Unpacking the Rest of the Cases

Last Sunday, in Lesson 4, we finally unpacked all the cases. We covered Nominative and Accusative in Lesson 3, so we did the Vocative, the Genitive and the Dative this time. Our 2nd Declension masculine nouns in ος chart is now complete. We even managed to squeeze in the masculine definite article forms from Lesson 5. Bring on the feminine and neuters!

The class was a bit of a panic for me—I couldn’t believe how quickly the time went! I think we’re going to have to start doing 5 hour lessons; there’s just too much to teach and too little time….

Okay, okay, okay, that was a joke. I’d never do that to you. Only Sandy could tolerate listening to me go on about Greek grammar for 5 straight hours.

Okay, okay, okay, that was a joke, too….

Next class I’ll cover the complete lesson on the masculine definite article; explaining more fully how articles are used for more than just saying “the” in Greek. As well, I’ll be introducing the verb form εστιν (he/she/it is) and explain the significance this type of verb has for the cases of the nouns on either side of it. There’s also going to be a special announcement.

How exciting does all that sound? Be there or be square…

Later today, I’ll post the Why Learn Greek illustration from Sunday. However, you can only have 10 of those page tabs per blog, so, in order to get as many lessons up there as I can, I’m going to put all the WLG’s on one tab (most recent at the top).

Oh, one more thing. Trish asked me what the Greek on the blog title was. It’s a snippet from the top of a page of the Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament in existence. The verse is John 7:40.


The red letters are what you can see above. The first epsilon of “ΕΛΕΓΟΝ” is missing because it was the last letter of the previous page.

ΕΛΕΓΟΝ ΟΤΙ ΟΥΤΟC ΕCΤΙ ΑΛΗΘΩC Ο ΠΡΟΦΗΤΗC.

The letters are uncial—uppercase. Notice the scribe has used the symbol C instead of Σ. If you put the whole thing in cursives, it’ll be easier for you to read:

ἐλεγον ὁτι οὑτος ἐστι ἀληθως ὁ προφητης.

The entire sentence looks like this (from the Textus Receptus):

πολλοὶ οὐν Ἐκ του ὀχλου ἀκουσαντες τον λογον, ἐλεγον Οὑτος ἐστιν ἀληθως ὁ προφητης.

Notice the TR doesn’t have the ὁτι (that) of the Codex. The translation of the whole line is “Therefore, hearing the saying, many of the crowd said (that), ‘He is truly a prophet.” Our part of the line is “…said that, 'He is...'”, with half of the word for “is” cut off.

Cool, eh?

God bless,
Ἰακωβος