Biblical Greek - Lesson 19

Dr. Bill Mounce
Biblical Greek
NT201-19
Future Active/Middle Indicative
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:00] In chapter 19. We're going to learn the future, both active and middle indicative. Now you notice there's no future passive in this chapter. The future passive is formed differently, and we're going to learn it in a few chapters. So in this chapter, we're going to look at the active and the middle forms in the future. In other words, we're going to learn how a Greek would say, I will. Go do something, for example. So how do you form the future active? Well, actually, in a sense, there's two basic ways we're going to look at one way in chapter 19 and another way in chapter 20. But in chapter 19, what we're looking at is really the easier the two formations to identify. And what we're looking at are verbs whose tense dim in the future is the same as their tense stem in the present. In other words, we're looking at words like a cool. Because the present tense term of a school is a coup and in the future, the future tense term is also a coup. So it's those kind of words or what you might want to call regular, although I don't like that word. But the regularly formed futures. Okay, so how do these verbs form their futures? Well, it's simple. You start with the future active, tense stem. We'll talk about that in a second. And then you add a tense formative. Now, in the case of the future, it's a sigma. In other words, the Greeks took a sigma, stuck it on to the end of the future. Active, tense stem to help form the future tense. The tense formative. But then they also added a connecting vowel, the same ones we're used to. And then they added the primary active personal endings.

[00:01:55] In other words, there's no new endings to learn here. But when you say I hear and I will hear, both forms are using the primary active personal endings. And so, for example, you get loose in those your parts. Okay. The question then becomes, what about this future active STEM business? Greek verbs break down into six basic tense forms. Now, if you've learned Greek earlier with a different textbook, you will have heard these different tense forms called principal parts. I don't use that terminology. It's technically, I don't think, correct in terms of English grammar. Principal parts are nouns, verbs, pronouns, that kind of thing. But I prefer to talk about the different tense forms. And so Greek verbs have six different tense forms. And if you were to look up a word like a pothole in the index or in the full lexicon, you would see that they're all listed. And the first is the lexical form, which is the present tense form. Gopal. The second one is the future active tense form. And in the case of Gopal, you'll see that it's listed as agar paste. So. Okay. That's the future active, tense stem. And you notice, as I said earlier, the present tense stem is aga pop and the future active temp stem is aga. Pot happens to be the alf has been lengthened to an ETA. We'll talk about that in a bit. But the point is it's the same tense stem. There's no difference in this particular category of verbs. Okay, so how do you get to know the future tense stem Simple. You look it up in the lexicon and I can still remember when I was starting to work on my method, my dad said, Well, don't you just memorize all of them? I go, No, you're not to memorize them.

[00:03:52] Of course you do. I said, No, you don't. There's triggers, there's indicators. As you look at these inflected forms that will tell you what tense it is. Master verb chart. And so we're not going to be memorizing all these different tense forms. You'll will be learning how to recognize them. Now, every once in a while, the tense form gets so odd and weird that I'll encourage you just to memorize it. But there's not many of those. How then, do you know what the future active tense form is? It's simple in the textbook. When I give you vocabulary. I will list the different tense forms for a verb. And it's the second tense form that's the future Active. In other words, if you were to go to the back of the book and look up the portal, you would see a portal. There's your present active. Then you would see Agar Paste. So that's the second of the tense forms. That means that's the future active, tense form. Now do you need to memorize that bag Peso? Is the future of Gopal. Why would you want to do a thing like that? Why would you want to do that? You've got a sigma, you've got your Omega. It's got to be a future. There's nothing else it can be. Don't fill up that slot in your brain. It's not important. All right. Now, what I have done is instead of overwhelming you with all six tense forms at the same time in the exercises, I've only given you when you hit a certain vocabulary word. I only give you the tense forms that you know up to that point. And then in the following chapters, there's a final section called Previous words, where I'm filling in the other tense forms for the words you've already learned.

[00:05:47] You'll see it in the textbook. So anyway, how do you know what the future active tense form is? You look at it in the textbook and you say, Well, I recognize this if I see it, or do I need to memorize it? And for the most part, you should be able to recognize it when you see it. So why worry about it? So when you see the paradigm, it's very straightforward, isn't it? Lucy. Lucy. Lucy! Lucy! Men. Lucy! Tell Lucy. The only thing you have to recognize when you see that is there is a stigma. Now, let me tell you something about English. We tend to stress the beginning of words. And that's just kind of inbred into us because the ending of most of our words aren't that significant, other than singular to plural. German, on the other hand. Most of the guts of a German word are at the end. And that's why the stereotypical German is so staccato. Because they have to say the end of the verb or end of the word very clearly to hear the inflection of endings. Greek is more like German in that sense, that as an English. And so what you're going to have to do is you're going to have this natural tendency, even without knowing it, most of you, is to see loses and you kind of let the ending blur. But you have to become Germanic in that sense. And when you look at these verbal forms, you have to look at every little letter because there's a lot of difference between Lucy's and Louis. Because in one case you're destroying it now, and in another case, you're going to do it in the future. And the only difference is that Sigma. Okay, So pay close attention to the little every little letter, especially in verbs.

[00:07:37] Now, instead of learning these as exceptions, I want you to see that there's two different kinds of verbs that are absolutely regular. Even though things are changing. Look at the three contracts. I saw Pau Gasol play Rosa. What's happened in all three? Right. The final contract vol has lengthened, hasn't it? Because that's the rule in contract verbs. The final contract vowel lengthens before the tenths formative. Alpha and epsilon go to Ada. I'm Akron's. Go to Omega. But that doesn't mean you have to memorize agar paste or because it's not an Alpha sonata. I have to memorize it. No, you don't. You just know that contract vowels lengthened before tense, formative. Other than that, they're perfectly regular. Okay. What's going on in the right hand column? If you have the root blip, it goes into the present as Aleppo. I see. But it goes into the future as a blip. So why square a stops? Why any stem that ends in a labial? When you add a sigma to it, you pronounce it as a piece. So why not write it as a s e so blip, so is I will see. In other words, as you're working on these verbs, you're start. You may look at it and recognize the vocabulary, which is a huge help. You kind of start on the right side of the word and work back in and we'll become Hebrew here for a second. And you see the Omega, you know, your first person singular, but then you see a C, you see a compound consonant. This got a sound in it, most likely. It's a consonant that swallowed up the sigma because you don't have any Greek verbs that naturally end in a C. Okay, so when you see that C at the end, you think, okay, what? Plus a sigma forms a C labels.

[00:09:40] This could either be Black Paul Bledsoe or Bledsoe, right? Could be any of the three labels. If you have a STEM doc. You have a wheeler. Wheeler plus sigma forms. See? So deal code means I pursue deal so is I will pursue and all this going on. Is it that the sigma of the transformative is getting swallowed by some being swallowed up is being rewritten because you can't say because you say x an x in Greek is a C, okay. If the stem ends in a dental tal, delta or theta, guess what? It drops out right before a sigma. And so this baptismal is I will baptize. The point I'm wanting to make, though, is that these are regular changes. These are not things that you need to fill up memory slots in your brain with. These are patterns. They're common patterns. They're easily observable patterns. And you just learn the patterns and save yourself a lot of memory work. How do you form the future middle? Let's talk about the form first, then we'll talk about its meaning. Well, it's simple. You take the future active, tense stem. See, there's going to be a future passive tense stem. It's the sixth tense form. So that's why you have to keep saying future active. You take the future active, tense stem. You take a tense formed if you take a connecting vowel. Big deal. But then you take primary, middle passive endings. And so we have this verb Paru. Am I? I go. And you have Peru plus Sigma, plus our Macron plus Meetha and the first plural, Peru. Samatha is a future middle form. But guess what? What does that mean? All middles that, you know so far are deponent. Regardless of what we discover, it means for the time being all middles you have or deponent and therefore Puru Samatha is translated.

[00:11:55] We will go. All right. It's a future middle C, unlike the present, where the middle and passive are identical. In the future, the middle and passive are two different forms. So actually you have future active future middle. Both of which are formed on the same tense time. But they have different endings. And then the future passive, which is formed on a totally different tense stem. So it's perused some I peruse say peruse to peruse some of the peruse peruses the peruse Sunday same endings we have with Lou. Am I the way to a ty lue. I'm a silhouette saloon tie, but you're in the future. The opponents never have an active form. They always have a middle or a passive form, but they're always active in meaning. Now, how are you going to know if a verb is deponent in the future? This is something that you need to simply to memorize. In other words, here's this verb genus Go. You'll notice that it's not deponent in the present. It's going to go. It's not going to ask me, but in the future it's going to ask me if the second tense form listed ends in on my. Then, you know, it's a future middle deponent. It's just like present opponents. How do you know if a verb is deponent in the present? The lexical form, the first of the tense forms. And if it ends in. Oh my, then it's a present deponent. But guess what? Just because a verb is deponent in one tense doesn't make it deponent in another tense. Deponent, see if that's a word is a function to some degree of the temps. Now, there are some words like Paru am I, which is deponent in the present. When it gets in the future, it's Peru's Saami and it's deponent in the future as well.

[00:13:48] But there are other words like Janos Skull, which is not deponent in the present, but when you see Gunness Sami as the second tense form, you know that it is a future middle deponent. It will not have a future active form. It will only have future middle forms. And because it's a deponent, you know, it's always active in its meaning. I struggled with this for two years, but I struggle with it because I made it harder than it really was. Deponent. Verbs are very simple. They've lost their active form, but not their active meaning. And so they have to take their passive forms, but use them with an active sense. But remember, the full definition of a deponent is a word that is middle or passive in form, but active in meaning. And when you look at alchemy, because the middle and passive are identical in form in the present, you can't tell whether it's a middle or a passive deponent. And it doesn't matter when you get into the future because the forms are different to a middle and passive. You can tell the difference, and so you have to understand it. Well, I used to remember it was my second year of Greek. I actually had hitched a ride with my Hebrew teacher and I said, okay, can you describe to me what a deponent is? And Dr. Maddox said, all the words that are middle or passive in form and active and meaning. Oh, that's really easy, isn't it? He goes, Yeah, what's your problem? He got mad. We would have said much nicer than that because I was a basket case in Hebrew. That's why I teach Greek. But it really is simple, but it's easy to make it more complex.

[00:15:32] Finally, we have two new rows in our master verb chart. Okay. How do you form the future Active? You take the future active tense stem. You take a tense formative, which is a sigma. You take a connecting vowel. Same one we've always had. You use primary active, always aiming at oozy endings. And so you get, for example, lose. So how do you form the future? Middle? Well, you start with a future active, tense stem. You have a tense formative sigma connecting vowel, but you have primary, middle, passive personal endings. And so, for example, you get peruse summary. Can you see why this chart is absolutely critical? Because if you don't know this, you have to memorize the 900 different paradigm forms. But what I want you to be able to do is to look at a verb and do what all of us do, who've known this language for a while is that we don't know the paradigms unless they're great teachers. We look at the words, There's some great teacher, I should say. We look at the words, we look for the triggers. We're looking at the tense, formative. We're looking at connecting vowels. Or there's a series of things. And at a certain point you go, Well, it has to be this, it can't be anything else. And that's why the master verb chart is so critical for the future of your health in this seminary and in the use of the language.