Lesson 4 John1:1b Grammer: English and Greek

To understand the wonderful expressiveness and richness that is the Greek language we have to have a language of common terms to be able to talk about it. That language of common terms is called "grammar". So lets talk about some simple English grammar facts that will help understand the Greek.

Grammar terms:  Subject, verb, and object are used to describe how words work in a sentence. The subject is what the sentence is about. The verb (usually) shows action, and an object (usually) is what receives the action from another word.  Example:

Joe hit the ball.

Joe is the subject. He is what the sentence is about. Hit is the verb, the action. Ball is the object directly receiving the action (called the direct object, because it the object directly receiving the action of the verb). Here is another example that introduces another way the object can be used.:

Joe hit the ball toward Bob.

Joe is the subject, hit is the verb (action), ball is the object directly receiving the action (direct object).  Bob introduces  another use of an object- as the object of the word toward (which is a preposition). Prepositions  are words that show relationships between words. The preposition "toward" relates "Bob" to the rest of the sentence.  Bob is the object of toward and receives its "action". So we have covered two uses for an object- as direct object receiving the action of a verb, or as the object receiving the "action" of the preposition.

Grammar - Word Order. Another grammar fact is that the word order is very important in English. It is what tells us what is subject and what is object. Example:

Joe hit the ball.   The ball hit Joe.

Both sentences have the same four words, but the difference in word order totally changes the meaning of the sentence. The word in front of the verb is the subject. The word after the verb is the direct object. Thus the meaning of the sentence in English depends on the word order.

However, the meaning of a sentence in Greek does not depend on word order, but on the endings of words. The same words can be put in most any order in the sentence and the meaning does not change. It will be the ending of the Greek word that tells you if it is a subject or an object. The Greek word logos has the subject ending os. The words in the sentence can be in any order, and the os on logos will tell you that it is the subject and not some other word. For example:

 kai o logos en pros ton theon  (subject- logos before verb)
 kai pros ton theon en o logos. (subject- logos after verb)

In the first one logos is in front of the verb,and in the second sentence logos is after the verb. Yet both sentences mean the same thing: "and the word was with the God". 

The Greeks used this fact (endings not word order determines what is subject or object) often to emphasize or call attention to something in a sentence by moving the words out of the normal Greek order of subject before verb.

The object form here is on as in theon, God.  (The subject form of God is theos.)  The on ending is for objects that are receiving action, such as direct objects and objects of prepositions that have action.  Theon has the preposition  pros before it. Since pros often has the idea of "action/movement toward" the object that follows it, theon will get the Greek ending that shows "receiving action" which is on.

Note: When the Greek is translated most often people use one English word for one Greek word. For many things this is fine, but for some words this limits the meaning of what the author was trying to say. The one word that is often used to translate pros is "with" which is one way it can be translated. However, the root meaning of pros is motion toward someone-  having a face to face relationship. To translate pros strictly as "with" limits severely the picture being shown here of the "logos" being in eternal face to face relationship with God.

Study Helps: Since many new ideas have been introduced in this lesson, it will help to review the information several times.

To go to Lesson five click here.