from that sheet on the back of the handout. Should be straightforward. Questions?

I know this isn't on your exact topic, so what about Aramaic? Where does Aramaic fit in to the language mix? So I have not studied Aramaic at all. So I don't know a lot about Aramaic. Vern? A couple of things. Aramaic is in Daniel, part of Daniel and part of Ezra. So that's where it fits in the Old Testament. OK? It was something that the Jews brought back when they came back from Persia. As a major part of their language, or just their own? Yes. As a significant language spoken in Israel.

So in the New Testament, you'll have a number of Aramaic words, or Aramaisms, that is Aramaic expressions, that come across in the Greek. OK? So the place to look for Aramaic is in those parts of the Old Testament, Ezra and Daniel, where part of the book has Aramaic. And then to look at Aramaic coming through the Greek in the New Testament. So those are the places to look for it.

It has different, you know, alphabet and rules and whatnot from Hebrew. So it's a separate language altogether. So if you think about it, Greek, and there's Koine Greek in the New Testament, and Aramaic, and Latin, and Hebrew were all relevant languages during the time of Christ. The Latin was, of course, imported by the Romans coming in. And the Greek that we're studying here left over from the time of Alexander the Great.

The Hebrew, which was ancient, then got pushed aside by many of the Jews with the use of Aramaic. So it had all those four languages involved by the New Testament times. Can I just ask then, when you see something in Aramaic, because I know there's only a few phrases in the New Testament, what is the significance of that?

Just the fact that the people spoke it, or does it have any kind of added significance? Yes, it did. And it takes some digging sometimes to look at that. One of the places it comes through, in the beginning, was the word. That word, word. comes across with an Aramaic significance. As an example.

Will we gain better understanding when we go through the cultural part of this class? That's the part we'll look at. In other words, he's going to focus on Greek, but we'll be looking at some of the background information that will help us understand where to use the other languages and to draw from those. Okay, well, we second Bell in their beginning to cue, so let's pray and bail.

Bob, again, thank you so much for your love and for your foresight in the way that you just use everything so that we can know you better, and I pray that we would be able to focus clearly in on you as we go through this material. Because you're worth it. It's in Jesus name. Amen.