Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today we're going to talk about John 10.14 from the Greek New Testament, and we're also
going to talk about the Greek passive voice.
Now this verse says in English, I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known
of mine.
Let's go through it in Greek here.
It reads, Ego, imi, opimin o kalos, che yinosko taima, che yinoskome i po tonemon.
Let's go through this word by word.
Of course, we have the familiar phrase, Ego imi, which means I am, opimin, the shepherd,
o kalos, the good.
And this is how adjectives are often used in Greek.
Instead of saying, as we do in English, the good shepherd, they say the shepherd, the
good.
Opimin o kalos.
Now we can tell by the word for the here that this is a masculine singular and that it's
in the nominative case, because it's a predicate nominative following the state of being verb.
That's why the adjective also matches up with the noun.
The adjective here, o kalos, is also found in the nominative singular masculine form.
Because if the word were feminine, then kalos would take on a feminine form, as we went
over on the lesson on adjectives.
So Ego imi opimin o kalos, I am the good shepherd, che yinosko ta ema.
That means and, I know, yinosko.
If you speak Spanish, conosko is how you would say this in Spanish.
It's almost identical.
That helps me remember this word, yinosko, is that the Spanish is conosko, it means I
know.
Ema means mine, ta is the word the, but it's plural, it's neuter, and it's accusative.
And I know the mine.
Now you notice in the King James Bible, this verse reads, I am the good shepherd and know
my sheep.
But the word sheep is in italics, and here's why.
Because in the original Greek here, the word sheep is not used.
Sheep has been added in the translation, which is why it's in italics.
Throughout the King James Bible, when words have been added to aid the translation, those
words are usually found in italics.
For example, a lot of sentences in Greek don't even have a subject.
In English, we have to have a subject and a verb.
Whereas in Greek, sometimes the subject is just implied.
It's kind of built into the verb, and so it's left out, therefore the English translators
have to supply a subject and it will be found in italics.
So the italicized words in the King James Bible are words that are necessary to express
the verse properly in English, to provide the best possible translation, to give the
correct meaning and the correct sense.
Those words have been supplied by the translator.
So those are not extra words being added in.
They are words that are found in the text.
The word sheep is in verse 13.
So the way it's worded in Greek, ta-e-ma, is just referring back to the word sheep in
verse 13.
In English, it makes more sense to restate the word sheep from verse 13.
So that's why in Greek it just says, keginosko ta-e-ma, and I know the my.
In the King James it says, and know my sheep.
And here, we have ke again, which means and, keginosko-me i-po-ton-e-mon.
Now ginosko-me is what we're going to be talking about today with the passive voice.
Ginosko means I know, ginosko-me means I am known, alright, and we're going to talk about
that in a moment, i-po-ton-e-mon.
I-po is a preposition in Greek that means under, but it also means by in the sense of
something was done by someone.
So here Jesus is saying, I am known by the mine.
I am known of mine, is what it says in English.
I am known by or of the mine.
Now I-po is where we get our prefix in English, hypo.
This has a rough breathing mark, so in the ancient Greek pronunciation, it started with
an H sound.
We're of course using modern Greek pronunciation, so we would pronounce this word, I-po.
But it comes from an ancient pronunciation with an H at the front.
That's why we have the prefix hypo, and hypo in English means under.
For example, a hypodermic needle is a needle that goes under your dermis, under your skin,
hypodermic needle.
People who have high blood pressure have hypertension.
Hyper means above or it's too high, hypertension.
But if they have low blood pressure, then it's called hypotension.
So this I-po is where we get our prefix hypo, means under, but it also means by in the sense
of who is doing something, agency.
So ginoskome hypo ton emon.
And when hypo is used in that way, it takes a genitive object of the preposition.
So ton emon is the same as ta ema.
They both mean the mine or mine.
The difference is that ta ema is an accusative case when he says I know mine, whereas ton
emon is in the genitive case because he is known of mine.
And remember, genitive is often associated with the English preposition of.
So let's talk about the difference between these two words, ginosko and ginoskome.
Ginosko is in the active voice.
And the active voice is when the subject is the one who is acting or doing the action.
I know.
So the subject is I and I'm the one who knows.
I'm the one doing the action.
Whereas with the passive voice, ginoskome, the subject is not doing the action, the subject
is being acted upon.
So instead of I know, it becomes I am known.
So the subject is being acted upon or receiving the action.
That is called the passive voice.
There are actually three voices in Greek.
There's the active voice where the subject is acting, there's the passive voice where
the subject is being acted upon, and then there's the middle voice.
The middle voice most of the time is written out exactly the same way as the passive voice.
There are a few places where it's going to be different, but most of the time it's the
same or very similar.
The middle voice though is when someone is acting upon themself.
They're acting to themself or for themself or on behalf of themself.
If you know Spanish, it's very much like the reflexive in Spanish where you do something
to yourself.
So ginosko means I know.
Now I've drawn a couple of charts here to help you out.
Here I've shown the active conjugation for the present tense indicative of ginosko.
This should remind you of the lesson where we conjugated the verb I have, ejo, and remember
how ejo meant I have, but then ejis meant you have, eji, he, she, or it has, ejomen.
Remember how we went through that and we drew the same chart for ejo.
I've drawn it for ginosko.
So I know is ginosko.
You know is ginoskis.
He knows is ginoski, ginoskomen, ginoskete, that's of course we know, you know plural,
and ginoskusi means they know.
So these are your active forms of ginosko.
And remember when you look up Greek verbs in the dictionary, they're going to be found
in this form, the first person singular, the I form.
I know, I eat, I do, I run.
Those are all going to be the forms that you find in the dictionary.
And then they have to be conjugated when you're using them in another form.
Like if you want to say we know, you can't say ginosko, you have to change it to ginoskomen.
Well over here I've shown the conjugation for the passive voice.
So this would be instead of I know, it's I am known, you are known, he is known, we are
known, you plural are known, they are known.
Now out of these six forms, it's good to learn all six of these for the passive voice.
The only two that I've ever found in the New Testament though are these two right here.
So these are the two for this particular word that you're going to want to be familiar with.
But see the reason that you need to learn all of these is because other verbs are going
to appear in these other forms.
And remember these endings will be the same for a lot of verbs that follow the same pattern.
So you want to learn these endings.
Well same thing over here with the passive endings.
You want to learn this ome ending, this ending right here with just the epsilon iota.
You want to be familiar with the ending right here, ete.
You want to be familiar with this metha, esthe, ente.
So you need to learn all of them even though for the particular verb, ginoskome, these
are the only two that I've found in the New Testament.
This one means I am known, this one means he is known, ginoskete.
So that's the difference between the active voice and the passive voice in Greek.
Now a lot of times when you're learning vocabulary words, you'll learn these two forms separately,
almost like they're two separate vocabulary words.
Because sometimes verbs have a little bit different definition in the active as they
do in the passive.
So often when you're perhaps going through Greek flashcards, you'll have a lot of verbs
that end in the omega, right, ginosko, pieo, whatever.
But then you're also going to find words that look like this where they're in the first
person singular passive, the ginoskome, things like that.
Ome ending is an ending that you should become very familiar with because you're going to
see it a lot with passive verbs.
So again, the great thing about this memory verse, and you should definitely memorize
this verse, is that you've got the first person singular active dictionary form and the first
person singular passive right in the same verse.
So it's really easy to compare and contrast the difference between I know and I am known.
So again, this verse says, I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine.
In Greek that's ego, emi, opimin, okalos, ginosko, taima, ginoskome, ipotonemon.
So memorize this verse and memorize this chart right here, should be very easy.
If you've already gone through the conjugation of echo in the previous lesson.
And then also learn these six forms of ginosko, these passive forms, ginoskome, ginoski, ginoskete.
And remember that other passive verbs are going to follow that exact same pattern.