Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today I want to go over with you James 1-1 from the Greek New Testament.
In English this verse says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the
twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
Now let's go through this word by word.
The first word here, James, in Greek is Jacobos, and you'll notice it's very similar to the
name Jacob.
That's because the name Jacob and the name James are both the same name in the original
languages.
Words just change, names change over time and as they go from one language to another.
So we say James, but in the original it's Jacobos, okay, which is the same as the name
Jacob.
Jacobos, fau, ke, kiriu, isu, hristu, lulos, tesdodeka, philes, tesentidiaspora, herin.
Alright?
So, fau, ke, kiriu, isu, hristu should stand out to you right away as being in the genitive
case.
If you don't know what the genitive case is, go back over the lesson from Mark 1-1 where
we saw those masculine singular genitives that ended in this ending, this omikron epsilon
ending, that telltale sign of the genitive case.
And if you remember the genitive case is either possessive or it corresponds to our English
preposition of, alright?
So theos means God, theu means of God, alright?
So what this says is Jacobos, James, theu, of God, ke means and, kiriu means of Lord,
in this case of the Lord, even though they don't use the word the the same way we do
in English.
But ke kiriu, of the Lord, because kirios is Lord, so in the genitive it becomes kiriu,
isu, hristu, Jesus Christ, so this is one unit here, kiriu, isu, hristu, of the Lord
Jesus Christ, okay?
All in genitive because it's all one unit, okay?
Then finally, right here, we have our word in the nominative case, servant, zulos, okay?
So what this is literally saying is, James, of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, servant.
Notice how different the word order is in Greek.
The Greek word order is a lot more flexible than it is in English, so a lot of times things
come at you in an order that you're not really expecting.
We of course in English say, James, a servant, of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, so notice
this is moved around.
But you can notice these os endings here, that masculine nominative case ending.
This is a restatement of who James is.
He's James, a servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's saying who he is, okay?
Now this word lulos is pretty easy to remember as being servant if you know the word doula,
okay?
I know a lot about childbirth because my wife has given birth seven times and she's expecting
again, and a doula is a woman who helps out at a childbirth, okay?
And so she's serving, she's a servant, she's helping out the woman who's giving birth,
and doula is basically just a feminized, Americanized version of this Greek word lulos, which means
servant, okay?
So let's look at the next half of the verse here.
It says, tes dodeca philes tesenti diaspora sheren, all right?
Now I've underlined some of these diphthongs for you to help you notice them in the second
half of the verse here, and it's this alphayota diphthong that I want to draw attention to.
Now we went over the Greek alphabet in lesson two.
We talked about how this alphayota diphthong makes the same sound as epsilon, okay?
So whenever you see alphayota as a diphthong, and of course we're doing modern Greek pronunciation,
you pronounce it like an epsilon, okay?
And so this is gonna be pronounced tes dodeca philes tesenti diaspora sheren, all right?
So all of those alphayota diphthongs are pronounced like epsilons, okay?
Now this word tes is the again, but this time it is in the plural dative case, and
if you remember, dative case answers the question to whom or for whom.
So when we see tes dodeca philes, these words mean the 12 tribes, but because they're in
dative case, it becomes to the 12 tribes, all right?
Now dodeca, the word for 12, you'll notice this deca right there.
That's the Greek word for 10, and we have words like decathlon, 10 events, right?
Decalog or even the metric system, decaliter, decameter, decagram.
So deca means 10, dodeca is 12, all right?
That though at the beginning there takes it from 10 to 12.
Dodeca philes, which is tribes, tes.
These two words are the same, okay?
This is the again.
But in this case, it's functioning as that or which, okay?
So it's saying to the 12 tribes that n means in, we've already gone over that word, t is
the again.
It's got a Yoda subscript.
What case do you think it's in?
You should know by now that when we see that Yoda subscript in nouns and adjectives and
pronouns that it's a telltale sign of that singular dative case.
So n, the preposition is usually followed by the dative case.
Like for example in John 1, 1, in the beginning, n are he, that are he had that Yoda subscript
because it's also in dative case.
And t, diaspora.
Now what does diaspora mean?
Well we have the English word diaspora, which is coming from the same root word as dispersion
or to disperse.
And the diaspora is talking about the children of Israel who've been scattered abroad or
scattered throughout the world.
In English this verse says to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad.
And this diaspora is referring to that, okay?
So in Greek it's worded as in the diaspora or in the dispersion, okay?
It's a lot easier to understand the way it's worded in the King James when it just says
the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad and has the identical meaning, okay?
So tes, enti, diaspora, and then there's a comma again, sherin, okay?
Now this word sherin means greeting, right?
That's how it is in the King James, greeting.
Notice these last three letters here.
These show us that this word is an infinitive, okay?
Now an infinitive is in English the verb preceded by the preposition to.
For example, to love, okay?
To do, to learn.
When we express verbs like that in English with to in front of them, those are infinitives,
all right?
Well in Greek the infinitive has this ending right here, this ene ending.
This word right here means greeting.
Now this is still used today in Greece as a greeting.
If we're speaking modern Greek, if we were in Greece, we would greet someone by saying
sherete, all right, which is another form of this word.
Not the infinitive form, but a different form.
Sherete means hello.
It's just a way to greet people.
Let's say you wanted to say hello sir, you'd say sherete kyrie, all right?
Now what's kyrie?
Sherete kyrie.
Kyrie is the same word as this right here.
Lord, okay?
Kyrios becomes kyrie when you're calling someone by that name.
So when you say in Greece, sherete kyrie, you're saying hello sir, all right?
Because the word for sir and the word lord are the same word in Greek.
In fact, it's that way in most languages.
For example, in Spanish, if you want to call someone sir, you call them señor.
And the lord in Spanish is el señor.
That's how it is in the Bible.
That's how people refer to it.
It's the same way in German.
It's the same way in Hungarian.
In fact, most languages that I've studied use the same word for sir and lord.
In English, we use two different words.
But in Greek, you would say to someone when you're greeting them,
if they're a man, sherete kyrie, all right?
Hello, sir.
So this word is also used in modern Greek.
If you meet someone and you want to say please to meet you, you say shero poli.
All right?
And so that's the first person singular form of the word,
which would be the dictionary form of this word.
So if you wanted to look this up in a Greek dictionary,
you'd look up shero, ending in omega.
All right, so that's greeting.
So let's go over it one more time.
Ya kobos teu ke kyrieu i suhristu dulos.
Tes dodeca philes tesenti diaspora sherin.