Biblical Greek - Lesson 7

Dr. Bill Mounce
Biblical Greek
NT201-07
Genitive and Dative
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:00] So, are you having fun yet? A blast. Oh, good. All right. Today we're going to look at chapter seven, which is the chapter on the genitive and the date of cases. The last two cases you need to learn English has three cases, and one of them we've already seen quickly is the possessive case. And you can use the word of and say the word of God. Or you can use an apostrophe s God's word, or if the words are already plural, you just have an apostrophe after it. Right. The apostles were. The other aspect of English grammar that you need to be sure that you know is the whole issue of an indirect object. The indirect object is the person or thing that is indirectly affected by the action of the verb. In other words, it doesn't receive the action of the verb, but it's still involved in the process of the verb. So if you had a sentence like Karen threw Brad a ball, which word is the indirect object? Okay, Brett, you can usually tell if a word is an indirect object by putting the word to tile in front of it. And if it makes sense, then there's a good chance you have an indirect object carried through to Brad a ball. If Brad were in fact the direct object, then he would be directly receiving the action of the verb. But in this sentence, Karen threw Brad a ball. Brad is the indirect object and is indirectly receiving the action of the verb. Okay. So when we move into Greek, let's look first at the genitive case. The genitive case in Greek has several, in fact many different functions. But one of the functions and in fact one of the easiest ones to learn is that when Greeks want to show possession, one of the ways they do it is they put the word into the genitive case.

[00:02:09] Now Greek doesn't have an apostrophe as construction. Someone words are put into the genitive case in order to show possession. It's always in the of construction. And so we would see Namoi. To say you. And we'd recognize that the up salon in both those words are genitive case endings. Showing us that to say use in the genitive. And so we would translate it. Namoi means laws. We would translate Namoi to, say, you as laws of God. Now, Greek will always have it in that construction. It doesn't have an apostrophe s kind of construction. You will always have laws of God. Now, if you want to change that, you can say God, Apostrophe S, God's laws, and that's a perfectly acceptable translation. So you have some flexibility in how you want to translate the genitive when it's functioning as a possessive. There's a couple of phrases that you need to be very comfortable with. The first is the phrase head noun. The word that the genitive modifies is called the head noun. When you say, for example, laws of God. I've introduced a term here called Key words, and all these are little words. Later on you'll see that sometimes they can be phrases and they're just little words to help you get a handle on the meaning of a case, for example. And so the key word for the genitive is of. So when you see a genitive, you automatically think of and then the word that's in the genitive. Now you'll find that sometimes of doesn't work, but the keywords are just kind of a general kind of way to get you used to us case and what the meaning of that case is. The second case that we're going to learn in this chapter is the dative case.

[00:04:12] The date of case is the case that carries several basic meanings, and I want you to learn three of them. The dative can carry the meaning of two till. It can carry the meaning in and it can carry the meaning of with. In other words, you have three key words that you can associate with any word that you find in the dative. How are you going to decide which one fits? Context, as is almost always true. It's context. Now under the tube category will find the indirect object. And. WHEREAS, English doesn't have a separate case for an indirect object in Greek, indirect objects are placed into the dative. So if the text wants to say he told them the story, them is going to be the indirect object, right? He didn't tell them. He told the story, but he told it to them. Them is going to be in the dative case. Or if the Greek wants to say Jesus was baptized in water, water can be in the dative. Or if the Greek wants to say Jesus was baptized with water. Water can be in the dead of case. And it's going to be up to your exegetical skills to determine which of those keywords best fits that particular context. We now have all of your case endings for the first and second declension. We'll be learning a few more with third declension, but this is the chart that you really, really, really need to commit to memory. The underline means that the Omega is going to swallow up any vowel that precedes it. Just like the alphas are underlined in the neutered plurals. When you see it with the article and a noun, it's perhaps a little easier to learn, but you still need to be able to tell me what the exact case endings are.

[00:06:28] You also now know all 24 forums at least you will know all 24 forms of a definite article, please. Absolute memory work. In this chapter, we're going to learn the next three non rules. Rules four, five and six. Rule four is that in the dative singular, the Yoda subscripts if possible. Now the rule there is Yoda's can subscript only under long vowels. So when I see graphic I see the Yoda under the ADA. I don't really care that it's under it. I just see that Yoda. For me, that Yoda is the sign of the dative. And I go, Oh, it's a dative. Now the reason that's important is that when you get into the plural graph goes to graph face, alpha, yoda sigma. So in the singular, the Yoda subscript in the plural is still there along with the sigma. But for me that all registers is one case. Number five is that vowels often change. Their length is called technical word is all. You'll notice in the date of singular, for Lagos it goes Lagos lagoon, and then in the dead of it goes to log go a short old class vowel. The macron has gone to a long vowel and omega. It's has changed its length. Does that mean that Omega is a new ending after memories? No. It's just gotten longer and you're going to see this is one of the shortcuts that you can take. And Greek American Omega. Yeah, we're all the same thing kind of. And the second rule is that in the genitive, in the date of the masculine and neuter will always be identical. In other words, the endings will always be identical. So in the genitive singular, you have longer. In the genitive singular. For another you have argued.

[00:08:19] In the database singular for log offsets, log goal and the date of singular of Aragon its error goal. In other words, those two cases are going to be same between masculine and neuter.