Semester 1, Lecture 1: Introduction and Alphabet
Welcome to Basic Biblical Greek Class
- Classroom protocol
- Everything to please the Lord
- Greetings: “χαῖρε μαθηταί” and “χαῖρε διδάσκαλε”
- Raise your hand to speak
- You will be addressed by your Greek names
- The teacher may be addressed as “Διδάσκαλος”
- Please ask any relevant questions, which is a good seque to:
- Grades – Homeschool students earn a grade – 3 components
- Class Participation (20%) – includes your knowledge of material as represented by responding to questions in class, reading out loud, translation, etc.
- Weekly Quizzes (40%) – graded and reviewed at the beginning of the following class
- Mainly material from Mounce
- Also material in covered in class which is not in the text
- 2 Exams per semester (mid-term and final) (40%)
- Adults (if any) will be auditors. They may participate in class, and if they do the work it will be graded.
- Class Structure
- Opening Prayer
- Return and Review last week’s quiz, answer questions
- Answer questions on last week’s assigned material before quiz
- Quiz
- Lecture and Discussion of this week’s assigned material
- Closing Prayer
- Lecture notes which cover material not in the text will be posted on gknt.org after class for your review
- Διδάσκαλος Ἀνδρέας will be available to answer questions on GKNT.ORG chat most Tues. Wed. evenings after 8:30 pm. and other times by request
Required Class items
- Mounce textbook
- Mounce workbook
- Metzger’s Lexical Aids
- Writing Paper, pencils, pens
- Your brain!
Requirements and recommendations
- You must think! – this is not just rote memorization, but learning a language. – You must engage all the rational and creative faculties God has given you.
- Consider the nature of Language – it is a very large part of our being made in the image of our Creator
- Expression of thought, both concrete and abstract
- Communication of intelligence and perception from one to another
- Think of the Why just as much as the What
- Consider the nature of Language – it is a very large part of our being made in the image of our Creator
- Attendance is essential – getting behind in this class is often fatal
- Study partner(s)
- Patient persistence – 5-6 days per week. Schedule at least 1.5 hrs. per day
- Read all footnotes
- Get a Greek New Testament (UBS or Nestle/Aland preferred, others, e.g. Majority Text are OK)
Why study Greek?
- Language of Scripture – by God’s appointment
- To enable you to better understand God’s Truth
- Most expressive, subtle nuances, precision
- ready-made to communicate abstract concepts such as “truth” et al.
- Lingua Franca of the Roman world
- Original vs. Translation – Read in color
- “Reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your wife through a veil” ~ Martin Luther
- Side benefits
- Logical discipline
- Better understanding of Language in general, and English in particular
- grammar
- cognate and derivative words (more on this below)
History of Greek – Smyth on History of Greek, and Dialects
- Language – What is it?
- Means of communicating thought from one intelligent being to another
- Part of our bearing the image of God
- Jesus Christ the archetype of language – the Word
- God communicates to us through language.
- “Greek” vs. Ἑλληνιστί (The Romans coined the term Γραῖοι (Greeks), but the Greeks called themselves Ἕλληνές)
- Inflected language – DEFINITION – “vary expression by means of endings and prefixes on word stems”
- Nouns have “declensions” are are declined
- Verbs have “conjugations” and are conjugated
- 2 great familes of inflected languages:
- Semitic – includes Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Canaanite (Phoenician), Ethiopic, Hebrew, Sabaean, Syriac
- Indo-European aka Indo-Germanic includes Aryan group (Sanskrit, et al.), Armenian, Albanian, Latin & all descendant “Romance” languages (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.), Celtic (Gaelic, Breton, Manx, etc.), Germanic aka Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon, Baltic / Slavonic
- The farther back you go, the more similar the words become – Tower of Babel
- Remnants of inflection in English – “Who” and “Whom”
- Cognate & Derivatives
- Derivatives, e.g. arithmetic, theology, hagiography, philosophy, astronomy, sympathy, symphony, telephone, idolatry, onomatopoeia, poetry, etc. – other examples?
- Cognates – see chart
INDO-EUROPEAN COGNATES
| English | I | Me | Is | Mother | Brother | Ten |
| Sanskrit | aham | ma | asti | matar | bhratar | daca |
| Persian | azem | ma | asti | matar | bratar | dasa |
| Greek | eg | me | esti | meter | phrater | deka |
| Latin | eg | me | est | mater | frater | decem |
| Anglo-Saxon | ic | me | is | moder | brothor | tien |
| Irish Gaelic | __ | me | is | mathir | brathir | deich |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithuanian | asz | mi | esti | mote | broterelis | deszimtis |
| Russian | ia | menya | jest’ | mat’ | brat’ | desiat’ |
Timeline
- Mycenaean Age 1500 – 1000 B.C. (Minoan civilization on Crete)
- Age of Dialects 1000-300 B.C. (Homer to conquest of Alexander the Great)
- Many dialects including Doric, Aeolic and Ionic
- Mountainous geography fosters localization
- One strain of the Ionic dialect is called Attic, after the region of Attica, whose chief city was Athens. This was the language of Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, et al.
- The KOINE (Common) Age 330 B.C – A.D.330 – Alexander the Great, pupil of Aristotle, takes the common Attic (Koine) with deposits from the other major dialects, and Hellenizes the world. By this providence of God, Greek becomes, the Lingua Franca, the language of commerce, of the entire Roman world.
- Byzantine Age A.D. 330 – 1453 (schism of Roman Empire, eastern capital set up in Constantinople, aka Byzantium until sack of Byzantium by the Turks)
- Modern Greek A.D. 1453 – present
Alphabet – Smyth on the Alphabet
- 24 letters
- Α−Τ – Phoenician (like Hebrew) originally pictographic, Υ−Ω invented by Greeks.
- Letters which disappeared, but whose invisible presence can still sometimes be felt: digamma ϝ (sounds like ‘w’) koppa Ϙ (sounds like ‘q’)
- Pronunciation – review entire alphabet –
Consonants – Smyth on Consonants
The Square of Stops (Mounce p. 83)
| Voiceless |
Voiced |
Aspirate |
With Sigma |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labials | π | β | φ | + σ => ψ |
| Velars(Palatals) | κ | γ | χ | + σ => ξ |
| Dentals | τ | δ | θ | + σ => σσ => σ |
- Nasals – μ (labial), ν (dental) , γκ, γγ, γχ, γξ (gamma nasal – palatal)
- Liquids – λ, ρ
- Spirant – σ
Vowels – Smyth on Euphony of Vowels (quite advanced)
- Long and short vowels, quantity.
- ε and ο always short
- η and ω always long
- α ι υ short or long
| Open | <- | α | − | η | − | ε | − | ει | − | ι | -> | Closed |
| Open | <- | α | − | ο | − | - | - | ω | − | ου | −> | Closed |
- Why are omicron and omega so named?
- Diphthongs (διφθογγοι – “two sounds”) blending of 2 vowel sounds into one
- “improper diphthongs” – iota subscript
- diaeresis – when a diphthong is not
- Originally letter H (disappeared) → ├ and ┤ → ‘ and ’
- Rough and smooth breathing
- Initial ρ and υ always take rough breathing
Orthography ( note: this word is a derivative) – How to draw the letters.
Assigments
- Read Greek out loud!
- Workbook exercise 3 with the Majuscules
- Prepare for quiz next week on everything up to chapter 4.
- Read and study chapter 4 on punctuation and syllabification.
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη, Διδάσκαλος Ἀνδρέας Ἀέρος :-)