by placing the subject before the verb, and the object after the verb. That’s how we know who is doing what to whom. Greek conveys that same information by changing the ending of the words. So the subject has one kind of ending (we call it nominative) and the object has another kind of ending (called accusative). In addition to nominative and accusative, there are also genitive and dative endings. Remember that the primary function of the genitive is what we call possession, while that of the dative is for indirect object.
We used “Greenglish” to reintroduce the idea of word endings versus word order. Greenglish used an adaptation of the most common Greek noun pattern (second declension). Using the Quick Start Guide (day 6), we looked at the second declension patterns and other common noun patterns in Greek.
Exercise 7
Go back through exercises 1–6. Reread the verses and passages that you read before. Try to stretch for a little more understanding than you had the first time through. As time permits, read a few more of the suggested verses/passages from each exercise that you couldn’t get to the first time through.
Day 8: The (Article)
I mentioned earlier that there was one tiny part of the Quick Start Guide that I recommend you memorize. That one part is the article (those twenty-four little words, all translated “the”). Here they are:
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
| Nom Sg | ὁ | ἡ | τό |
| Gen Sg | τοῦ | τῆς | τοῦ |
| Dat Sg | τῷ | τῇ | τῷ |
| Acc Sg | τόν | τήν | τό |
| Nom Pl | οἱ | αἱ | τά |
| Gen Pl | τῶν | τῶν | τῶν |
| Dat Pl | τοῖς | ταῖς | τοῖς |
| Acc Pl | τούς | τάς | τά |
Why are these twenty-four words so important that they warrant such attention? Because they will serve as lighthouses in the fog of Greek sentences. Sometimes you’ll find yourself uncertain of this or that noun form. But when you locate the article, you can be confident about the case of that word because you definitely know the case of the attached article. Moreover, when you have a ready familiarity with the articles, you can more quickly identify the parts of the sentence. For example, if you know that τήν is the accusative feminine singular article, you will know immediately when you see it that you are looking at the direct object of the sentence.12 The more familiar you are with the articles, the more easily you can make out which part of a Greek sentence is which.
I recommend that you memorize the Greek article by reciting the words out loud, moving across the rows (not down the columns). Why should you read across rather than down? Because reading across highlights the case of each form, whereas reading down highlights the gender. Although both case and gender are important, knowing the case is usually more helpful for understanding the meaning of a Greek sentence.
So, I urge you to memorize the Greek article extremely well. Memorize it so well that the words just roll off your tongue without giving much thought to it. This level of familiarity with the Greek article will pay great dividends in the long run. (Besides that, spending time memorizing is a concrete way of making visible—or should I say, “audible”—progress toward your goal of refreshing your knowledge of NT Greek. Some days ahead, you may feel like you haven’t really learned anything going through all this. But at least you will be able to point to your memorization of the article as tangible progress.)
The article is the only thing in this book that I am asking you to memorize through “brute force.” The rest is accomplished by simply reading and focusing reflectively on your reading.
Exercise 8
Read the articles out loud several times. Read across the rows, not down the columns. Write them out several times. Continue working on these until you can recite them out loud in under thirty seconds.
As time permits, read the following verses. Use the articles to quickly locate the subjects and objects in each verse.
1. Luke 3:21–25
2. Rev 20:7–10
3. Eph 3:8–13
4. 1 John 5:5–12
12. You may remember that there are other uses of the cases than the ones we discussed so far, so it is possible that this is not the direct object. Nevertheless, this only serves to strengthen the point—it is all the more useful to know the articles so that you can have great confidence in your identifications of the cases of words.
Day 9: Noun Patterns (Again)
Congratulations on your progress through this forty-day journey! Are things beginning to come back to you? After yesterday’s focus on articles, plus the noun overview from a few days ago, you might be recognizing a lot of the noun endings that you encounter in your exercises and fifteen-minute bonus time. (You are keeping up with that fifteen-minute personal commitment, aren’t you? Oh! I said I wasn’t going to mention it again . . . oops!)
Well, it’s now time to tackle one of the big mental hurdles of the refresher—the dreaded third declension. If you had a typical journey through your beginning Greek course, you were doing great for the first five to seven weeks. You had conquered the notion that case endings, not word placement, determined which word was the subject, which word was the object, and so forth. You had become fairly good at recognizing the case endings for common masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. You were beginning to think that maybe all the horror stories about how hard Greek is were just not going to happen to you—but then third declension hit.
All of a sudden all those familiar endings started shifting on you. What used to be “for sure” a nominative, now just might be a genitive. And what your teacher had told you was always a genitive plural now shows up as a nominative singular! How can this be? Suddenly, panic began to set in, and you began to doubt you would ever be able to read Greek—real Greek.
If that scenario even remotely describes you, you may be feeling the third-declension panic rising within you again right now! You may have read the words “third declension” in the first paragraph and felt like giving up again. But if you have read this far, that means you have successfully fought off that first wave of panic! That’s a step in the right direction, because you really can handle these things. You can do it, and I’m here to help!
Let me begin by saying that you do not have to completely master the third declension in order to enjoy reading New Testament Greek. You don’t have to spend hours upon hours memorizing all the possible third-declension endings before you can begin to read the New Testament again. In fact, I estimate that you will be able to handle about 90 percent of third declension words if you simply remember the articles (which you’ve got down cold now) and the normal third declension endings. The last 10 percent you can get from context (usually) or by looking it up (only once in a blue moon). So you’ve already conquered the articles, and now let’s look at that important “normal” third declension ending pattern.
But first, let me introduce you to a friend of mine. Her name is Sashia Es-own-sea-as. She likes to have her name repeated out loud over and over every time someone thinks of her! Sashia Es-own-sea-as . . . Sashia Es-own-sea-as . . . Sashia Es-own-sea-as.
Okay, okay, so you’re thinking Sashia
