Elementary New Testament Greek, 2014a

A Limited Comment on Innitives and
Participles
We are not able, in this rst semester of Greek, to tackle the formation and use of
Greek Innitives and Participles. Yet it is possible to make brief mention of them,
and offer English examples to illustrate their essential character.
The Innitive is a hybrid, the combination of verb and noun. Notice in the examples
below how an Innitive can sometimes be substituted for a noun in a given sentence.
[English Innitives often take the form of “to ‘blank.’”]
Sentence with a Noun: I love ice cream. Jessica is human.
Sentence with an Innitive: I love to eat. To err is human.
The Participle likewise is a hybrid, the combination of verb and adjective. Notice in
the examples below how a Participle can sometimes be substituted for an adjective in
a given sentence: [English Participles can take the form of “blank-ing.”]
Mark 5:23–
24
Matt 8:32
John 8:20–21
He asked him urgently, “My little daughter is near death. Come
and lay your hands on her so that she may be healed and live.”
μ .
. ( = many; =
they were crowding)
And he said to them, “You all go!” Then they came out and entered
the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep slope into the lake
. ( = waters)
These things he spoke in the treasury while he was teaching in the
Temple. No one seized him because his hour had not yet come.
μ μ μ
μ . ( = I am going
away; = where; = able to go)
Sentence with an Adjective:
Sentence with a Participle:
New Testament Exploration
1 Cor 15:11
Matt 4:25
The yellow boat might be smashed against the
rocks.
The drifting boat might be smashed against the
rocks.
Whether then it was I or they, μ
.
and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and beyond
the Jordan. ( = many; = Galilee)
Digging Deeper into the New Testament
Text
1) Find John 2:12-22, the story of the cleansing of the temple, in your
GNT, and read these verses aloud. Make mental notes to yourself as you
recognize such things as pronouns, preposition, articles, conjunctions,
adverbs, etc. You may also be able to make out as much as a third of the
vocabulary.
2) Now nd the same verses in the Greek Interlinear. Almost 200 items
are individually parsed by Mounce in these eleven verses. Your job?
Construct a chart, tallying the number of occurrences of each Part of
Speech represented. In other words, you should be able to show how
many nouns, how many verbs, how many pronouns (etc., etc.) are found
here in John 2:12-22. [It would be wise to review the codes that Mounce
has devised to identify each Part of Speech.] [There is no need to write out
the Greek words here. Simply tallying the count for each Part of Speech
is adequate.] What observations do you have regarding the frequencies of
12: Aorist Tense
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