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

So we're on to week two. Didn't scare you guys away with week one. We should finish a little bit early today, which is good. I've brought in a number of Greek books that you guys might find useful, so we can leverage some of that time at the end. You can come up and glance through what we've got available for you up here.

In terms of today, we're going to go through the alphabet again. We're going to remind ourselves why we care about the alphabet and pronunciation. And we're going to talk about tools. And so I'll show you a few electronic tools that I use and talk through some of the tools that we've got up here. And then English.

I said I wasn't going to assume that We all knew English, and so we're going to start going in to sum up the basics of English grammar so that we can understand the Greek grammar a little bit better. But why don't you guys tell me, why are we learning alphabet and pronunciation and English verbs and adjectives and all of this sort of stuff? What's our purpose here? Are you familiar with the Greek? To get familiar with the Greek, okay, and why do we want to get familiar with the Greek? So we can learn what the Greek actually says and what the original author was actually saying in the Greek. Because the Greek is a different language than English. So we're learning the Greek so that we can understand scripture in the original language, still with Jan. To that point, Why do we want to understand scripture?

It clarifies things more. It makes things more clear so we don't misinterpret things that don't misinterpret. Right. Yep, we get more clarity on what's going on in scripture. We get a richer understanding of it. But why would we bother with scripture in the first place? Glenn? I think it helps us understand God more. Helps us understand God more.

The end goal of this, and it's really easy to get lost, I'll be reminding you guys regularly, it's really easy to get lost when you're focused on sentence diagramming and this is a participle that's functioning as an adjective or an adverb. to lose sight of the fact that what we're trying to do is put more tools in our tool bag so that we can understand scripture better, so that we can know our Lord, so that we build a relationship with the creator of the universe.

So yes, we're learning grammar. Yes, we're learning sentence diagramming. We're doing it so that we can have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we're here. At least I hope that's why we're here. So, Alphabet. Let's get busy with that.

Who noticed the very intentional test that I gave you last week with Alphabet in your notes? I know you did. A couple people. So as you were going through your notes, you might have noticed that I dragged slides into that Word document out of order. So you guys have a magical alphabet last week that is slightly out of order. It's not intentional. Google does wonders. Right? The Google is smart. You just have to be a little discerning about what the Google returns sometimes. And be careful about how you search, and always keep SafeSearch on. All right.

So we are going to do this as though we are doing wedding vows. I think that's going to be the easiest thing. So for those of you who have lots of experience or can't, this is a repeat-after-me song. So say what I say. Say what I say. And do what I do. And do what I do. All right.

So alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta. Eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu. Eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu. nu xy omicron p rho sigma. nu xy omicron p rho sigma. So the second letter can be somewhat problematic to say for those of us who are English speaking.

The easiest way to think of it is you are on a cruise. And you don't do really well on a cruise. And ooh, ick. See so it's exceed is how that's pronounced. So there you go Tau Oop salon fee key see Omega You guys have the alphabet. And you'll notice this second to last slide, we have some links. Nancy did track down some Greek alphabet songs for us. So yay, you can try those out when you're at home. Pronunciation.

Why would we care about pronunciation? I understand why we need to learn the alphabet, because I find a word, this funny looking thing, and I want to know what it means. And so I need to go to a dictionary, and to be able to look it up in the dictionary, I need to know that first letter, where does it fall in the alphabet, so I know where to turn in the dictionary. So I have to learn the alphabet. But why in the world do I need to learn how to pronounce these suckers?

We're not going to have conversational Greek. So that when we find something super cool in Greek, we can talk to our fellows about it and understand what our fellows are talking about. That is exactly the right answer. So what Tristan said is so that when we find something that's super cool in the Greek, and we want to share it with our fellow believers, we can actually say it. And I have a great example of this.

So, John 20, 3 through 8. This is when Peter and John discover that Jesus is not in the tomb. So, we've got Peter and the other disciple, who happens to be John, went forth, and they were going to the tomb. The two were running together, and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter, and came to the tomb first, and stooping and looking, he saw the linen wrappings lying there. But he did not go in, and so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb. And he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the facecloth which had been rolled on his head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed. Guess what?

All three times it says saw, it's a different word. So we've translated it using the same word in English every time. And there's some richness underneath the covers, understanding what's going on with these words. So the first one, John gets there, and he sees.

And this is a perceiving. He's understanding. He's seeing what's going on, and he's experientially sort of experiencing it. So Peter goes in. And this is a word that's used for spectator sports, where you're observing intently for a purpose. He's seeing these linen wrappings. He's trying to figure out what's going on, and he's looking closely and trying to understand. The last one, John comes in the tomb, glances, and believes. Just, oh, totally understand what's going on here.

A couple of reasons for this. Number one, if there were grave robbers, would they unwrap the body and then carefully fold up the head covering before taking the body away? No, they're just going to jump in, grab, jump out. So OK, this is an insight. But the other one is that the part about the face cloth being rolled in a place by itself. That rolled could mean carefully folded, or it could mean that it's still in the exact same shape as though it had been rolled over the head. So John comes in, glances, and he's like, totally get it, I believe. Pretty cool. And so you're telling me all of this amazing stuff. And I say to you, that's excellent.

What's the first word so that I can look it up? You say, well, I don't pronounce Greek very well. I'm like, OK. So why don't you tell me what the word looked like? Like, OK, I don't know my letters too well, but I know it started with a B. But it wasn't quite a B. It kind of had a tail on it.

I'm sort of picturing this in my head. Okay, a bee with a tail. And then the next letter, it kind of looks like a giraffe. Like, okay, bee with a tail followed by a giraffe. And then, you know the sign for a euro? Yeah, that's what the next letter is. I think it's a euro. Right. Okay. And then a table? and then lungs. That's what the word is. The word is beetail, giraffe, gyro, table, lungs.

Do you mean bleppo? So it's important to be able to talk to one another. Without that, you're going to look silly talking about giraffes and tables. Instead, just learn how to pronounce the words, and then when you find something super exciting in scripture, you can come running up and say, I saw this great passage, and the word in it is blepho.

The nice thing is, a lot of the Greek letters look like English letters, and those that do, for the most part, are pronounced the same. So that helps. Alright, let's talk about diphthongs. This is not an insult. A diphthong is a combination of two letters that makes a different sound.

We have them in English and, like I told you, the ones in Greek end up looking a lot like the ones in English and end up being pronounced pretty much the same. So on the left you've got Alpha Iota, And that sounds just like AI in aisle. So whenever you see Alpha Yoda, it's not I, it's I. And so just walking down these different combinations, we've got owl, A, and by the way, there's a lot of controversy about A. So there is the A camp, and there is the I camp. And these camps don't get along. We are firmly in the A camp here. All right. So then there's you, as in feud, oy, u, as in group, and we, as in sweet. So nice thing. There's really nothing to memorize here.

The letters look like their English counterparts. When they're slapped together, they behave like diphthongs in English. So now we know one more pronunciation technique. Accents. So accents in the Greek actually matter. We're going to have to pay attention to them. But not like they did at the time. So the original New Testament Greek didn't have accents, but accents were prevalent in the time period.

There are three types of accents. So there are acute. There are grav and circumflex. The interesting thing about Greek is that the acute used to say that when you hit that syllable, you go up. Grav meant you go down. And circumflex meant you go down. So it's up and down. Fortunately for us, we don't have to feel silly Today we don't sing Greek.

So the only thing that we need to pay attention to is the syllable that's got an accent above it. We're just going to emphasize that syllable more. And so it's nice when you speak with somebody in We're used to pronouncing a second syllable as the dominant one, and they like having the first syllable as the dominant one. So you know our friend who comes and visits us, her name is Elishka, and almost everybody here calls her Elishka. But her name is not Elishka, it's Elishka, because we're putting the emphasis on the correct syllable. Well, Greek gives you the complete cheat sheet. When you see an accent above a syllable, that's the one that you hit. So it's actually helpful. Breathing mark. This is the one that is challenging to explain, but I have two ways of going about it.

So any word that begins with a vowel or begins with a diphthong, which incidentally begins with a vowel, is going to have a breathing mark over it. And that breathing mark is going to tell you whether you pronounce the word just the way it looks, or if you put an H in front of the word, sort of a H sound. That's why it's called a breathing mark, because H. So a smooth breathing mark sort of looks like a comma, but it's sitting up in the air.

And that one just says, you know, pronounce the word like you see it. So the word that we've got down here, you see, we've got outos. And you would pronounce that outos, because it's got the smooth breathing mark over the top of it. OK, the second one is the rough breathing mark. And if you see this one, it looks like a backwards comma sitting up in the air. If you see that backwards comma sitting up there, then you pronounce an H in front of the word. So you see we have HWIOS. It's not WIOS. It's HWIOS. That's how we get that sound. So I have two mnemonics. They work basically the same way for memorizing these.

So instead of looking at it as a comma, look at it as an arrowhead. And that's telling you the direction the wind is blowing over the word. Because we are reading these words from left to right, that's the way I approach the word. As I'm approaching that word, and I get to a smooth breathing mark, the wind is blowing over the word, so it just pulls me along, and so I don't do anything. In the other case, I've got the arrow, the rough breathing mark, that arrow is pointing back toward me, the wind is blowing this way, and so I'm coming up to the word, And then I say the word. So that's one way.

That did not go over with the Greek class that I taught most recently. We had a lot of kids that didn't understand wind over words. But they did notice that that rough breathing mark looks kind of like a fist. They decided that thing looks like a fist. And so as I'm approaching that word, that fist is facing me. And so I'm approaching the word, and that fist just gets me right in the stomach. And I go, ha! And then I pronounce the word.

We also noticed that the fist actually has the thumb sticking up, which is not how boys are taught to fight. And we're pretty good about learning how to fight as boys. And so the rough breathing mark became the girl punch. So you're approaching the word, and if you get a girl punch, then you say it. So that's how we remember breathing marks. Girl punch, no girl punch.

Wind, no wind. You can pick the one that helps you remember it. But now it should probably stick with you. Yeah? All right. Syllables. OK, so now we've got this big, long Greek word. And we're like, what's that like? Two syllables, is that 23 syllables? I don't even know where to start. Well, I'm going to start breaking it into the individual syllables, and we've got some simple rules for it.

So rule number one, a word has as many syllables as it has vowels or diphthongs. So for example, that second word, sarx, flesh. Sarx has one syllable. Why does it have one syllable? Why do we know that? One vowel. One vowel. It's got an alpha. Hwios, two syllables. Why? It has a diphthong and a vowel. Has a diphthong and it has a vowel. So you're going to actually have to know your diphthongs because you might look at that and say, oh, three vowels. It's ooeyos. No, it's not. Actually, it'd be hooeyos. Hwios.

So, and a pungalia has five, oh my goodness, why in the world five syllables? Four vowels and a diphthong? It turns out it's got five vowels. Yeah, so no diphthong in there whatsoever. And just as an interesting aside, if you see two gammas together like you do in the middle of this word, We pronounce that like NG. So it changes. It's not a pog-go-ia. It's a pong-go-ia. So when we're talking about angels, those are ungolas. It's two gamuts in the middle of that word.

So each vowel or diphthong makes up a syllable. So now we can start dividing up these words and figuring out what they look like. Double consonants get separated. And if you've got a single consonant, it goes with the trailing vowel. So those are our rules. As many vowels or diphthongs, that's how many syllables you've got, split up consonants, and take single consonants and chuck them with the vowel that comes after them. We have so much opportunity to practice. So let's do that. So I will say the word, you'll say the word, and then I'm going to ask you why we split it the way that we did. And you guys can tell me which rule we applied. So, what? Po. Beautiful-ish. All right, so blephote. Why did that P go with the omega at the end?

Consonants go with the following vowel. Consonants go with the following vowel. Logos. Logos. Beautiful. Consonants go with that following vowel. Lu-o. Lu-o. Why did we split that there? Two vowels, so the vowels get their own syllables. So that's why we're splitting it there. Le-go. Le-go. That's like Lego, my ego. And we split that. Consonant goes with the following vowel. That is ha-g-e-os. And it's girl punch. See? Hug. It's not hug. Huggy us. And why did we split that way?

OK. So first thing we found, I made a mistake. Where's my mistake? There are so many mistakes to choose from. Yes. So, ha-gi-as. First, you're right. That consonant needs to go with the following syllables. So it should be ha-gi-as. Each consonant, each vowel gets its own syllable. I've split it as two, it needs to be three. Complete mess on the screen for you guys. So you can correct it in your notes. What an excellent pedagogical tool. All right. Glossa. Glossa. Why did we split it there? Two consonants together get separated, and then there's two vowels. There are two vowels, so we're going to have two syllables and two consonants together. We split them up.

So you guys are understanding the rules. It actually works pretty simply. It's not too tough. You guys can also be making notes as we go through here, because one of your homework assignments is going to be practicing pronouncing the words that are on these slides. And interestingly, the words that are on the slides are the most common Greek words in the New Testament. So you're already starting to learn some words that are going to help you as you're looking. So, we have a-go. Car-pos. Fe-lo. Fe-ro. Isn't that great? The fee just sounds like an F. Car-dee-uh.

Zoe. This is a common girl name, and we usually pronounce it Zoe. We put that emphasis on the first syllable, but guess what? It's on the second syllable in the Greek, and thankfully we have the help, we have that accent right there to remind us it's not Zoe, it's Zoe. That's how we pronounce it.

Right? We've got more. Now we've got diphthongs involved. Life's getting exciting. All right. So first one, qui-os. Qui-os. Hu-tos. Hu-tos. I-du. I-du. I-du. Oi-cos. Oi-cos. U-de. U-de. So this one's a great one. So I see you wore your Broncos shirt today. So Ude. Ude, say if you're going to beat them Broncos. Ude. Right there. This next one is a favorite when you're teaching kids. Poo. Poo. Poo. Poo. All right. Emi. Emi. Emi. Houtas. Houtas. Houtas. Kainas. Okay, so this one I'm actually not going to provide you with any help this week.

So you guys can look at this slide and just sort of draw lines When you go home, where you think that that should be broken up. We've got very simple rules to remember. So each vowel or diphthong gets its own syllable. If you see two consonants together, split them up. If you've got only one consonant, it goes with the trailing vowel. You guys think you can do that?

All right, so we've got a repeat after me song. So man-o. Man-o. Kay-roo-so. Kay-roo-so. again because I liked it so much apparently. Pseudomai, Oikos, Autos, Melo, Thelo, Emi, Aletheia, meta, aquas. This one is Bernie's favorite. I'm pretty sure of it. Poor you, oh my. Poor you, oh my. So if you feel just awful for somebody, just poor you, oh my. Okay, tools.

I'm fairly Mac-centric. I'm sure there are great PC tools. I can tell you about good tools for your phones or your tablets or your Macs. Vern might be required for his consultative services to tell us what would be good on a PC, but I'll walk you through a few. So first off, Olive Tree. This is the one that I use probably the most at this point. I'm not a representative. It works great on all devices. So it works on Windows, it works on Mac, it works on my iPhone, it works on my tablet, it works on Android devices, and I think it even works on BlackBerrys. I mean, just everything.

It has integration with a bunch of different tools. I really like the fact that I've got multiple windows, when I've got multiple windows open, like I do here, whatever I'm doing in the left pane just starts tracking over into the right pane. I've got multiple dictionaries installed, multiple mapping tools, like all sorts of things. And just by clicking on this word or that word, I start getting different kinds of options in terms of, oh, do you want to look it up in this tool, or do you want to see it over in this other one? And then once I'm over in there, I can see other places in scripture where that word is used and just click on them and immediately see all of those things.

Yes, sir? What's it cost? The tool itself is free and books that don't have copyright will also be free. So I think you can actually set yourself up with just a King James with Olive Tree for nothing. five bucks tops. So, pretty good. Once you start getting into getting vines or getting the actual Nestlé Elan Greek translation, these are things that you have to start paying for. NASB will have a cost. But with this tool, you're paying for the books. So just think of it as I buy the tool and it links all of these different things together and then I pay for the books. Is that a one-time charge or is it yearly? One-time. Yeah, it's a one-time charge.

And this app, out of all of the ones that I've tried, by far it's the best one on mobile devices. So for iPads and for phones, this thing is just fantastic. Problem is there's no interlinear. So if you grab the blue book out of the queue in front of you and open it up, you'll see you've got, yes sir? Another pro is that you can just have one account for a family. And everyone in your family can use it. That's true. So you can share your account across your family members. And so just like your books, you can share them with one another.

On the no inner linear side, if you look at the blue book in the back of the queue and open it up, you'll see you've got the English word and then the Greek word right below that. With Olive Tree, you have two options. So option number one is really know the Greek. So when you see something on the left-hand side, you're like, oh, it says C. So I happen to know that C is blepo. So I'm looking for blepo over on the right-hand side. That's one way that you can use the tool. I'm guessing most of the people here would not do that. So then you play this game called Go Fish. So I know I'm in verse six, and I'm counting. I'm like five words over. Well, I'm going to click the fifth word over. No, that's not C. What's this one? That's not C. What's this? Ha! It's C. It's this funny thing that looks like a giraffe. So you kind of have to play Go Fish with this tool.

I'm in the former camp for how I use it, for the most part. I can pick the words out at the right-hand side now. I'm in the latter camp when I'm using it in the Hebrew. So I'm like, oh, look at all these funny symbols. Click that word. No, that can't possibly be the right one. Click that word. Yeah, that's the right one. So I play Go Fish as well. That's Olive Tree.

Accordance, for those of you who are Mac users, it's native, it feels right, it looks right in terms of Mac usage. It also has integration with a lot of tools, so you've got Greek and Hebrew tools and lexicons and grammars and all sorts of things that you can start linking up to one another. It's also got some truly fancy things that you can do. that are lots of fun. So there's a sentence diagramming tool as part of it. I myself prefer paper with a pen. I find that to be a very good way of... In reality, paper with a pencil is a better way for doing diagramming. Oh shoot, I messed that one up too. Alright, now I can do it again.

But there's some really fancy stuff that you can do If you search for words in the Greek, then once you've found them, you can click and get a histogram of the words as they occur throughout the Bible and find out, oh, wow, love is mentioned way, way, way, way more than grace. It's interesting. Who's talking most about love? Oh, well, it seems to show up mostly in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. I guess John is our love guy. So you can start making those sorts of correlations and it shows you pretty pictures.

Problem? It's pricey. It costs a fair amount. They're pretty proud of it. Mobile version was terrible a couple of years ago to the point that I did not find it usable. It's been two years. It's quite possible it's become usable. But now I'm pretty married to all of the truth. And the interface feels genuinely weird. You have to think the way that they think to be able to make sense. But another plus is they do have an interlinear, and you can pick which things you want to show up in it.

So you see here I've got the English words, I've got the Greek In this case, I've got the root form, the dictionary form of the Greek word. You can also show the word as it appears in scripture. So it might be spelled differently to give you context in terms of how it's being used. You can have the strongs number show up. And so you can stack these as high as you want. And just double click on one of these words and it pops up in a dictionary, which is pretty cool.

And you guys might be able to see at the bottom, if your eyes are not at all like mine, it also tells me exactly how the word's being used. So in this particular case, you'll see what my eyes look like. It's telling me that it's a verb. It's third person singular, present, active, indicative.

And all of that's going to make sense to you guys after next week. So you can get excited. We're going to do verbs next week. The S.W.O.R.D. project. This is a project that is trying to put free Bible tools in the hands of everybody. So the price is really good.

You can get the Byzantine Greek translation for free. King James is also free, so now you've got Greek and English together for free. It has a Strong's Concordance in it. And you can link from the words to Strong's Concordance. So if you just want really basic and not have to pay anything for it, Crosswire is there. It is clunky. It looks like a free project. It looks like somebody's side project. That's what it looks like. But all of the tools are there and it's free, which is great. They do not have interlinear. Again, you're looking at them side by side.

And I know if you are a PC person, years ago in a class we were using a tool called Word Search that's still around. You can get interlinear with that as well, and the linking over to Vines and other stuff. What do you use, by the way? Books? No. Paper? No. We use actually a very old version of Bible that is not available, but works for us.

I know that Courtney's got a tool that he loves. So if you guys are PC people, you're not loving not having an inner linear. If you could talk to Courtney, I think his was, I believe they're also proud of that one, and it will set you back a pretty penny, but it's interlinear as well. My brother uses BibleWorks, and he loves it, but it's not cheap.

Okay, so BibleWorks is one if you want to spend a lot of money. I have used the Interlinear Scripture Analyzer. on both PC and Mac. It only has two games, but it has strong numbers and strong notes. Click on a strong number and it will bring you the strongest notes and it will give you the dictionary definition. linear scripture analyzer. Trying to make sure that gets recorded for posterity. Last tool.

This is a fantastic tool for those of you with internet access. You're never going to be looking up Greek when you're on an airplane or you don't have access to the internet. What's great about it, there's no software to install. It works in your browser. It's free, it gives you a lot of the things that the other tools will give you. The cons, it's online only, so if you don't have internet access, you don't have Blue Letter Bible.

And I think that you can still only get King James together with the Greek. But here's what it looks like. It actually breaks it up really well, in my view. So you can see what the Greek looks like. You've got, at the very top, you've got King James. Below that, you've got Greek. And below that, you've got everything broken out, word by word. And it's telling you, this is what the word is. This is how you pronounce it, so you're not stuck telling people about giraffes.

And it's got a Strong's number. You can click the Strong's number and get a definition. So it's a pretty good tool. I do not use it, not because I dislike it, but because I just always want to have Olive Scripture with me, and I can't guarantee I've always got internet access. So that's why I prefer Olive Tree. Other old-fashioned tools, these things with paper that you open and turn.

Lexicons, fancy word for dictionary. They'll give you definitions. Grammars will tell you about the language itself and how different words are being used in different contexts so that you can understand a little bit more what's going on in Greek because, as you point out, Greek is not English. If you flip all the way to the back of the handouts today, you'll see a two-page appendix that Vern put together that will walk you through some of these tools. And I brought a fair number of them in. We've used a lot of them. They're great. So you have the complete word study dictionary, which is fine. thick, so there's plenty of context in there.

Binds is actually the one that I go to most often. If I just want a quick definition, it gives a little bit more information than Strong's Concordance will, than the Strong's Dictionary will. And it will also provide cross links, so I can see when I Click on a word in this book. When I click on a word in the Greek, I can look it up then in Vines. Once in Vines, I can see where else it's used in scripture. Click on that and go straight to the context. So I just like the way all of that's integrated in Olive Tree.

We have Strong's Complete Dictionary if you want just quick and dirty basic word meanings. We have the lovely four-volume Wiest series. Wiest was quite a Greek scholar. He has his own translation of the New Testament. One of the volumes is his translation, and if you've seen Verne's expanded and explained Versions that just take this verse that's got 12 words and turns it into five paragraphs But you understand the context a little better. That's kind of what we does So that's one of the one of the volumes and then the other three volumes Go through line by line through scripture and explain why? The expanded and the explained is the way that it is We are w u e s t It's West with a U in it.

We have Wallace's Greek Grammar, Beyond the Basics. Once you've gotten a basic understanding of Greek and you want to go to a deeper level and understand all the subtleties, this group's to be very good. A lot of the content for this nine-week class that we're going through is actually coming from Wallace. I have found it to be super valuable.

And then I have this lovely Belcher diagramming the Greek New Testament. And the thing I like about it is it goes through all the different parts of speech and not only shows you what those parts of speech translate as, but also gives you diagramming examples so you can see how they do that.

Who wrote the Bible? God wrote the Bible. By the work of the Holy Spirit through people. Is the Bible true? Is it infallible? Yes. And if you look on our doctrinal statement, you'll see that we do regard the Bible in the original language as infallible. So that's one of the reasons why we're learning the original language for the New Testament. Who wrote Greek grammar beyond the basics?

Wallace. Wallace. Is it true? Yeah. With a little t. It's not a big T. Not a capital T anymore. It's true with a little t. Always? Is he infallible as Wallace? knows everything on mission? No. No, he's not. So all of these tools are great. They're super useful. They are not scripture. And so you have to be careful about how you use them. A great example, actually, I think this is a really great example.

Vern talked the first couple weeks about all of these different denominations. We've got how many, 10,000, 30,000? 30,000. 30,000 different denominations. And he asked, why do we have so many different denominations? And the answer is, because it's easier to have a church split than to work it out and to figure out what scripture actually says. So they take their balls and they go home. And this happens over and over and next thing you know you've got 30,000 different denominations and they all feel really, really, really right, but not so right that they're actually trying to work together to find out what God, who is omniscient and true and infallible, is actually trying to convey.

So Verne has been teaching on the perfect tense. And definition of the perfect tense is? Completed past action, ongoing results, on into the future, implying permanence, unless the context says otherwise. And it's that last part, implying permanence, unless the context says otherwise, that's interesting. Because this guy, he says that's hogwash. He says that's not true. And this is where I've gotten a lot of my information.

I have this view that it doesn't imply permanence, and Verne's telling me it does imply permanence. And so, should I take my balls and go home and we'll have 30,001 different denominations? No. So I came to Verne and I said, look, here's what it says in laws, and here's what it says in Summers, and so I don't see what you're saying. And so Verne He always does. Went and found 27 different references that all say implied permanence. And looking at those carefully, looking at this carefully, I'm like, you know what? I agree with you. So now we don't have 30,001 denominations. Vern and I see the perfect tense the same way. And this guy's wrong about it.

So that's a cautionary tale. appendix that Vern's provided. The two-page paper that Vern put together goes into depth in some of these tools and just It's a cautionary tale. Look out for this guy because he thinks this way about, in some cases. The bottom line is, use multiple tools, correlate them with one another, figure out what multiple people are saying.

Don't assume that because you looked it up in a book, it's true. Unless it's the Word of God. There was one that I was going to bring in this morning, but I opened it up and just happened to open it up right to In the Spirit. which it said didn't mean in the Holy Spirit, it meant in the human spirit, and I'm like, complete hogwash. So remember, these things are not infallible. So I left it at home. So that's my cautionary tale.

Karate Kid, who's seen it? A fair number of us. Mr. Miyagi, explains to Daniel at one point about karate, and he says, karate is like walking down the road. You can walk all the way on the right, you can walk all the way on the left, but if you walk in the middle, sooner or later you're going to get hit.

So don't go at it half-heartedly. Greeks the same way. And this was actually a cautionary tale from Randy's Greek instructor when he was in seminary, which is, if you know a little bit of Greek, but you think you really know something, that's when real danger happens. And that's when you get crazy doctrine. So really, correlate with a lot of different sources.

You're not as smart as you think you are. Don't walk down the middle of the road. OK, I think we can actually get through this in the next five minutes. I thought we'd be done early, though. So verbs. Verbs are action words. So verbs tell you what you're doing. There's a special class called essence verbs. Essence verbs are verbs that describe a state of being.

So we'll give you a few examples. One of the links at the end. is going to be for a song, The Tale of Mr. Morton. That's where all of my examples are from. So if you want to find out context for Mr. Morton, go look it up with one of those links, and you will be jamming along with us.

So, Mr. Morton walked down the street. The action is walking. That's our verb. Mr. Morton talked to his favorite cat. He talked. That's our action verb. Mr. Morton was a lonely man. That's our essence verb. It's describing a state of being. So he was. Yes sir? Can you, for me or anybody, but a state of being, can you go a little bit more of what that is? Yeah. So an essence verb is not describing action, it's describing State of being is actually the best way to explain it. But let me give you a couple examples. So one example is is. Vern is something that's describing Vern. He's not busy is-ing. Become talks about a state of being. So he became a man. He wasn't busy becoming that's describing his state as it transformed. OK, so it's describing more. It's more descriptive of the individual, of the subject.

To diagram them, piece of cake. We've already done all of this with subjects and predicates. So you've got a baseline. You separate them with a line that drops down below. And so now we're going to start refining some of those diagramming concepts that we've talked about. So subject on one side of that line, the verb on the other side. So now we're no longer doing subject and everything else. We're doing subject, verb.

We're going to learn a little bit more. Modifiers. So modifiers are words that are describing another word. They change that word in some fashion. Adjectives are modifiers because they're describing a noun. Adverbs are modifiers because they're describing a verb. So some examples, the bird flew. So which bird? Any bird? No, it was a specific bird. It was the bird. So you see how the is describing bird for us a little bit better?

One tired boy rested. OK, any boy? No. Well, maybe. But was it a bunch of boys? No, it was one. So that's describing. And what do we know about this boy? He was tired. So these are describing further. He ran quickly. That's describing the running. He didn't run slow. It's very specific.

And a wall fell. So diagramming modifiers. The modifier just drops down below the word that it's describing. And it goes on this little line the way that it's drawn here. The direction of the angle coming down actually matters. So we've got the bird flu. You see not the bird flu that's like when you get really sick, but that different type of flu. So anyway, the bird. B is going to drop down below bird.

So you can see clearly, oh, this is describing that bird. He ran quickly. You look below and you see quickly, oh, clearly there's a relationship between quickly and running because it's describing that running. What's nice about diagramming is you can look at it in an instant and see what matters. What matters is he's running. OK, everything else is description because it's falling below that line. Last one, direct object. Direct object is the thing that's receiving the action that's going on in the verb. So it's said to limit the verb.

So an example, Mr. Morton knew just one girl. So lots of things he could know. He could know lots of book knowledge. He could know principles of financial accounting. He could know Tristan. But that's not what the sentence is talking about. He knew one girl. So that's limiting that knowledge. It's limiting the bird. That's what our direct object does. Mr. Morton grew flowers. He could have grown many, many, many things, but he grew flowers. That's very specific. It limits the bird. And a neighbor chased his kid. He could have chased a car. He would have looked silly. He could have chased his dog. He was chasing a kid. That's interesting.

So how do we diagram that? Well, subject, big line, verb, line that doesn't go all the way through, direct object. So far, we're just adding a little bit every time. We'll be doing very fancy sentence diagramming here in a few weeks. But right now, modifiers go below the word they're describing. Direct object goes after that sort of half line that just comes down to the baseline. Make sense? OK.

Critical Aids. The alphabet song. So first link is traditional Twinkle Twinkle Little Star song with the Greek alphabet. The one that's going to get into your head, burrow into your head and annoy you to no end, but get the alphabet. Right? It's that rap version, Nancy found it. It's horrible, but it sticks.

Subjects and predicates. You have The Tale of Mr. Morton. So if you want to understand my examples, you have to go and listen to it. So the original one is sort of a 1970s schoolhouse rock song. And the rap version is actually quite good. It's by Steelo. Worth watching. And verbs. This is also from Schoolhouse Rock. Verbs, that's what's happening. That's what that link is.

So a little music to reinforce what we're trying to learn here. So keep practicing writing and memorizing that alphabet. Listen to the annoying song. It will burrow into your head like an earworm, and then you will know the alphabet. Practice pronouncing the words that we've gone over today. So our Repeat After Me song next week I'm going to give multiple Greek words, and I want you guys to be able to say multiple Greek words back to me. So that's going to take some practice. And diagram and sentences given in the week two homework. All right, we have homework. Yes, sir.

I just wanted to say diagramming modifiers and down here on the bottom it says the direction of the slant matters? It does. So if you notice the slant that's coming down, so Mr. Morton knew just one girl. The slant is coming from, I guess, right to left as it comes down. If it goes the other direction, that's going to mean something different. later on. You're talking about the line above the baseline? I'm talking about, okay, so you've got girl and one and there's a line that connects the two of those that's slanted that comes down. The way that that slants is going to matter. So up on the screen you see it's slanting from right to left. I see it coming down left and then it's flat. Okay, so coming down left and then flat. If it comes down right and then flat, it's going to mean something else.

So there's none that come down right on that example? Correct. We haven't learned that yet. That's advanced skills. We're not ready for that yet. OK. So there are so many people queued up because I'm not a good estimator of time. So let's pray, and you guys can hit me up with any questions afterwards. Father, thank you so much for giving us the scripture in a language that is so precise in the way that it works. And I pray that we would not lose sight of why we're doing this so that we can know you. In Jesus' name, Amen.