Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona,
and today I want to talk with you about John 1-9 in English.
This verse says, that was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world.
Let's look at it in Greek.
Ein tophos toalithinon, ophotisi panda anthropon erhomenon eston cosmon.
Let's go through this word by word.
Now ein is a word that you should know from John 1-1, and arhi ein ologos.
Ein means was, okay?
Ein tophos, was the light, all right?
Now the word light, phos, should remind you of some English words that are derived from
it like phosphorescent or a photon.
Phos means light, tophos means the light.
Now so far we've learned three singular nominative words for the, okay?
This is the in the singular nominative case, and we have the masculine, the feminine, and
the neuter form of it, okay?
So o is masculine, e is feminine, and to is neuter.
Like if you remember, the vine was e ambelos, all right?
Whereas God was otheos.
Now we have tophos.
When we see tophos, we know this is a neuter word, okay?
The light, tophos, all right?
Now it says ein tophos toalithinon.
Now alithinon is another form of the word we keep seeing over and over again.
In John 14, 6 Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, e alithia, the truth and the life.
And we've seen other forms of the adjective true.
This one right here is going to be our neuter form in the singular nominative case.
So we have ein tophos toalithinon, was the light the true?
And that's the Greek way of saying, was the true light, okay?
We saw that in John 15, 1 if you remember where Jesus said, I am the true vine.
He said, ego e mi e ambelos e alithini, all right?
So the vine, the true, meant the true vine.
This is just one way of doing adjectives in Greek, ein tophos toalithinon, was the true
light.
Now you notice that a word is not here that we have in English, because in English this
first starts out, that was the true light.
In Greek it just says, was the true light.
That's why in your King James Bible the word that is in italics.
Whenever a word is in italics in the King James, what it's usually there for is to show
you that this is a word that has been added in the English so that it will make sense.
Basically just, it's something that had to be added in the translation or the verse wouldn't
make sense.
And they're just kind of showing you, okay, here's what we had to add to say it in English.
In English it would not be grammatically correct to say, was the true light.
We have to say that was the true light, whereas in Greek you can just say, was the true light,
and the that is just understood to be there, even though you're not saying it.
So a lot of people will make the mistake of saying, well you know, when we read the King
James we should remove the italicized words.
Now the italicized words are there for a reason.
In order for it to be properly translated you have to have the word that to say this
in English.
But because it's not in the original, that's why they put it in italics.
You know, I hope you understand that.
If you don't understand that, you probably shouldn't be learning Greek because that's
a pretty simple concept.
But anyway, it says in tophos toalithinon, okay, which means that was the true light,
o photizi, and o is the word the, but in this case it doesn't mean the.
In this case it's acting as that or which, okay.
So in tophos toalithinon, o photizi, which lighteth, okay, notice the similarity between
the noun, phos, the light, and photizi, which means lights or lighteth, okay, the verb form,
third person singular, o photizi panda, now panda means all, okay, panda anthropon, okay,
so panda anthropon means every man, all right, all man, every man, okay.
Now let me say a word about the pronunciation here.
This is another pronunciation exception.
Thankfully Greek is very phonetic and there are very few exceptions, but there are certain
little combinations of letters that you have to get used to.
Like for example, this letter is p, right, but when it has a me in front of it, it's
a b sound, b, b, b, b, like a second letter of our alphabet.
Well this is another one of those exceptions.
The letter toph is pronounced with a t sound, a t sound, but when it has me in front of
it, it becomes a d sound like dog in English, all right.
So this word is actually pronounced panda, all right, so o photizi panda anthropon.
Now the word anthropon means man, pretty easy to learn because we have some English
words that are derived from this like anthropology, right, the study of people, study of mankind.
Anthropon, anthropology or a philanthropist, okay, those are some words that are derived
from the Greek word anthropon, all right.
And then we have this word, erhomenon, and we're going to get into this verb form in
another lesson.
But this verb form is super common when you're reading a Greek New Testament, and so you're
going to definitely want to get used to seeing that o-ni ending, the omicron-ni at the end
of the word, okay.
We'll talk about it in detail in a future lesson, but basically what this word means
is it's derived from the Greek word for come, okay, and what this means when it says o photizi
panda anthropon erhomenon, it means every man which cometh or that is coming, you know,
that cometh, is ton cosmon, into the world because that was the true light, which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.
So this erhomenon means that cometh, that cometh or that comes, okay.
So panda anthropon erhomenon, every man coming or that comes or that cometh, is ton cosmon,
into the world.
And then you'll notice right here again, something familiar from old lessons, the o-n ending
is an accusative ending.
Remember John 1-1, pros ton theon, okay.
Pros was a preposition that took the accusative case following it.
So that's why it was pros ton theon, with God, okay.
Well is also takes an accusative, ton cosmon, into the world, okay.
Now let me give you a little trick that's been really helpful for me and a lot of other
people to remember which case to use with which preposition because, you know, as we've
talked about things, I've mentioned to you that a lot of prepositions take the genitive
case, a lot of prepositions are going to take the dative case, a lot of prepositions are
going to take the accusative case.
You know, how do you know which one to use?
Well, if you remember accusative case is usually used for what we would have in English as
the direct object, the one who's directly receiving the action of the verb.
The dative case is akin to the indirect object in English.
It answers the question to whom or for whom and then the nominative case you remember
was the subject case and then the accusative or we already talked about accusative, which
one am I missing?
Genitive is the possessive or corresponds with the English preposition of or from, okay.
But if you remember prepositions can take any of the three, accusative, dative or genitive.
So how do you know which one to use?
Well, here's something that I like to use just to help me remember which one to use,
okay.
Because a lot of prepositions have to do with space or time, where things are located or
where they're going or where they're coming from.
And so this chart has been something that's been helpful to me and what this chart represents
is what's in the circle is just kind of where you're at.
I mean this is what's there, okay.
And that's going to be represented by the dative case.
Like for example, something that was in something else, okay, was in the dative case.
And are he in the beginning, right?
It's just there, okay.
So prepositions that have to do with something that's just spatially located in a certain
place like and are he in the beginning, whether it be time or space are going to be dative,
okay.
Now these are things that are going there and these are things that are coming from
there, okay.
So going there is going to be accusative and coming out of there is going to be genitive.
Now maybe this is helpful to you and maybe it's not, but honestly this has been something
that's helped me remember the difference with prepositions between accusative, dative and
genitive case.
So for example, cometh into the world, okay, you know, you're going into the circle, right?
You're going into the world.
So that's why it's accusative, okay.
When you're coming from something or out of something, you'd be using the genitive case.
And when you're just talking about where something is located, whether we're talking about space
or time, that's going to be the dative case.
So therefore, accusative is for the direct object of the sentence or prepositions about,
you know, getting somewhere, going into the world, coming into the world, you know, arriving
somewhere, okay.
And you know, a letter that you'll see real commonly associated with that, you know, this
singular form right here, you got this knee on the end, right, this letter right here,
ton cosmon, ton theon, right?
That's pretty common.
And then the dative, okay, in the singular, remember that Yoda subscript was the tell-tale
letter at the end of the singular dative case.
That's for where things are.
And then genitive, remember all those genitives in Mark 1-1, isu or istu, et cetera, with
that omicron epsilon ending, all right, those were in the genitive case.
Well, some prepositions are going to take a genitive too when it's talking about where
something's coming from, all right.
So hopefully this little chart helps.