Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson with Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today we're going to talk about John chapter 1 verses 10 and 11 in the Greek New Testament.
Now in English, these verses say, he was in the world and the world was made by him and
the world knew him not.
He came unto his own and his own received him not.
Let's look at this in Greek.
Ando kosmo in, keu kosmos theaftou eenetou, keu kosmos afton uch egnou, ista idia ilthen,
kei idi, afton u parellavon.
Let's look at this word by word.
The first verse is pretty simple.
Ando kosmo in, in the world was.
In English this says he was in the world, but the Greek words here are just in the world
was.
In English need a subject, that's why it says he was in the world.
Of course, en, the preposition en, takes a dative case, which we see our telltale yota
subscripts both on the word the and on the word world, ando kosmo, in the world.
We're pronouncing tof with a d sound because it follows ne.
So en, do, kosmo, in, in the world was, or he was in the world, keu kosmos, and the world,
theaftou, by him, we've seen that phrase a few times already, egenetou, was made or came
into being, past tense, aorist, definite past, we're gonna talk about that later in the lesson.
Keu kosmos, in the world, afton, means him, and it's in the accusative case, so this is
gonna be the object of this phrase, uk, eggno, new, not, u, uk, or uk, of course, means not,
eggno means new, the past tense of no.
In the dictionary this word would be under yinosko, which yinosko means I know.
It's almost the same as the Spanish word conosko, for those of you who speak Spanish.
Yinosko, in the past definite, is eggno.
We're gonna come back to that because I wanna explain more about the aorist past in this
lesson.
But before we do, let's go on to verse 11 here, ista itia, is is a preposition that we've
already seen a few times in this passage, it usually means into or unto, it can also
mean other things like for, et cetera.
But here it means unto, ista itia, unto his own.
Now let's talk about this phrase, or these words, ista itia.
We have an English word idiom, which is I-D-I-O-M, and an idiom is something that people say
in a certain language that doesn't really translate well into other languages.
It's idiomatic, it's an expression that people use.
For example, if I said it's raining cats and dogs outside, that's an idiom in American
English, but if I were to translate that into German literally or translate that into Spanish
literally, people wouldn't understand what I was saying because they don't have that
idiom or that expression.
So you can think of an idiom as a certain group of people's own way of speaking.
They have their own way of speaking, they use certain idioms.
That might help you remember the Greek word here.
We see it in two forms here.
Both are plural, one of them is neuter and one of them is masculine.
Ta-ithia is the neuter plural, and i-ithi is the masculine plural.
So it means the one's own, all right?
So basically, unto his own, ta-ithia.
So it's saying unto his own, is-ta-ithia, il-then, and of course we know that il-then
is came.
Again, aorist definite past.
It's the past tense of erhome.
Then it says here, ke-i-ithi and his own, ofton, him, notice same word here and here,
ou, not, or did not, parellavon, which means received.
Now there are a lot of aorist verbs in this, let me just underline them for you quickly.
This is an aorist, egenito, and then this is an aorist, agno, this is aorist, il-then,
and this is aorist, parellavon.
So let's talk a little bit about the aorist past tense in Greek, also known as the definite
past.
I like to call it the simple past because it's just the simple, basic way of just saying
that something happened.
So let's talk a little bit about it.
First of all, you'll notice that these aorist forms of verbs look dramatically different
than their present tense forms.
For example, we have agno here.
That is the past tense of yinosko, very different than yinosko.
Here we have parellavon, parellavon comes from the dictionary form para lambano, which
means I receive, which is just basically lambano with the prefix of para tagged onto the front
of it.
You say, well how in the world do I figure out that il-then is coming from ergome, they're
dramatically different.
Agno is dramatically different than yinosko.
Well, a lot of times when you're looking up Greek words in a dictionary or a grammar book
or whatever reference materials that you're using, you'll often find verbs listed with
their principal parts, especially when they are irregular verbs.
And you'll see a lot of times six principal parts for each verb, if it has all six parts.
And those six principal parts will help you to be able to conjugate a verb in all different
ways and to be able to get an idea of what that verb is going to look like in different
forms.
For example, if we took the verb lambano, which means I receive, the first of the six
principal parts is going to be the present, which is just the basic lambano.
The second is going to be the future, liposome.
The third is going to be elebon, which is the aorist past or the definite past.
So basically, if you find a verb and it's got the six principal parts listed, the third
one is the one that you're going to want to look at to get an idea of the aorist past
or definite past.
Then there are going to be three other principal parts, which is why I put these little dots
here.
But I don't want to go into those right now because we're trying to keep it simple and
just focus on the definite past.
But if we were to talk about all six of the principal parts, it would be present, future,
aorist, then it would be perfect, active, that would be the fourth, then it would be
perfect, passive, or middle, and then the last would be the aorist passive.
But those four, five, and six we don't need to worry about right now.
It's easy to remember the first three are present, future, past, and this is the definite
past, the aorist past.
And you say, what do you mean by aorist past or definite past or simple past?
Well, when you're expressing the past tense in Greek, you can express it as an aorist
past, but you can also express it with the imperfect past.
Now, if you know Spanish, this will be really easy for you because Spanish has pretty much
the same thing.
Do you remember in high school Spanish class you'd learn about the two different past tenses
being different, the imperfect and the preterite?
Well, if you look at the differences in Spanish between the preterite and the imperfect, that's
pretty much the same as the difference between aorist and imperfect when it comes to the
past tense in biblical Greek.
So if you already have that background in Spanish, that'll help you.
But let me just explain it to you this way, and I'll just give you just roughly the difference
in these two past tenses.
Roughly, generally speaking, the imperfect is something that was ongoing or repeated
in the past, and of course, this is just a generalization, whereas the aorist is more
just something that happened.
It's just an event that took place.
Now, a lot of times this can be tricky because often in a sentence, one event will be a backdrop
for another.
So let me give you an example.
Let's say I was waiting at the bus when I dropped my lunch.
Well, when I was waiting at the bus, that's something that was an ongoing action.
It was a backdrop for another action, which was me dropping my lunch.
So while I was waiting at the bus, I dropped my lunch.
I dropped my lunch.
That would be the aorist.
It's just something that I did.
It's just something that happened.
Just a past tense, I dropped it.
Whereas I was waiting was the ongoing.
That would be imperfect past, that would be an example of that.
A lot of people get mixed up though because when they see something that's imperfect,
they say, oh, that was ongoing like it was going on for a really long time.
I might have only been waiting at that bus stop for 30 seconds, and that might have been
the only time in my life that I ever waited at that bus stop, but a lot of people will
make the mistake when they see a verb that's in an imperfect past tense, oh, that was repeated,
that was habitual, that was ongoing, and they draw a lot of conclusions from that that just
frankly aren't there.
If I said while I was waiting for the bus, I dropped my lunch, you can't just infer from
that that, oh, I habitually waited at that bus stop, or I was repeatedly waiting at that
bus, or I was there for a really long time.
I might have been there for 30 seconds one time in my life, but you'll hear a lot of
preachers do this where they go back to the Greek and they say, oh, this verb is ongoing.
This is repeated.
This is habitual, and they'll draw all kinds of theological conclusions from that just
because they don't really understand how these verb tenses work in the original language.
I think people who speak Spanish would probably have a better understanding of this.
In fact, a verb could be in the imperfect tense and be something that really happened
quickly.
For example, I could say, as I sneezed, the bus arose.
Now, as I sneezed would be imperfect because it was ongoing in the sense that it is a backdrop
for another event taking place.
As I sneezed, the bus pulled up.
The bus pulled up would be in the aorist, and as I sneezed would be imperfect, even
though the sneeze might have only lasted for a second.
It wasn't habitual.
It wasn't repeated.
We don't want to go too crazy with our understanding of these two verb tenses.
Just understand that it has to do with what perspective we're speaking from.
Imperfect, if we think about, for example, the biblical definition of perfect, which
is complete.
In James 1, it says, but let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect
and entire, wanting nothing.
Something that is perfect, according to the Bible, is something that's not lacking anything.
It's complete.
It's entire.
If I said I were eating the entire pizza, I'm saying I'm eating a complete pizza.
The imperfect is something that is incomplete or not finished yet.
That's why it's called imperfect.
So if I said as I sneezed, the bus pulled up, the sneeze was incomplete as the bus is
pulling up, so that's why from that perspective I'm using an imperfect verb.
I hope that makes sense to you, but just to generalize it, the imperfect is the ongoing
repeated habitual, and the aorist is just a simple past, definite past, something that's
completed, something that just happened.
It's perfect.
It's done.
And again, I'm trying not to get too complicated.
I'm simplifying things and generalizing things to help you to understand the concept here
of an aorist versus an imperfect past tense.
So one of the things that you'll notice about these aorist forms that we're looking at here,
or the definite past forms, is that they often start with epsilon.
And in fact, that epsilon is kind of tagged onto a verb where it normally wouldn't be.
For example, yinome becomes egeneto, and it gets this epsilon.
And then we've got yinosko gets this epsilon tagged on, eggno.
Now it might be a little harder to see on this verb, but really the exact same thing
is going on with paralavon because of the fact that this is a compound word.
It comes from para lambano.
So that prefix, para, is tagged onto this verb, lambano, I receive.
And if we go to the principal parts of lambano, we go to the third one, which is our definite
past aorist, look what it is, elavon.
And right here, what do we see within this word, elavon?
So basically the para has just been shortened to basically par.
So instead of being para lambano becoming para elavon, that's a mouthful, so it just
becomes para elavon.
So just if you cover up the para, you have elavon, which is the third principal part
of lambano.
So again, we see the telltale epsilon being added onto the front of the word.
So we've got here egeneto, eggno, elavon.
And it follows that same pattern.
Now sometimes what you'll see tagged on to the front of one of these aorist paths, or
sometimes the initial letters of the word, if they're vowels, will morph into this is
the eta.
So here it starts with eta instead, ilthen, ok?
Echome becomes in the aorist definite past, ilthen.
But what you're going to see most is the epsilon.
So just be aware of that telltale epsilon being tagged on the front.
That's not the only thing that the epsilon is tagged on to, but that'll help you in the
beginning to start getting used to these past tenses with that epsilon.
Because if you see a word in the past tense and you're like, man, what is that word?
One of the things you can do is just kind of eliminate the epsilon in your mind and
see what you're left with, and then it starts to look like something that you're a little
more familiar with sometimes, ok?
So that's just a little tip with that.
So let's talk about some of these.
Elavon should remind you, because this is of course plural because it's saying his own,
which is a plural term here, he knew him not.
So this is a third person plural.
They knew him not.
Well a little bit earlier in the passage, remember the Bible said the light shineth
in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not?
The darkness is singular.
So comprehended is singular, and if you remember, hopefully you're memorizing these verses as
we go, the word was katellaven, ok?
And katellaven came from kattalambano.
And kattalambano is going to be real similar to paralambano.
And it's going to come from this same form, elavon, but because it's singular third person
as opposed to plural third person, instead of being elavon, it was elaven, alright?
So elaven, elavon, so you can see how knowing this principle part makes it pretty easy to
get all the conjugations you need.
So paralavon here, earlier in the passage we had katellaven, ilthen we've seen a few
times, agno.
By the way, agno, a good way to remember that word, is our English term agnostic.
Because what's an agnostic?
An agnostic is someone who's saying, I don't know whether God exists.
An atheist is someone who is just anti-God, they are saying there is no God.
The a on the front of theist is a negating prefix.
So atheist means basically one who is not believing in God.
Because of course God is theos, right?
So we've got a, and then we've got a word derived from theos, and then the ist on the
end means one who believes it.
So atheist is one who does not believe in God, whereas an agnostic is one who doesn't
know.
And it comes from ginosko, or ginosko, agno, and it means basically just not knowing, agnostic.
A meaning not, ginosko, you know, coming from ginosko or to know, I know.
So that just might help you to remember agno and ginosko and those different forms.
So a person who's an agnostic, they're not saying that there's no God, they're saying
well I don't know if there's a God.
And usually they'll say I don't know if there's a God and no one can know whether God exists.
That's how my wife was before she got saved.
Before I met her she was pretty much an agnostic.
She didn't just vehemently say there's no God, but she didn't really know if there is
a God or not.
So that's how a lot of people are these days.
So the whole verse again, endokosmo in keokosmos diaptu eenetou, keokosmos afton uch agno, istah
idya irthen kei idi afton uperelavon.
Next week we're going to talk about John chapter 1 verse 12.