Lesson 40.1 — Getting Serious About Verbs:
Present Active Indicative Word Formation
Credentials and Recognition for Your Work
To borrow from Acts 3:6, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have
give I thee." I can teach you to read Greek, but I have no recognized
certificate or degree I can offer you for what you are learning.
Your actual accomplishments are your only credentials. I suggest that
you keep your hard copy worksheets that show your progress in translating
the book of Acts. While a three-ring plastic binder will work, I
recommend that you use the ACCO Pressboard Report Cover, Side Bound.
They take up minimal space on your shelf, they are durable, and they last
almost forever. Here are my worksheets from a translation I did of
Galatians over 45 years ago.
You can see that I like to include a loose-leaf divider page that indicates the
content. I put the
binder in my bookshelf bound-side in, and that divider tab is readily
visible when I look at the bookshelf.
If the need arises, you can take your Acts notes to a professional copy
shop. They can remove the pages, scan them, and turn the whole thing
into a PDF file that you can share as needed. You can email this to
people if there is need to demonstrate what what you have accomplished.
So you will not have a degree or certificate in NT Greek, but you have
already translated more of the New Testament than many people who get Master
of Divinity degrees.
Overview of Verbs
Verbs in English are a bit limited, since they only communicate the action
being performed (e.g. "hunting"). More words are needed to be more
precise.
For example, to say “I am hunting,” it requires three words (“I” =
pronoun; “am” = helping/auxiliary verb; “hunting” = main verbal idea).
In contrast, verbs in Greek are very compact. They communicate a
considerable amount of information through a single word.
For example, to communicate the idea of “we are loosing” in Greek, only
one word (λύομεν) is required since Greek
verbs express both person and number through attached endings (in this
example, –ομεν communicates that the verb has
a first person plural subject = “we”).
Person and Number
You are already familiar with the concepts of person and
number in Greek verbs.
The options for the person of the verb are these: first
person (“I” or “we”), second person (“you” [singular or plural]), or
third person (“he/she/it” or “they”).
1st person: The subject is speaking.
2nd person: The subject is being spoken to.
3rd person: The subject is being spoken about.
Similarly, number refers to whether there is only one
person related to the action of the verb (singular → “I,”
“you” sg, or “he/she/it”) or more than one person (plural →
“we,” “you” pl, or “they”).
Voice
Active: The subject performs the action. E.g.
I see.
Middle: The subject both performs and is affected by the
action. E.g.
I see (for myself).
Middle voice is difficult for English speakers, as there is
no equivalent of the Greek middle voice in English. For
that reason, it is often translated the same as an active voice
verb.
The ancient Greeks thought of some actions as being inherently
middle voice. That is, you could not do the action of the
verb without affecting yourself. Hence, some verbs such as
ἔρχομαι (to come/to go) only exist
as middle voice verbs. An active voice version of
ἔρχομαι does not exist.
Passive: The subject receives the action. E.g. I
am seen [by somebody else].
Mood
The indicative mood represents something as certain or
stated (“He went fishing” or “Will he go fishing?”).
Statements in the indicative mood do not necessarily indicate an
objective fact. By using the indicative mood, the author or speaker
is choosing to present his speech as factual, at least for
consideration. Consequently, it is possible for someone to lie or be
mistaken while using the indicative mood.
The subjunctive mood represents something as probable,
contingent, or indefinite (“He might go fishing” or “Whenever he
goes fishing”).
The optative mood, which is fairly rare in the NT, represents
something as possible or hoped for (“I wish he would go fishing”).
The imperative mood represents something as requested or
commanded (“Go fishing” or “Please, go fishing”).
Tense
New Testament Greek has six tenses: present, future, imperfect,
aorist, perfect, and pluperfect. These are sometimes referred
to as "tense-forms", since tense (or "time") is not always packaged
in the verb.
Here are examples in the active voice and indicative mood.
Present
λύω
“I am loosing” or “I loose”
Imperfect
ἔλυον
“I was loosing”
Future
λύσω
“I will loose”
Aorist
ἔλυσα
“I loosed”
Perfect
λέλυκα
“I have loosed”
Pluperfect
ἐλελύκειν
“I had loosed”
Only in the indicative is there any element of time. In
other moods, verbal aspect is totally dominant.
Aspect
Aspect is a difficult concept for me, as a native-English
speaker. I am going to present a slightly different spin on
aspect here from the essay I wrote back in 2014 (which is available
from the menu to the left under Verbs >> Aspect). There are
three kinds of aspect that NT authors have in view.
Imperfective Aspect (present and imperfect tenses):
the author depicts the action as ongoing or in process, without
attention to the action’s beginning or ending.
Perfective Aspect (aorist tense): the author
depicts the action as complete or as a whole. The beginning and
ending of the action (and everything in-between) are included in the
depiction of the action. The perfective aspect describes a given
action simply as occurring or as having occurred without indicating
how the action took place (“it happened”).
Stative (or "State-of-being") Aspect (perfect
and pluperfect tenses): the
author depicts a state of affairs or ongoing relevance resulting
from a previous action or state (“it has happened, and it is
relevant to the present context”). Depending on the context, there
can be more emphasis on the completion of the action or its ongoing
relevance.
A good example of the stative aspect would have to do with the
resurrection of Jesus. It happened in the past, but has
implications for the present.
There is some debate over the significance of the future tense.
It generally DOES seem to relate primarily to future time...and is
undefined in its aspect.
Present Active Indicative of εἰμί
Singular
Plural
1st person
εἰμί
I am
ἐσμέν
We are
2nd person
εἶ
You are
ἐστέ
You (all) are
3rd person
ἐστί(ν)
He/she/it is
ἐισίν
They are
This is a very common verb in the NT, and is irregular. To learn it
you must simply memorize it by wrote.
Assignment
Write this chart out again and again, until you can do it correctly
from memory.
Present Active Indicative of λύω
We have already seen several instances of present active indicative verbs
in the first two chapters of Acts. You have, of course, noticed that
the most common verb tense in Acts is the aorist. This is normal,
since the aorist is the verb tense most commonly used in historical
narrative.
However, present tense verbs have some important functions. One of
them has to do with "chunking" the text. The Gospel writers all make
periodic flips from aorist to the present to signal a division in the text—something
that we today would handle with either a new paragraph, subheading, or
indentation. For instance, in Mark 1:37-38 we read:
And they found him and they are saying to him, “Everyone is seeking you.”
And he is saying to them, “Let us go elsewhere—to the surrounding villages
so that also there I may preach. For this [reason] I came forth.”
It would be a mistake to translate the Greek text mechanically, as above,
because Mark is not using the present tense to indicate that the time frame
suddenly switches to the present.
Rather, he is conforming to a standard ancient method of segmenting his
narrative. Unless you are reading the New Testament in Greek, these subtle
authorial indications of narrative structure are inaccessible to you.
It is time now to get a bit more methodical and learn the pattern of word
suffixes that point to the present active indicative.
Although there are a number of verbs that are irregular, it is still true
that this pattern of word suffixes is found over and over again in the New
Testament. Since λύω is a short verb, it is a
popular one to use when learning verb endings.
Assignment
Write this chart out repeatedly until you can reproduce it from memory.
Include both the Greek word and also the English translation.
Present Active Indicative
Singular
Plural
1st person
λύω
I untie
λύομεν
We untie
2nd person
λύεις
You untie
λύετε
You untie
3rd person
λύει
He/she/it unties
λύουσι(ν)
They untie
I know that memorizing the word formation for εἰμί and λύω
is tedious and difficult. But you are learning a new
language! This is inevitably going to involve some hard work. There
is no getting around that.
Once you feel like you have the present active indicative forms of these two
words memorized, click
for some exercises to help you practice these things.
