Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona,
and today I want to teach you your first Greek Bible verse, and this is probably the most
famous Bible verse from the Greek New Testament, which is John 1.1, what we know in English
as in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
So hopefully you've got your Greek New Testament, your Textus Receptus, the best place to get
it is from the Trinitarian Bible Society.
Just Google Trinitarian Bible Society, you can order it for 10 or 12 bucks from them,
and that'll be the exact Greek text underlying the King James Bible, so that way what you'll
have in your Greek New Testament will be identical to what you have in your English King James
Bible.
There won't be any discrepancies or corruption.
So you want to get a Textus Receptus, and here's the verse, John 1.1, and so we're going
to go through this in Greek, and I'm going to explain it now.
Hopefully you already know the alphabet and understand that, but I'm going to first start
by just explaining some of these other little markings that you may or may not be able to
see on the board here.
First of all, any word that starts with a vowel, okay, it's going to have like a little
apostrophe up above it, and sometimes it's facing one way, and sometimes it's facing
the other way, okay.
That is called the breathing marks.
Now, modern Greek speakers do not pronounce those.
So the good news is you can pretty much just ignore those, okay, because, you know, I believe
that we should probably use modern Greek pronunciation.
That's all I use, and so that's what I'm teaching, but these little commas that either go forward
or backward up above the words that start with a vowel, those are breathing marks that
in modern Greek pronunciation we're going to ignore those.
That's the good news.
But then what you'll also see is accent marks, okay.
Some of those accent marks look like typically what we think of an accent mark like in Spanish,
either going forward or backwards, and then some of them look sort of like the Spanish
tilde above this letter, for example, and those accent marks, they tell us where to
put the stress on a word, where to put the accent, which syllable to accent when we pronounce
that word.
So here's how this verse is going to be pronounced.
And arjí in ologos, whoops, forgot a letter here.
And arjí in ologos que ologos in proston theon que theos in ologos, okay.
So you notice I'm putting the stress or the accent on the accented syllables.
En arjí, okay, so the accent is on the last syllable in this word arjí.
En arjí in ologos, and notice in logos I'm putting the stress on the first syllable because
that's where the accent mark is.
En arjí in ologos que ologos in proston theon.
So notice the word for God, theon, the accent is on the second syllable, that's where the
mark is.
Ton theon que theos in ologos.
So let me just explain the words here and what they mean.
En arjí is in the beginning, okay.
Now this is a pretty easy word to learn, arjí, because we have the word archaeology.
And what is archaeology?
You know, they're digging up things that are very old.
You could say it's the study of beginnings, okay, archaeology.
So arjí means beginning, pretty easy word.
En arjí, in the beginning, in ologos, was the word, this o here is the word the, okay.
So en arjí in ologos, in the beginning was the word.
Que ologos, que means and, que ologos, and the word, in proston theon.
En means was, pros in this context means with, ton theon is the God, okay.
Sometimes in Greek the word the will occur in front of God in places where we wouldn't
put it in English, you know, it's just a difference between English and Greek.
We don't say the God very often, but in Greek sometimes they use the word the differently
than we use the word Greek in English.
So it's que ologos, in proston theon, and again we're using modern Greek pronunciation.
Que ologos, in proston theon means and the word was with God or the God, ton theon, okay.
And then the last phrase here says que theos, and God, in ologos, was the word.
Now if you remember in English this says the beginning was the word and the word was
with God and the word was God.
Now you'll notice that in the Greek New Testament it says and God was the word.
Now don't let that confuse you or bother you and say, oh, it's different in the Greek.
It's not different.
It's only different to those who don't understand the language.
You know, people who don't know Greek but then they try to look at the Greek New Testament
and try to find places where they can correct or change the King James.
You know, it's just that they don't understand the language.
And let me just explain to you something about Greek.
In Greek the word order is not the same as it is in English.
You know, in English the word order is very important, you know, subject, verb, direct
object.
Well in Greek because of the way the language is inflected you can move things around and
get the exact same meaning.
You can basically instead of saying, you know, for example, I hit the ball, you could say,
you know, the ball hit I but you don't mean that the ball is hitting you.
You know, the way the words are inflected in Greek you're still saying I hit the ball.
You're just putting in a different word order.
So the word order is a lot less rigid in Greek.
You know, things can be moved around.
So basically what I'm trying to say is that saying,
is not any different at all from saying, you know,
I mean, it's not really any different.
I mean, you're just putting in a different order doesn't really matter, okay?
So it's saying the exact same thing that the word was with God and that the word was God,
okay?
Theos in ologos, okay, is how that's going to be pronounced.
This is a good verse to memorize, probably the most famous verse in the Greek New Testament.
So we talked about the word arhi and we talked about the word logos means the word, okay?
Pretty famous words.
Now you'll notice that with the word theos here, theos means God.
Now theos should remind you of the word theology, for example.
So this is another one that's pretty easy because we derive our word theology from theos.
But you'll notice that these two words have a slight difference here, okay?
Theos ends in an s, theon ends in an n.
They both mean God, but the reason why this one ends in an s and this one ends in an n
or ni, as we would say it in Greek, is that this one right here is in the nominative case
and this one right here is in the accusative case.
Now you say, what in the world does that mean, nominative case, accusative case?
Well in English, we have things that are the subject of a sentence and then we have things
that are the direct object of a sentence.
But for us, that word would not change, okay?
For example, if I wanted to use my example from earlier, you know, I hit the ball, okay?
In this sentence, I would be the subject, hit would be the verb, and then the ball is
the direct object.
Now, if I wanted to say the ball went over the fence, well now ball is the subject of
the sentence, right?
But it's still ball, it doesn't change.
You know, whether I'm hitting the ball and it's the object or whether the ball is going
over the fence, then the ball is the subject of that sentence.
We don't change the word ball, it's still just ball, okay?
But see this word I right here?
I hit the ball.
When it's a subject, it's I, but we do change the word I when I becomes the object.
If I said someone hit me, notice that I has now become me, okay?
If I said I went over the fence, I'm the subject, it's I.
But if I said the ball hit me, now I'm the object, so it becomes me, okay?
So in Greek, nouns change based upon whether they're the subject or the object, okay?
So for example, just as I becomes me, the ball doesn't change.
In Greek, God as a subject is going to look a little bit different than God as an object,
okay?
Now, God here is not a direct object, but God here is the object of a preposition because
this is the phrase the word was with God, okay?
With is a preposition, pros is the word for with that's used in this verse, okay?
So because God here is the object of a preposition, it needs to become theon, not theos, which
would be when it's the subject, such as God was the word or the word was God, where it
is a predicate nominative or it is nominative because it's the subject, now it needs to
become theon because it's an object of a preposition.
So it's in the accusative case, okay?
So when a word is being used as the subject in Greek, it's a nominative case.
If it's a predicate nominative, as it is right here in the phrase the word was God, if it's
a predicate nominative, it's again a nominative case, subject, nominative case.
But when it's an object, such as a direct object, or the object of certain prepositions
of which pros is one, then it's going to be in the accusative case.
So theos becomes theon, okay?
And everything else in this verse is pretty straightforward, right?
I mean that's probably the only thing that would kind of throw you for a little bit of
a loop when you first look at this verse.
Everything else is pretty straightforward.
It's pretty basic.
So let's go through it one more time.
And are he in ologos, que ologos in pros ton theon, que theos in ologos.