Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today we're going to go over John 6-48, just a very short memory verse today.
In English it says, I am that bread of life.
And then also we're going to put together a lot of what we've been learning about the
different case endings for nouns.
We've talked about nominative case, genitive case, dative case, and accusative case.
So we're going to go over all that and we're going to talk about the differences between
the three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter.
So this is going to kind of put together a lot of things we've already talked about and
put them in a nice chart form that you can write this out and understand it and memorize
it.
You know, I feel like you're ready for this now that you've already been exposed to these
cases quite a bit.
So let's start with our verse here.
We've got, ego y mi o artos tis zois, all right?
Ego we know means I, and then y mi means am, so I am, o artos.
Now remember this word o can either mean the, but sometimes it also means that, as we've
seen in previous lessons.
Our King James Bible says, I am that bread of life.
So we've got ego y mi, I am, o artos, that bread, tis zois, okay?
And tis again is the word the, but it's in the genitive case, just like zois is in the
genitive case.
And if you remember, the genitive case is the case that shows possession or corresponds
with our English preposition of, okay?
So this means I am that bread, tis zois, of the life, but again, Greek uses the definite
article the differently than we do in English.
So we would just say, I am that bread of life, okay, tis zois, all right?
So we've got two nouns in this verse, one of them is bread, which is a nominative case,
and one of them is in the genitive case, which is life, okay?
Now the reason that bread is in the nominative case here is because it is what is called
a predicate nominative, following a state of being verb.
I am is a state of being verb, and so the noun that follows it is called a predicate
nominative, and it is in the nominative case, okay?
Let's talk about the four cases.
In this chart that I've drawn for you here, we're listing each word four times.
Let's start with a really familiar word that's been in so many lessons, and that word is
God, theos, okay?
Now the word theos is in the nominative case.
Usually when you're reading any kind of a textbook of Koine Greek, biblical Greek grammar,
you'll find these lists of four a lot.
You'll notice the word theos is in four forms, artos is in four forms, zois is in four forms,
and the forms that they're in are nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative.
That's the standard order that you're going to see them listed in, so that's why I've
listed them in that order, okay?
So the word theos means God, but depending on what part of speech it's acting as in the
sentence, it has to have the proper case ending.
So if God is the subject of the sentence, or is a predicate nominative, it's going to
be theos, all right?
If God is the object of the preposition of, or the object of other prepositions that take
the genitive case, as we've gone over in previous lessons, or if we want to show possession,
if we want to say, you know, God's son, or God's word, or, you know, the son of God,
or the word of God, we're going to use this one, theou, the genitive case, okay?
This is the dative case.
Now remember, one of the things that can tip us off to the dative case in the masculine
or feminine gender is this little yota subscript that's below the omega there.
That yota subscript, when we see that in a pronoun or we see that in a noun, that's kind
of a telltale sign that we're dealing with the dative case.
The dative case, we'll see that yota subscript a lot.
You say, well, what is the dative case?
The dative case answers the question to whom or for whom, or it is the indirect object
of the sentence, or it is the object of some prepositions, as we've already gone over.
Then lastly, we have the accusative case, all right, theou.
And theou in the accusative case is God is the direct object of the sentence, or the
object of certain prepositions.
Now, these three, okay, genitive, dative, and accusative can all be the object of prepositions.
Certain prepositions take this, certain prepositions take this, certain prepositions take this.
And I drew a chart in the previous lesson explaining to you how to understand which
one to use with which preposition, okay?
But again, theous, nominative case, that's the subject or prediconominative.
Theou, that's your genitive case, usually possession or of God, okay?
Theou, that is your dative case, that's gonna mean to God or for God, usually.
And then we've got theoun, which is when God is the one receiving the action, okay?
That's the accusative case, so we have nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, all right?
Now, the word theous is a masculine word, okay?
So this is a pattern that we're gonna see with masculine nouns, we're gonna see these
four endings, ous, ou, ou, and on.
Those are typical endings that you're gonna see in other words as well.
For example, the word bread, okay, artos.
And we saw it in our scripture, ego, imi, ou, artos, ti sois, all right?
So here we've got artos, and notice the similarity in the endings, ous, ou, ou, with a yoda subscript,
and on.
So notice how these two masculine words take the same endings for the four cases, nominative,
genitive, dative, and accusative, okay?
So therefore, when we come across masculine nouns that seem to be following this pattern,
you know, this is a handy thing to know and understand.
In other words, theous has the accent on the second syllable, right?
Therefore, all of these other case endings end up following suit, theous, theou, theou,
theon.
When we get to artos, however, the accent is on the first syllable, and artos, and again,
it follows suit, because we have artos, artu, arto, arton, all right?
So this is bread as the subject of the sentence, or a predicate nominative.
This is of bread, or bread as possessing something, arto, this is to bread or for bread, and then
arton is going to be accusative, direct object, when bread is the direct object, okay?
So that's your masculine singular, and remember, these are all singular.
We're not even getting into plurals.
We don't want to overwhelm you, of course.
So these are all just singular.
These are singular masculine nouns.
These are some typical endings.
That's a pattern that you're going to see as demonstrated by these two words.
Now let's move on to a feminine noun, okay?
Izoí is a feminine noun, the life, okay?
So it takes different endings than the masculine endings.
The masculine endings, ous, ou, ou, and on, for this particular type of masculine noun,
is not going to be used here, although we can see certain similarities.
So in the nominative case, we've got zoí.
That's when life is the subject, okay?
Genitive, zoís.
That's what we have in the scripture up here, tis zoís, of life, I am that bread of life.
So we've got zoí, zoís, which means of life, right?
Zoí, which would be to life or for life or the object of other prepositions, that's a
dative case, zoí.
Again, notice the handy yota subscript to help you identify the dative case.
And then lastly, we have zoí, which is the accusative form of the word life, when life
is occurring as the direct object of the sentence.
You might say, Pastor Anderson, I don't know what these words mean, prediconominative,
direct object, indirect object, you know.
You need to go back and learn English then before you think about learning Greek.
And one of the great things about learning a foreign language, sometimes it helps us
with our English.
A lot of us just speak English because of just we were brought up speaking English.
We don't really understand the grammar.
We just speak English naturally.
But when you learn a foreign language, it kind of helps you to analyze English.
And one of the great benefits of learning a foreign language is that it helps you to
understand English grammar.
So if you're struggling with these terms, prediconominative, you know, dative case,
genitive case, accusative case, direct object, indirect object, you know, these are things
that you need to understand going forward.
If you don't understand them, you need to figure them out before you continue with these
lessons because these are very important terms.
And these are concepts that you must have, okay?
So we've got these two columns or masculine.
Then we're showing you an example of a feminine noun here, straight out of our Bible verse,
John 6.48.
Now let's look at some neuter nouns that we've come across.
Here is one, thos.
So if we wanted to say, this is light, if you remember.
And if we want to say the light, it would be tophos, all right, tophos.
This is the nominative case, tophos.
In the genitive case, we see that it undergoes a change here, it becomes photos, all right?
So we've got phos and then we've got photos.
Again, a way to help you remember the word phos is you could think of phosphorescent
or photography, okay, photos.
You can think of photos, you know.
There's a flash of light when they take a picture, right, and the word phos means light.
That might help you remember.
You say, well, how do I remember the word artos?
The way I remember is that sometimes you get what's called artisan bread.
So that's just a trick that I use to help me remember the word artos is I just think
of artisan bread.
I think of theology with theos.
I think of zoology with zoi.
And then with phos, you can think of phosphorescent, photos, photography, whatever you want to
think about.
But anyway, phos is nominative, photos is genitive, photis is the dative.
Notice there's no yoda subscript with this particular neuter noun, so it's not always
going to be there.
But it is a nice help with these masculine and feminine, so it's not going to help you
with the neuter though.
Photis is the dative, which means to the light or for the light.
And then phos is the accusative.
Now, one of the things I want to point out to you, because this is also a neuter noun
as well, onoma.
Onoma means name.
So phos means light, onoma means name.
These are both neuter nouns, tophos, toonoma, all right?
Both of these, what I want you to notice is that they're both the same in the nominative
and the accusative.
Isn't that nice?
So you don't have to memorize two different forms for nominative and accusative.
They're both the same.
These are all different, theos, theon, different, okay?
But with the neuter, phos, phos, onoma, onoma.
That's very helpful that those are the same, okay?
And then notice there's a similar pattern going on with onoma, which is a neuter noun,
as there is with the neuter noun phos, because we've got onoma for the nominative case, onomatos
for the genitive case, okay, onomati for the dative case, and onoma for the accusative.
So here's the similarity.
This one ends in tos, this one ends in tos.
This one ends in t, this one ends in t, okay?
And then also there is a little bit of a similarity between the feminine genitive and the neuter
genitive in that they both end in an s, all right?
So let me point out also the change in accent with onoma, all right?
Here this one goes phos, photos, photi, phos, all right?
So when we're dealing with onoma, notice how with the nominative and accusative, the accent's
on the first syllable, onoma, but for the genitive and the dative, the accent has moved
over one syllable and it becomes onomatos and onomati, all right?
Let me explain part of the reason why.
Greek nouns, Greek words in general, always have an accent on one of the last three syllables,
okay?
This word right here, onomatos, has four syllables, onomatos.
That's why the accent cannot remain on this first syllable because there has to be an
accent on one of the last three syllables, okay?
So that's why that moves over to the third from the last, not the fourth from the last.
There's always an accent on one of the last three.
So here, onoma is a three syllable word, onoma.
So it's fine and dandy to have the accent on that first O. However, down here, there's
going to need to be an accent later in the word.
That's why it becomes onomatos and onomati, all right?
That's probably a lot to digest.
This is kind of a difficult lesson perhaps, but we've already seen this.
I mean, we've already seen theo, theo, theo, theon.
We've already seen all these.
I'm just kind of putting it together for you and helping you understand that all the nouns
in Greek are going to have a little chart like this with four things in the list that
you're going to learn for each word, okay?
But the good news is that they do follow patterns with one another within their different families,
okay?
Here we're looking at a couple of masculine that match up pretty well, a couple of neuters
that match up fairly well.
So in the next video, we're going to talk about adjectives, okay?
This is how nouns work, while adjectives pretty much work the same way or in a very similar
way.
So we're going to look at that in the next lesson.