Hello, it's Pastor Steven Anderson from Faith Forward Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today we're going over John chapter 1 verses 4 and 5 in the Greek New Testament.
Normally we only do one verse per lesson, but verse 4 is so simple there wouldn't really
be much to talk about, so we're doing verses 4 and 5 today.
In English, these verses read, In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and
the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
Let's look at it in Greek.
En hafto zoi in, kei zoi in tophos ton anthropon, keto phos en discotia feni, kei discotia hafto
u cateleven.
So let's look at each word of this and explain all the things that are going on here.
En hafto means in him.
En is the preposition in, and you'll see that yota subscript, which is of course the tell-tale
sign of the singular dative case.
The preposition en in this case takes a dative object, and so en hafto means in him.
This is the personal pronoun him in the singular dative case.
En hafto zoi in, life was.
In him was life.
This is a lot of review.
Verse 4 is pretty much review of stuff we've already learned in previous lessons, but zoi
means life.
Think of zoology.
Think of a zoo where living creatures are kept.
So the first phrase there is pretty simple, en hafto zoi in, kei zoi, and the life in
was, tophos, the light, ton anthropon, of men.
Now men here, anthropon, is in the plural genitive case, and remember the genitive case
is usually associated with the English preposition of.
Look at that ending right there, ton anthropon, both the definite article and the noun show
signs of being in the plural genitive case.
This is why it is so important to memorize that chart, that demonstrative pronoun chart
and the definite article chart, because when you see that definite article, you can know
right away what case it's in and whether it's singular or plural.
You've got to memorize that chart, the o, i, to, tu, tis, tu, totito, and on and on.
So this right here, if we were to just read this part, we'd say tophos ton anthropon.
And this is a little bit tricky with the pronunciation, because remember, when toph
comes after ni, it doesn't make a t sound, it makes a d sound.
And look what we have right here, a ni.
So even when the ni is in a different word, you actually end up pronouncing it with the
d sound.
So the way that this should actually be pronounced is, en hafto zoi in, kei zoi in, tophos ton
anthropon, tophos ton anthropon.
That verse is pretty easy, verse four.
Let's move on to verse five.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
Okay, verse five, ketophos and the light, en di, remember I'm going to pronounce it
di because the toph comes after ni, ketophos and the light, en di scotia, in the darkness.
Again, notice the telltale Yoda subscript underneath di and underneath scotia, showing
that this is in the singular dative case.
And when something is in something, it's going to be dative case.
En di scotia, in the darkness, and the light, in the darkness, feni, shines, shineth.
The light shines in the darkness, and the light shineth in the darkness.
Now the word feni, in the dictionary, you're always going to find verbs in their first
person singular, active, indicative form.
And so the dictionary form of this word is going to be feno, which would mean I shine,
or I appear, or I am seen, I show.
So the word feno means show, appear, shine, and of course this is the third person singular
form.
Feno would be I shine, feni is he, she, or it shines.
In this case, the light shineth in the darkness.
Now a quick, easy way to remember the word feni is to think of our English word phenomenon.
And our English word phenomenon comes from feni because a phenomenon is something that
is seen or something that is observed.
And feni means to be seen, to shine, to appear, to sight.
So we've got that phrase covered, ketofos, and the light, and iskotia, in the darkness,
shineth, feni.
Let's look at the last phrase now, ke iskotia, and the darkness, ofto u katellaven.
Okay, ofto is again the personal pronoun, just like ofto up here, just like ofto in
verse three.
The personal pronoun, but this is not masculine anymore.
Now it is neuter, all right?
So that should look familiar from the the chart.
Now it is neuter because it says, and the darkness comprehended it not.
So in this case, because it's not masculine, it is actually neuter.
It's not going to be him like it is up here, him.
It's going to be it, okay?
And it's in the accusative case, it's not in, this one's a dative.
This is in the accusative case.
This is the accusative case.
And of course, if you look at your the chart, to is the accusative singular of the neuter
word for the.
So that should help you with identifying the personal pronoun, ofto, although I don't really
know how personal it is, but it's the same word as him, it's just a neuter form.
Ofto, accusative, oo means what?
We just learned it in the last lesson on verse three, oo means not, because we learned the
word oothe, which contains this within it.
And then katellaven is the comprehended part of the verse or understood, what does it mean
to comprehend?
To understand something, right?
So this last phrase is keiskotia, and the darkness, ofto, it, not, comprehended.
And the darkness, it, not, comprehended.
Of course, the word order is totally different in Greek.
We would say in English, and the darkness, comprehended, it, not.
Comprehended here is past tense, of course.
Many is in present tense, the light shineth, present tense, in the darkness, and the darkness
comprehended, past tense, it, not.
Now let's talk about the word katellaven, this past tense word for a moment.
It comes from the root word that you would find in the dictionary in its first person
singular, present, indicative form, and that would be katalambano, all right, katalambano.
And a word that you may be familiar with, a pretty common Greek word, is just the word
lambano, which lambano means I receive, okay?
That's where this comes from.
Lambano means to seize or to grasp or to arrest or take hold of, which, you know, that's kind
of what we're doing when we understand something.
We grasp it.
You know, if you grasp something, that can metaphorically mean that you understand it
or comprehend it.
But I want to mention also that this word katellaven also provides a great example of
the crossover between learning modern Greek using, for example, the Pimsleur audio program
and learning Koine Greek.
A lot of people have this idea, and I talked about this earlier in the series, but they
think that modern Greek is just a completely different language from biblical Koine Greek
and Koine biblical Greek is just a completely dead language and so forth.
Well, if you're using this crazy pronunciation that I don't like to use, this so-called reconstructive
pronunciation, well, you know, yeah, it's a lot different.
But if you just pronounce it in modern Greek pronunciation the way we've been pronouncing
it, there is so much that is the same.
And I would not consider it two different languages.
I would just say it's two different dialects.
I mean, there are differences between King James Bible English and the way we speak today.
That doesn't mean it's a completely different language.
There are differences between the way an Australian speaks and the way an American speaks or the
way someone from Great Britain speaks, but that doesn't mean that it's a completely different
language.
And there's a lot of crossover between modern Greek and biblical Koine Greek.
That's why I suggest learning both at the same time.
Because if you learn both at the same time, it will help you to realize that Greek is
a real living, breathing language that flesh and blood humans speak, not just a language
of scholars and education and all this antiquity and whatever.
It's a real human being language.
It's not a mystical, magical, scholarly language.
This is a language that people actually spoke and continue to speak in the country of Greece
where I believe, what, 15 million people reside or something like that.
So this provides a great example of crossover because if you're doing the Pimsleur audio
program, which I think is an excellent program for learning any language, but it's especially
great on the Greek lessons.
If you're doing the Pimsleur audio, this word is really similar to what you learn in lesson
one.
And in lesson one of the Pimsleur audio, you start out by talking about, you know, I can
understand Greek or I can understand English or asking someone, you know, excuse me, do
you understand Greek?
Signomi katalavena te eleinika, you know, excuse me, do you speak Greek?
And you learn how to say I understand Greek, katalaveno eleinika.
Or you can say katalaveno ligo eleinika, I understand a little Greek.
Or katalaveno eleinika polykala, very well, I understand Greek very well.
Or katalaveno anglica polykala, I understand English very well.
So you'll notice that those words that you learn in that Pimsleur course, lesson one
of I understand and you understand, katalaveno and katalavenete are really similar to this
past tense understood, the darkness understood it not, because remember in the King James
it says the darkness comprehended it not, comprehend and understand are two words that
mean the same thing.
So katalaven is really similar to katalaveno and katalavenete.
So that's just another great example of how listening to those Pimsleur courses can help
you understand New Testament Greek when you read it.
So next lesson we'll do verse six.