Greek I

Greek 1

Instructor: Justin Barber, Ph.D.
Email: jbarber@iliff.edu

The middle voice typically appears where the subject of a sentence acts upon her/his/its own behalf. For example, "The bird is bathing [itself]." Or "I am shaving [myself]." In both of these examples, the subject of the sentence is both performing and receiving the action. The subject and (implied) object are one and the same thing or person.

The Greek middle forms largely overlap with the Greek passive forms. More specifically, the middle forms and the passive forms are exactly the same in the present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect tenses. So πιστεύομαι could mean either "I am believed" (passive voice) or "I believe for myself" (middle voice). Since you have already started learning the passive forms for these tenses, you will not need to learn any new forms for these particular tenses. You just need to know that whenever you see a passive form in these tenses, it could just as well be a middle form. You will need to use the context of the verb and your knowledge of the verb to help you decide.

The future and aorist tenses, however, have middle forms that differ from their passive forms. Remember that the future and aorist passive forms use the -θη- morpheme (as in ἐπιστεύθην, "I was believed"), which occurs strictly in the passive voice. The middle forms of future and aorist tenses are declined as follows (as you might expect by now given your knowledge of other middle/passive forms):

 Future Middle Indicative

Singular

Plural

1st Person

πιστεύσομαι

I will believe in myself

πιστευσόμεθα

 We will believe in ourselves

2nd Person

πιστεύσῃ

You will believe in yourself

πιστεύσεσθε

You will believe in yourselves 

 3rd Person

πιστεύσεται

He/she/it will believe in his-/her-/itself

πιστεύσονται

 They will believe in themselves

Aorist Middle Indicative

Singular

Plural

1st Person

ἐπιστευσάμην

I believed in myself

ἐπιστευσάμεθα

We believed in ourselves

2nd Person

ἐπιστεύσω
(orig. -σασο)

You believed in yourself

ἐπιστεύσασθε

You believed in yourselves

3rd Person

ἐπιστεύσατο

he/she/it believed in his-/her-/itself

ἐπιστεύσαντο

They believed in themselves

Note that in each of the translations, the subject performs the action of the verb and also in some way receives the action of the verb. (You might also translate these forms as "I will believe on my own behalf" or "I will believe for myself" etc.) Can you translate the following sentences? (Note that tenses other than future or aorist have forms that could be either middle or passive.)

παρασκευάσεται εἰς πόλεμον.

οἱ δοῦλοι . . . καὶ ἐθερμαίνοντο (< θερμαίνω, I warm).

Μαριὰμ γὰρ τὴν ἀγαθὴν μερίδα (part) ἐξελέξατο (< ἐκλέγω, I choose).

δέξασθε τὸν . . . λόγον.

οὐ ἐβαπτίσατο πρὸ τοῦ ἀρίστου (meal).

Course Overview : Welcome to Greek 1, an introduction to Koine Greek! For some of you, this course might fill you with trepidation. Ancient Greek? Online? For others, it might excite you. This is something you have wanted to do for a long time! And for still others, it may generate a lackluster response. Perhaps the course suits your busy schedule, and that is just the sort of thing you need right now. Whatever your reason for taking this course, I am thrilled that you have joined me as we attempt to read and understand--through the Greek language--a world quite different from and foreign to our own. I hope that this course will inspire you to learn much more than an arcane language. I hope it will inspire you to understand the way early Christians and Jews assembled their world through the particulars of Koine Greek.

Learning a Language Online : Some of you may be wondering how learning an (ancient) language online will work. Perhaps you have had or heard of a similar experience that did or did not work well. (If you have had such an experience, I would love to know.) In short, this course is what you and your classmates make it. Learning is an immensely complex task, and learning a language sometimes even more so. Some of you have a good idea of how you learn best. If you do, I want you to shape this course in a way that corresponds with your knowledge of the way you learn. On the other hand, if you need some guidance, I would be happy to provide it to you based upon what has worked for students in the past. In large part, you will be responsible for your own learning in this course. We have the opportunity to study ancient Greek, the world that created it, and the world it helped create. What excites you about this topic? My goal is to give you as much agency as I can in order to free you to learn as much as you desire to learn about this fascinating topic. I have taught Greek online before (and several times residentially). I will serve as your guide.

Requirements : You will create a learning agreement with me in the second week of the course. This learning agreement will determine how and what you learn in this course. (Details to follow.) Some of you may be worried about how I will evaluate you at the end of the course. I want your motivation to learn Greek to come from your own interests and passions and not from how I might reward or punish you with a grade. At the end of the course, I will ask you what grade you feel you have earned in light of your learning agreement. If I feel that your assessment is too critical of your efforts (or too generous), I will let you know. We will negotiate together at that point to see what grade we will submit to the registrar. Do not think of me as a gatekeeper. Rather, consider me a guide and fellow student of the ancient world. I have led students through these waters several times before, so I have a sense of how this process goes.

Course Objectives : This course will not teach you all you need or want to know about Greek. Learning Greek is something you do across a lifetime. And I hope you will! I have created this course to enable you to learn what you would like to learn about ancient Greek and its world. You will know you have learned what you need to learn from this course if you end the course with a preliminary understanding of Greek and its world, and if you end the course with the desire to learn more about ancient Greek and the people who spoke it.

Office Hours : I am happy to meet with you as you have need. I plan to start a Slack channel that I hope you will all join. Slack is generally the fastest way to hear back from me. I am also available by other means (email, Google Hangouts, etc.).

Required Text:

No books are required for the Fall quarter. I will be introducing you to Greek here in Canvas. Throughout the course, I will point you to a couple of the very best grammars and lexicons, which are available (for free) online. If you would prefer to learn from a more traditional grammar, I would be happy to have you use the following grammar:

Croy, N. Clayton. A Primer of Biblical Greek. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2011. (ISBN-13: 978-0802867339)

I have used a number of introductory (biblical and Classical) Greek grammars in the past. Unfortunately, none of them suit our needs for this course here at Iliff. The biblical Greek grammars move too slowly for our purposes, and the Classical grammars use a vocabulary quite different from the vocabulary of the New Testament. The arrangement of topics I take here is based upon Hardy Hansen and Gerald M. Quinn's Greek: An Intensive Course (Fordham University Press, 1992), which is one of the best Classical Greek grammars (if not the best) in English to date. This arrangement will allow us to learn the most important aspects of Greek grammar very early in the course. Learning these concepts early in the course will help you remember them better. Additionally, for those of you who only take one quarter of Greek, learning these concepts early will ensure that you get those concepts that are most useful for exegesis. Our vocabulary work will largely focus on the vocabulary of the New Testament.

Recommended Books:

Danker, Frederick W., Walter Bauer, and William Arndt. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament  and Other Early Christian Literature . 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. (ISBN-13: 978-0226039336)

Danker, Frederick W. and Kathryn Krug. The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. (ISBN-13: 978-0226136158)

Nestle, Eberhard, Erwin Nestle, Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, and Universität Münster. Novum Testamentum Graece. 28 Aufl., Stuttgart 2012. (ISBN-13: 978-1619700307 )

Van Voorst, Robert E. Building Your New Testament Greek Vocabulary . Resources for Biblical Study. 3rd ed. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001. (ISBN-13: 978-0884140429)

Welcome! Please see my video below.

Introduction to the Course

Also, consider adding yourself to the course slack channel here. Slack is a great way to have conversations, ask me (or your classmates) questions, or otherwise get a hold of me. Let me know if you have any trouble setting it up!

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