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jannamar
Posts: 1
Joined: May 10th, 2015, 7:40 am

Hi everyone!

Post by jannamar »

I'm new here and I think this is going to be a wonderful place to pursue my quest; a quest to understand and appreciate the beauty and exceedingly rich culture of the Greek languge.
That brings me to the reason Í want to study this language. I have, along the years of my life, come to realise that sometimes translations of messages do not depict the true and intended meanings of the (most often encripted messages). The more recent testament of the Bible was written in the Greek language, which spurs my interest in studying it, to understand the inital messages give out even before the translations were made.
Anyway, I believe there are great people here too who would encourage, rebuke, correct and make me more efficient in the things i'm out searching for.
για τώρα είναι αντίο
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Hi everyone!

Post by Stephen Hughes »

jannamar wrote:The more recent testament of the Bible was written in the Greek language, which spurs my interest in studying it,
There are many ways to study Greek. Choose a path that you reasonably think you can follow, and stick with it. Skip the difficult bits if you are getting bogged down on them, if they're important they'll come up again, if they don't come up again they weren't important - either way, it's okay to skip them till your ready.

I suggest that you get a beginner's grammar and stick at it.

As for structuring your learning... Learning a little Greek often is what is often thought to be best practice for learning. That having been said, being a Sunday afternoon Greek scholar is a worthwhile approach too.

If you have a long study period each week, that can be good to let you concentrate and digest the language. On the other hand, memorisation happens best by regular short-interval exposure. If you have a few hours a week for Greek, spend some time to prepare something you can read for say 3 minutes of a morning as you eat your breakfast cereal, or when the ads come on on the TV in the evening. I mean like 5 common words and their glosses which you can read over and recite for 3 minutes, or one of the verb or noun patterns written out that you can recite once or a few times each day over the week.
jannamar wrote:για τώρα είναι αντίο
The French way of saying goodby "adieu", was borrowed into Greek during the period when intellectuals from the emerging modern state were going to Paris to study. The basic meaning of "If God is with you everything will be okay", was expressed in Greek at the time the New Testament was written Ἔρρωσθε, because you were writing to all board members, if I signed off this message just for you it would be Ἔρρωσο. The meaning in either case is something like, enjoy good health. για can be found in you NTG dictionary as διά - the form before the δ was softened and finally lost. είναι is part of a pattern that you will become familiar with as you continue to learn Greek.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: Hi everyone!

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Χαῖρε, Welcome! Also be aware that the NT was written in ancient (Koine) Greek, and not modern Greek. Quite a bit of difference, so make sure that the texts and other resources you get to support your study are specifically for Koine (or you could start with Classical...)
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Hi everyone!

Post by Stephen Hughes »

jannamar wrote:τώρα
Let me take the opportunity afforded here to make the comment that I think τώρα - the Modern Greek word for "now" - is an interesting word.

It is a shift in function like as if we were to begin saying "on the following day" - with the loss of the first part of the phrase - "following day", in all the cases when we now say "tomorrow". Of course this word τώρα means "now" - I was just using "tomorrow" and "on the following day" as an analogous example.

The phrase that is used in stories, ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ "in that hour", "right then", "without delay", "before moving on to another event in narrative sequence" was used in the Greek of the New Testament times in narrative constructions. Two examples of that are at;
Luke 10:21 wrote:Ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἠγαλλιάσατο τῷ πνεύματι ὁ Ἰησοῦς, καὶ εἶπεν,
In the same hour, Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said,
Matthew 26:55 wrote:Ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ εἶπεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τοῖς ὄχλοις,
At that time, Jesus said to the crowds,
Here are another 2 examples from outside the NT corpus without the preposition ἐν:
Daniel 3:6 wrote:καὶ ὃς ἂν μὴ πεσὼν προσκυνήσῃ, αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἐμβληθήσεται εἰς τὴν κάμινον τοῦ πυρὸς τὴν καιομένην.
And whoever would not fall down and worship, within that hour he will be thrown into the burning fiery oven.
Arrian of Nicomedia (c. AD 86/89 – after 146/160), [i]The Anabasis of Alexander (Ἀλεξάνδρου Ἀνάβασις)[/i] 6.21.1 ([url=https://archive.org/stream/cu31924026460752#page/n369/mode/2up]English translation page 349[/url]). wrote:ἦν δὲ ἐν μὲν τῷ τότε ἄπορος ἡ ὥρα ἐς τὸν πλοῦν: οἱ γὰρ ἐτησίαι ἄνεμοι κατεῖχον, οἳ δὴ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἐκείνῃ οὐ καθάπερ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν ἀπ᾽ ἄρκτου, ἀλλ᾽ ἀπὸ τῆς μεγάλης θαλάσσης κατὰ νότον μάλιστα ἄνεμον ἵστανται.
The season of the year was then unfit for voyaging; for the periodical winds prevailed, which in that season do not blow there from the south, which is with us, but from the Great Sea, which is in the direction of the south wind.
There is another word meaning "now" for dialogues, when somebody is speaking about the time they are in themselves, and it is νῦν "now". That dialogue form of now (νῦν) is lost as the τῇ ὥρᾳ ἐκείνῃ or αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ - both simplified to τῇ ὥρᾳ comes to take over the narrative and dialogue functions where "now" is needed.

As the pronunciation of eta and iota coallesed into /i/, the two forms τι ὥρα; "What time?" and τῇ ὥρᾳ "in the hour", "now", were phonetically similar, the question word τι "what", being stronger in pronunciation than the definite article τῇ "in the" remained separate, while the phrase τῇ ὥρᾳ elided to give the form τώρα, which you mentioned. That happened before the Byzantine period, in the Hellenistic period - the same broadly general period as the New Testament was written in (when Greek was used in territories subdued by Alexander) - but presumably later within the period than when the New Testament was written.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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