Welcome to More Painless Greek, First John. If you're wondering about the title, this is a follow-on course to my introduction to Greek called A Painless Introduction to Greek. So this course, More Painless Greek, is building upon all the concepts, the grammar, and the vocabulary that was part of the first course, again, called A Painless Introduction to Grief. So in this course, we're going to go through the entire book of 1 John, and we're at the very beginning. We're in session number one. So let's get into our agenda for this session. We're going to be learning 14 new vocabulary words, but the good news is 10 of these will occur again in 1 John. And in fact, one of the features of 1 John that makes it such an ideal first complete book to study in Greece is the fact that the vocabulary is somewhat limited and somewhat repetitive. So in this session, we'll learn four nouns, eight verbs, two pronouns. We will walk through the text of 1 John 1, verses one through four. And as we go along, we'll begin thinking at the clause and phrase levels instead of just translating the words. We'll try and broaden the way we think about the text. as we work through. So let's begin with this word, arche. Very appropriately, it means beginning. As you can see, there's a number of other related concepts here. This is a feminine noun of the first declension. And notice that it ends with the eta character. So we would expect it to follow in the singular using that eta. So, arch��, arch��s in the genitive, arch�� with an iota subscript in the dative singular, and arch��n in the accusative singular. And as you recall, the plural form of feminine nouns is essentially standardized regardless of whether they're spelled with an eta or an alpha. So arcti for the nominative plural, arctone for the genitive plural, arctice for the dative plural, and arctos for the accusative plural. And note this one occurs 55 times, so you'll see it fairly often. Next, a word which you may have seen or heard before, poinonia, and this is where we get our idea of fellowship in the ancient world. It also in terms of its secular meaning, meant an association, even a partnership, some sort of relationship. It's also feminine, first declension. Notice it uses the alpha endings. It surprisingly doesn't occur all that often, but it's an important concept in the New Testament. Well, you know, Nia fellowship. Now this one, I'm playing with you just a bit. because I want you to pronounce it and see if you recognize what it is. Ophthalmos. And if you guess, oh, this is like the word for our eye doctor, the ophthalmologist. Yes, indeed. Ophthalmos means eye. It's a masculine noun, second declension, 100 times. So quite likely you'll see this again and again. And then our last noun for this session is para, joy, or delight. It is a feminine noun, first declension again with the alpha endings, 59 occurrences. Now let's look at some verbs. Ahuvo, and you may have seen this verb before, I hear, I listen, grant a hearing, so forth. In the case of the verbs, I'm showing you how often they occur in the different moods. So you can see clearly that it occurs the most in the indicative mood, followed by its use as a partisan. But it's fairly widespread across all the different moods, and occurring 428 times, you'll be seeing this white often. Then we have apongelo. Apongelo. Report or announce, tell, proclaim. This you may recognize in the middle is the word angel or angel, and it has a prepositional prefix on the beginning of it. So it is about the message which is brought by the messenger, which would be the Angelos. And then we have the word grafo, and you can recognize that it has a clear link to our English word graphics and graphing and so forth that has to do with writing, reporting, composing, 191 occurrences Again, something you'll see a lot, and it is often used to refer to the scriptures, particularly what we would call the Old Testament. So in the New Testament, we'll often say, it has been written, and uses this verb, brapho. Then we have the word martyreho. And just in the hearing of that, You sort of recognize martyr, one who gives a testimony. So martyreo is the act of testify, confirming, or attesting, bearing witness. And in fact, the words for testify, testimony, and witness are all very closely related in Greek. Martyr, martyreo, martyria, with the content of the testimonial. We have the verb choropo. This is thought to be one of the older words in the Greek language. And so it declines a bit differently than some of the other verbs. I see, I notice, visit, perceive, so forth. 113 occurrences quite common generally as a perfect form, I have seen. And certainly we'll see in our text that the Apostle John refers to what we have seen, what I have seen. Then the verb, plevorato, to fulfill, complete. And anytime you see these characters, ple, plevor, hopefully recognize some form of this verb, play ra-o. And for whatever reason, I just associate this with a balloon filling up, filling, play ra-o. And then perhaps a rhyming word, fa-le ra-o, becomes visible, revealed, exposed. I make known or I have been made known, I have been exposed, 49 occurrences in the New Testament. And then we have a somewhat obscure verb, but John uses it in these first four verses of his first epistle, selaphato, selaphato. And this looks like some sort of strange underwater creature, but it simply means to touch or to handle, sometimes used in the sense of someone who is blind or in a darkened room, feeling and groping their way along. And for the first time, you see an extra mood here. Notice this verb occurs once as an optative mood verb. It only occurs four times, so that's why I've included this optative use that I don't normally include. That is a mood that was essentially phasing out during the time of the poine language period. It is a mood that conveys a sense of wish or desire, and this verb, say, lefa'o, does occur once in the optative mood. Now we'll look at a few other words. I'm not even sure how to classify this particular one. A metras, it means hour, and it can be used as a pronoun or an adjective. But if you'll notice in the spelling of it, it has that ter morpheme. Notice the teros in the ending. And you may recall that comparative adjectives, that is like bigger, smaller, taller, shorter, all of those typically use this ter ending to indicate their comparative. And the beginning of the word looks very much like chemes, which is a pronoun referring to we or ours. And so it doesn't make any sense in English, but I think of this as our, ours, or more ours. And perhaps it's an intensified form. It only occurs in the plural and you'll see the forms here, so there is no instance of the word haemeteros in its lemma or dictionary form, since it only occurs in the plural, the masculine plural that you'll see is haemeteroi. And notice, not in the genitive, but in the dative, haemeterois. Interestingly, it occurs most frequently in terms of its various forms in the feminine. They met a ra, they met a ron, they met a rice, they met a ran. Then, another word that's more definitely a pronoun, hastis. But notice, I need two words to describe it. It is an indefinite relative pronoun. Now a relative pronoun is not like your aunt Agnes, but relative to something else in the text. This is an indefinite pronoun, because it's not pointing to an exact antecedent. So this is a combination, as you see, of the relative pronoun hos and the indefinite pronoun chis. Now we'll go into some more detail on teis in our second session, when we deal with the text from 1 John chapter one, verse five through 1 John chapter two, verse two. But when we see various forms of hastis, we understand this is whoever, whatever, whichever, one who, one which. So it's just indefinitely referring to some person. Notice 144 occurrences, so you'll run across it fairly frequently. And here we see the various forms, and as my standard pattern is, the forms that do not actually occur in the New Testament, I've put into a gray font, but the darker print are the forms that you will find in the New Testament. And notice in the nominative, singular, neuter, there's something that looks like a typo, hot tea, but it looks like there's an erroneous space in there. Well, you recall, of course, that there is a word, hot tea, a conjunction, that sense because, and to distinguish it from this indefinite relative pronoun, often the publishers of Greek manuscripts will include this extra little space in the nominative singular. So you see the various forms that occur here. And then we are ready to begin looking at our text. In 1 John chapter 1 verse 1, just the first little part, we see these phrases. And obviously you'll notice the darker background on some of the words. Those are the vocabulary words introduced in this lesson. The other words are ones which And we certainly hope you've learned from the prior course. So let's look at the first line here. Ha, ein, ap, arches, ha, ache, poamen. And we see there's a relative pronoun at the very beginning. What was, that's the ein, a form of eini, up our case. You may recall that when certain repositions that end with a vowel come up next to another word that begins with a vowel, that some contraction will occur. That's why the op looks like it has a little apostrophe, which is more of a convention in English. So the omicron of op-pa has dropped off. Pa, ain, up arceis, that is, what was from beginning. Recall that our word arce means beginning, and this form is a genitive singular feminine, again meaning beginning. Then we have the same relative pronoun, but this time it's not capitalized. The first one was capitalized because it's the very beginning of what John has written. What we have heard. So this is a perfect active indicative first person plural of Aku'o. And because it's plural, first person, we would translate this as, we have heard. So on this first line, we have what was from the beginning, what we have heard. And notice from the original form, Aku'o, that some things have shifted around. It looks just a bit different. in this perfect form, there's not reduplication, but that is commonly not included in perfect forms that begin with a vowel. But we do have the kappa, which should remind us of the perfect. What was from the beginning, what we have heard, and that relative pronoun, again, ha, what, or rakhamet, This one may be a bit hard to pick out. This is a perfect, active, indicative, first person plural, of harapo, that verb we learned just a few minutes ago. And I noted at that time that it's often found in the perfect. And in fact, harapo is sometimes labeled an old perfect. In some of its usages, even when it appears as a perfect, it doesn't necessarily have the full meaning of the perfect, simply because it has been used so much in that form. But in this case, it certainly makes sense. John is saying, what we have seen. And note again, first person, plural. Heorakamens. what we have seen, and then look at the last little phrase there, kois ophthalmos haemon. What is ophthalmos? That is a dative plural masculine of ophthalmos, eyes. Whose eyes? Haemon, our eyes. And kois ophthalmos, Althoumois haemon would be in the eyes of us. But of course, we would smooth that out in English, and we would say, with our eyes. And we're familiar with this expression in English. If someone wants to emphasize the fact that they saw something, they might say, I saw this with my own eyes. And that's exactly what John is saying here. What we have seen with our eyes, this wasn't a vision, wasn't an appearance, this is something we actually have seen. Then he continues in the second half of verse one of 1 John chapter one, verse one, A relative pronoun, once again, ha-eth-the-ah-sa-meth-ah, hi-hi-he-res-he-mon-ep-se-le-fa-the-sa. So what do we have here? Again, what or which? Eth-the-ah-sa-meth-ah is an heiress, middle, indicative, first person, plural, what we have seen. This is from Theotama. What we have seen, chai, chai heres, and the hands, heimon, the hands of us, our hands, and then Here's one of our new vocabulary words, apse-la-pe-sau. This is that deep sea creature that looks so odd. Here, we have it in an arist-ective indicative form. It's third person plural. What they, that is, our hands, have touched, what they touched or handle, what our hands touch, handle. And then the second line narrows the scope. John is helping us understand what's important. Peri tu lagu tes zoes, that is concerning or about. Tu lagu The word is a waste of life. Technically, we could say of the life, but obviously in English, we would smooth that out concerning the word of life. All these sensory words John has included to indicate I was really there. I experienced this. in person with my senses. I'm a qualified wits is essentially what he's saying. Then as we move into verse 2 of 1st John chapter 1. Ah remember he had talked about the word of life at the end of verse 1 and here in verse 2 and the life Ephanerothe. What is that? That is an aorist passive indicative third person singular from the word phaneropho. It was manifested or it was revealed. It became visible. That light came visible, that life was manifested, took on physical human form. Of course, John is referring to the incarnation here. The life was revealed, it was manifested. And, hi, second line, he'oratzamen, oh, we've seen this before, So this is a perfect, active, indicative, first-person plural of hora'o, we have seen. And we have seen chai-marturumeh. So this is from our verb marture'o, testify, and it's a first-person plural. Remember that marture'o is an epsilon contract verb. So it's going to interact with the amen ending. So this is, in fact, a resonative indicative, where, again, the last vowel of the stem, that epsilon, has combined with the amen ending, producing umen. So notice that in this little phrase, tai heorotamen is in the perfect tense, what we have seen, then marturumen is in the present tense. We are testifying, we are bearing witness. This is right now in the present. We saw something in the past and it has made a permanent impression on us. Thus the perfect tense is very appropriate. And now we are testifying, we are bearing witness. And continuing to the second part of verse two, and we announce, we proclaim, you see again, that first person plural ending, no changes there. This is from Apongelo, first person plural, present active, indicative. And we announce or we proclaim who mean, to you, to y'all, pain zoane, pain ionia. And we announce to you all the light, the eternal. And of course in English, we'd smooth that out to the eternal light. And then notice the second line begins with this perhaps unfamiliar form, Atis, notice the rough breathing mark above the eta. This is a nominative feminine singular of hestis, that indefinite pronoun. And we can simply understand this as which. That eternal life, what about that eternal life? Which, ein proston patera. Again, this ain is a form of amy, imperfect, which was proston patera, with the father. Pi ephanorothe, amine, and was manifested. Notice the epsilon augment pointing to pastime. It was manifested. It became visible, amine, to us. And then, in verse three, we find another relative pronoun. Ha-he-o-ra-ka-men. And I'm sure you recognize this, again, from ho-ra-o, perfect active indicative, first person plural, what we have seen. Ha-he-o-ra-ka-men. This again is from Aku'o, it's a perfect form, perfect indicative, first person plural. We have seen, we have heard, Akecho'amen. Apangelemen, we announce, just as we've seen before, also to you, who mean. Kina, but now we have a purpose. He's explaining, here's the reason we're doing this. So that also you, Umeis, koinoniyan echeteh meh teymon. So that also you, fellowship, koinoniyan, so this is from the Noun, koinonia, it's an accusative singular feminine form. Fellowship, etete, from echo, it's a subjunctive. You may have met himon, hopefully you recognize that as a form of the preposition meta, with us. We're explaining, we're proclaiming all this so that you also may have fellowship with us. And then John continues, and the fellowship, that fellowship also that is ours, with the Father. And then in the second line, chi meta tu quion, that is, and with the son, au tu of him, Jesu Christu, of course, Jesus Christ. So in a sort of wooden way, and the fellowship also, ours with the father and with the son of him, Jesus Christ. So smoothing that out, we would say our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. And this is an amazing concept to even think about that we as humans, as redeemed humans, may have fellowship with the father and the son. And this concept of fellowship will come in also in the next little section. Finally, then, in verse four, the last verse of this portion, we read, Paitauta grafamen haemes. And tauta, demonstrative pronoun, it's a neuter plural, So we'll typically add the word thing or things to that demonstrative pronoun when it's in the neuter. So John is saying, and these things, grafomen, grafo, I write, grafomen, we write. That's simply a present active indicative, first person plural of grafo, we write a mace. So that, oh, we have another hinnah, a second purpose. And notice that the first time, the first purpose that John gave us with a hinnah clause was for the sake of fellowship. This time he says, so that, heikvah, that's a new word we learned, joy. And the vertical, of course, tells us this is nominative, singular, feminine. The joy of us, our joy, and I think we should understand this in a very broad, inclusive sense, this circle of power that includes the readers and the father and the son so that all of our joy, A, notice that Ada with the Iota subscript, Another form of amy may be pleiromene, and this verb is from our new word pleiro, but this is a perfect middle passive participle, first participle in 1 John, nominative singular feminine, having been fulfilled. And so what he's saying is so that our joy, this collective joy, may be fulfilled for all of us as more and more people join in this circle of fellowship, of koinonia, of partnership in the gospel. Well, I hope this is helpful and a good introduction to 1 John, And we'll continue in our next lesson with the next section in 1 John.