Learn Greek: John 1:1 (Lesson 1)

okay welcome back to the channel my name is chris morrison and this is the first video in our learning greek by reading the greek new testament series so if you've not already watched the introductory video to discuss this playlist i'll talk about how we're going to do this i strongly recommend i dare i discuss this book you see here uh basis biblical greek by william amounts that's worth knowing because we are not doing a a deductive study a traditional kind of a bible college seminary study instead we are actually going to be getting right in this very video in to the text of the of the greek new testament where by the end of this video you're going to read john chapter 1 verse 1 in greek and know why it says what it says so to that end very quick couple of housekeeping things uh number one again watch the introductivity if you haven't number two check the links in the video description below it's going to give you a link to a reader's greek new testament that's like the first 13 or so verses in the gospel of john you will find it to be very helpful i believe and then also if you don't already have a greek new testament i'd recommend getting one now you don't need a physical greek new testament like this one you're getting the download from me number two everything's online anymore and so i will give you some links to some free greek new testaments that you can take a look at online but there's nothing to me quite like having a physical text in my hands and so it's nice to have that as well i'll put a couple of those again in the video description below finally uh we're going to go pretty quick because this is a video and you can pause and rewind so you go man he's going fast that's okay uh you can slow down the blade speed and you can pause and rewind and feel free to do that so with that said why don't we go ahead and dive right in and look at the greek text of john chapter one verse one and even if you have never seen greek before if this is all just random squiggles on a page the really cool thing is by the end of this video you are gonna know exactly what this says so i'm gonna read it to you first it says in archaic us so what does that mean well you know what it means because you've probably memorized john 1 1 in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god fine how does this right here mean that that's we're going to show you so what i actually want to do and this is going to be something of a consistent method we're going to start by looking at the vocabulary we need for each verse each past set of passages we're studying if you know these 10 words i have on the screen here you will know enough to read the entire passage now how do you know the words well we're going to start by the i'm going gonna show you both the words and the letters together so that here in just a moment these they're not gonna look like squiggles they're gonna look like real letters so let's let's go ahead and look uh here first we have this first word is n and you see this letter looks like an e it's called an epsilon and it makes the e sound and that's easy to remember that's e looks like epsilon says e so there you go if you don't already you know your first greek letter the second letter that looks like a v is called a nu and it makes the n sound so epsilon nu says n or n we'll ignore this little mark on the top until the next video n just means n so there you know your first greek word n means n this second word is pronounced rk and you can see here uh this looks like an a kind of fun you're like a fish like a lowercase a it's called an alpha and says ah this letter that looks like a p is actually called a row and says r so don't confuse the row with an english p this that looks like an x is called a key some people say a chi a key and that's going to make the k sound and then this letter that looks like uh to me it looks like a funny looking n uh just trying to get this confused with an n uh this is called an eta we don't have anything like this in the english alphabet and the ada says a so alpha says ro says key says ada says a again let's ignore the marks above and below we'll talk about those with those marks in the next video here this just means rk rk it's gonna pronounce just like it's sounds rk rk means the beginning it can also mean the first of the series of uh it can mean the most important etc so we have two words n and rk now the next word you would actually know both of these letters already this is the eta and the ada says a and the new says [Music] means he she or it was so there you go was we know three words in our k end now the next word is uh just composed of one letter which is an omicron and omicron is going to say i bet you can guess by now ah you haven't figured out the letters are going to say what their name is the sound they make is what they're so epsilon says nu says alpha says act and so on omicron says ah and in this case because you do have it looks like a little backward apostrophe because it's pointing uh there in the direction that it is it's pointing over in that way it's going to say so it's going to be ha so when you see this this is ha this is basically the definite article meaning v think of it as v right now although here in the next slide next couple slides you're gonna see it doesn't always mean the next is a very popular word you know this word if you don't know it uh this first letter is a lambda looks like the upside down v with the line on the top so as that says you have the omicron you recognize ah this with looks like the little v with the uh tilt on the bond the tail of the bottom is called a uh gamma it says there you have the omacron again and this looks like a c with the tail on the bottom think of that as a looks like an s a funny looking s because that says that's a sigma and says so this is lambda omicron gamma omicron sigma says lagos or lagos you've heard logos before it means word uh is sometimes pronounced by preachers is la uh logos or lagos or logos it's pronounced lagos and here you have it right here lagos you know the first five words let's finish up here it's going to start going quicker because now we most we know most of the letters this letter looks like a k very easy called a kappa looks like a k sounds like a k cup we already recognize the alpha it says ah and the line here looks like an eye it's called an iota and says e i will say that when the alpha and the iota come together they make an i sound which isn't too hard to recognize forget uh remember think about it this way the word english word isle a-i-s-l-e makes the same kind of sound same thing here so k i says kai kai means and now you have this word pros you know this first letter if you've done any math that's a pie or as we typically say p and so there is your p says p the row says r the omicron says ah there's your sigma again it says so pros pros pros means with now you have another letter that you've never seen before but it looks very simple looks like a t makes the same sound it's called a tau says tau there's the omicron there's the new so on or tan tan is another way to say v it's another it's another one of the definite the definite articles then you have two words you recognize certainly one of these if you if you spend any time in bible study we'll go backwards this is this looks like an o with a line through it's called a theta and says and you know the rest of the letters here is your epsilon e and your sigma says so us which you've probably heard preachers say fias or theos or the us sometimes if i'm speaking carous but it's to us and you can see because this is a little emphasis markle on the last part of the sentence that us means god alternatively put the new on the end the un and the on also means god and we'll see why the distinction in just a moment but here you are all ten letters ten words and half of the greek alphabet you already know nrk lagas kai prostan theon and fehas practice that pause the video get really really good at it and now let's go to the next and let's do a really wooden translation and then we'll look at some of the grammatical issues so n means in our k means beginning so we might say in the beginning ain was it was or in beginning it was ha the lagos word so in beginning was the word kai and ha once again the lagos word so in beginning was the word and the word israel was pros with tan the theon god so in beginning was the word and the word was with the god kai and the us were god ain was the word so translated very woodenly it would be in beginning was the word and the word was with the god and god was the word so clearly that's not the way it's normally translated so now we get to move outside of just a wooden direct movement of word to english degree let's look at how to actually translate think about some grammar so there's a i think four or five things i want to show you here the first and you may have gathered this the definite article in greek is only sometimes it's implied and the reason is there is no indefinite article angry now if you don't remember your fourth grade english let me remind you what an indefinite article is in english if i want to talk about i can say v-cup or i can say a cup a cup so a cup means any particular one v cup means the one that i have in mind the is the definite article a or an is an indefinite article greek does not have an indefinite article i'll say it again greek does not have an indefinite article it only has a definite article so if you want a word to be indefinite you do not give you don't put the article in front of it and context will tell you but just because a word does not have the definite article does not mean it's always going to be indefinite and you're you can look at the first two words and see this this does not mean in a beginning it means the beginning in the beginning and context tells you this i don't have time to do a full bible so this bible says this right now but you can clearly see that john is concerned with the beginning of the entire universe beyond the fact that he's quoting genesis chapter one is the greek uh translation the old testament so this is in the beginning so note just because uh there is no article doesn't mean that it is indefinite but if you want to say a cup you would simply leave the definite article off and then you would let context determine uh whether or not you mean a cup or v cup number two related to the article is that sometimes it is translated the but not always one of the things that it will do it can certainly mean the cup you could have said the beginning that has its function but sometimes what it does is it takes an abstract idea and it kind of uh it makes it a big informal idea so for example we do something similar to this when we capitalize words if you say what tell me the truth of the capital t that notice that capitalizing t or what's the meaning of life with a capital m these are big grand ideas and so that's one of the things that greek will do it can also as an aside we're not going to get this verse it can be used at the beginning of a name so jesus in greek is jesus and you can say jesus the jesus it's just pointing to this particular person so that's the usage we're going to see here if we don't translate this the word was with the god rather what's going on is we're taking this concept of deity and we're abstracting it the highest possible this is the picture this is the god but this is god with a capital g and this may seem unnecessary if you're if you've never read greek but try to remember you and i probably have used the word god as a name your entire life for you this is obviously a name but very often for the greeks the word theos just meant god with the lowercase g zeus was a theos so they talk about the plural the gods and so this is saying not just any god this is the god with a capital g so that's why the articles here so it doesn't just mess you don't just have to translate it with v you can ask what's being used and hopefully already getting a sense of wow there's so much in just a few words next and this is probably one of the most important lessons to learn is that word order is not essential in greek in order to determine meaning the best way to explain this is with an english analogy and i like this this is an easy way to do it these two sentences mean the exact opposite things in english the cat bit the dog that means one thing the dog the cat means something very different now how do you know which is which well in english we know based on word order the cat is the doing the biting we know because it's the beginning of the sentence it's before the verb and the dog is being bitten it's receiving the action of the verb in widow because it's where it is in the sentence if you invert those and put the dog at the beginning of the sentence then now the dog is doing the action the cat is receiving it that is not the way greek works greek does not tell you what's doing and what's receiving the action based on word order it does it based on spelling that's why we have a theon versus say us so if you have a word that ends in new typically what that means is it's in what's called the accusative case and without getting too much in the too hardcore grammar yet accusation just means that's the object of the sentence that's what's receiving the action think of the accusative is if you accuse someone of something they're receiving your accusation you're saying something about them so tante on here logos it doesn't say that god was with the word the word is the one being with god so god is receiving the action of the word being with them okay so that's how you do that now go back to our english case to to really really make that clear and the phrase the cat bit the dog the dog is in the accusative case the dog is receiving the action of the cat and the cat is in what's called the nominative case in the case the dog with the cat the cat's in the accusative case receiving the action dividing the dog is in the nominative so if you haven't figured it out a nominative case is the subject that is doing the action the accusative case is the object receiving the action nominated from the word to name so we're naming the subject doing the action so going back to greek you have these the new ending is your accusative case and your omicron sigma ending is going to be your nominative case so here uh you have nrk was uh anarchy and halagas and so lagos is actually the subject it's what's it's it's the word was within the beginning and here it's the word was with god the word the lagos was is the subject and here at the end they ask us both of these are in the nominativ well which is doing the subject which is a subject which is a verb which is receiving that gets to our last time you have a sentence in which you have two nominative nouns that are linked together by a word like aing a state of being verb an is or a was or something like that how do you decide which is which you can't just say theos ain't halaga and theos in lagos because what is is it god is the word or is it the word is god which is the subject the way greek does this this is another use of the greek defined article so we've seen four now this used another word is to when you have two nominative case nouns when you put the definite article in front of one of them that will be the subject so here fayash and halagas if we wanted to say god was the word we would have said hathas in lagos but because it says it's the subject and theos is what's receiving the action so it's the word was god so then why do we do this in greek well we're going to see that the beauty of this but has it with emphasis because word order doesn't determine meaning then in fact what determines meaning uh is is spelling then wardrobe can be used for other things which is emphasis you're going to see that on the next slide so having done that let's get into some fun interpretation and see how this kind of goes together first of all the most important phrase is almost always in in john 1 1 almost all the discussion most part is going to come out into the third part theos and holagase if you spent any time doing evangelism or studying you may have discovered that jehovah witnesses would like to translate this the word was a god this is how they get to their claim that jesus is not the one true god but one of many gods but all their basis for this is because well theos does not have the article and since it doesn't have the article therefore it must be a god but hopefully not even 20 minutes into your first greek lesson you already know what's wrong with that don't you because just because theos does not have the article doesn't mean that it's not definite they didn't translate this in a beginning was the word and if you continue this in verse two and verse three you're gonna see they're terribly inconsistent so it's context it tells us we're clearly talking about god i mean clearly we have the the definite article added just the clause before so so first of all you can't just say say well and then you can ask them well suppose that we did put the article there ha theos ain't ha lagas well now we go back to well then how do you know which is the subject and which is receiving the action how do you know which is which is the subject of the sentence well if you put hog in front of it then you don't know so that's why john has written it the way he does they are saying lagos but theos is in the position of front why this is really cool once again because word order doesn't determine meaning the further you put a word in a sentence or a clause the more emphasis it has john could have said kai halagos and feos and it would have meant the same thing in terms of and the word was god we would translate it the same way but when you put us at the front what you're doing is you're putting emphasis on the us what he's saying is is in the beginning was the word and the world is with god and that god the deity itself the creator of the universe not some zeus character but god himself that is what the word was it's very emphatic it's pulled all the way to the beginning of the phrase so this is not only the jehovah witness is wrong and downplaying this is a god but this is saying the exact opposite this verse is a powerful emphasis on the deity of christ so in the beginning was the word the words with god the world so to finish up let's look at john 1 1 and now you have to watch the video a couple times but you can see why it says what it does nrk in the beginning nrk aim which is was entertain well what was there holagas n.r.k.a halagas the word itself was in the beginning prostant theon now he wasn't with pros any god any any old god prostan theon the deity itself and so he's with god with a capital g and chi and theos and that's what he was and then you can kind of put these three clauses together those are two there are three clauses nrk analogous that's caused in one chi then the second phrase is halagas and prostand theon and the third phrase we're saying three things about the word here you're seeing the word was in the beginning the word was with god and the word is identical with that same deity so it's a very powerful passage a way to begin the gospel of john and i think it's a powerful and beautiful way to begin our study of the gospel john as we begin studying our our our first lesson in greek so review this video a couple times as necessary jot the letters down practice learning them in the next video we are going to pause before we go to john 1 2. i am going to teach you the rest of the alphabet in the next video because that's worth knowing next video we will do the alphabet that we get to john 1 2 we don't talk about letters you can go ahead and start looking immediately looking at the vocabulary so many blessings any questions comments crowds about reg leave them in the comments below i'll get to them as i can and we'll see you next time god bless

Channel: Gulfside Ministries

Views: 14,653

Keywords:

Id: qIp6GGcxZg0

Length: 21min 34sec (1294 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021