2 Things I Learnt from John 5:18

Read John 5:18 this morning:

 διὰ τοῦτο οὖν μᾶλλον ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἀποκτεῖναι,
ὅτι οὐ μόνον ἔλυεν τὸ σάββατον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πατέρα ἴδιον ἔλεγεν τὸν θεὸν ἴσον ἑαυτὸν ποιῶν τῷ θεῷ.
(John 5:18 GNT)

Ephesians 1:3: is, be or let?

I’m starting a sermon series on Ephesians soon. This is probably the first of a number of posts I’ll write as I think through some of the grammar and syntax of the letter/epistle.

There is no verb in verse 3.  ”Εὐλογητὸς (…) ὁ θεὸς…”. This means we need to supply one in our interpretation and translation of the passage. Clearly the missing verb is a form of ειμι. But there are three options (see Hoehner):

Psalm 127

I preached on Psalm 127 yesterday evening. Preparation was a real struggle. I was not happy with any of the ‘traditional’ understandings of the psalm – so I needed to review them, explain the issues and explain my take on what the Psalm is about.

Grammar Revision

Some notes from my revision of 1st Year Greek:

Word classes – there are 8

• verbs
• nouns
• pronouns
• determiners – e.g. the article
• adjectives
• prepositions
• adverbs
• conjunctions – words that join clauses
• particles – words that don’t change form

Phrase types – there are 5

• verb phrase – a verb/predicate and any dependants
• noun phrase – a noun and any modifiers
• prepositional phrase – headed by a preposition
• adjective phrase – a phrase that modifies a noun
• adverb phrase – a phrase that modifies a verb

Clause elements – there are 7

• subject (S)
• verb/predicate (P)
• direct object (O_d)
• indirect object (O_i)
• subject complement (C_s)
• object complement (C_o)
• adverbial (A)

Clause patterns – there are 5

1. intransitive: S P
2. monotransitive: S P O_d
3. ditransitive: S P O_i O_d
4. copular: S P C_s
5. complex transitive: S P O_d O_c

Examples of the 5 different patterns (from the Greek teacher)

1. She (S) was breathing (P).
2. Jesus (S) healed (P) the blind man (O_d).
3. The disciples (S) had given (P) him (O_i) the loaves (O_d).
4. You (S) are (P) my friends (C_s).
5. They (S) made (P) him (O_d) king (C_o).

First attempt at some reivison: masculine and feminine noun paradigms.

(I’m trying to learn the accents as well as morphology – so let me know any mistakes you spot)

Noun Paradigms