October 4 - It's time for a little Greek

Alright all, I'm tired of sharing the normal classwork with you.  If you're going through this with me, you're going to have to suck it up and live through the Greek as well.  Because this truly is my very favorite class.  It's stressful and totally makes my brain hurt, but my goodness, I love working through the pieces and seeing how the puzzle comes together.

Last week I was studying verbs.  One of the cool things in Greek is that there are a bunch of words used over and over and over again in the New Testament.  There are a few words that are used sometimes and even fewer words that are rarely used.  So, if I (we, you) memorize some words, we actually attack a good portion of the New Testament before we even know it.

Like: kai - (ki).  It means 'and.'  It's used a zillion times.  Ok, say there's about 180,000 words in the New Testament.  (that's pretty close - off by a thousand or so).  Kai is used 7112 times.  So, with one word, I've learned about 4% of the Greek New Testament.  That actually works out quite nicely!

Verbs:
Luo (lou' oh):  I destroy
timao (tih - maw' - oh):  I honor
poieo (poi - eh' - oh): I make or I do
delao (day - law' - oh): I show or I explain
didomi (dih - doh' - mee): I give
tithemi (tih - thay' - mee): I put, I place or I lay
bleppo (bleh' - poh): I see
kerusso (kay - rou' - soh): I preach - I proclaim
lego (lay' - goh): I say
apostello (ah - paw - steh' - loh): I send out
lambano (lahm - bah' - no) I take or I receive
akouo (ah - coo' - oh): I hear, I obey
grapho (grah' - pho): I write

Still with me?  Hey, at least I'm writing the English transliterations.  I had to interpret those from the actual Greek words.  Getting pretty good with this, I am!

This last week I had to learn a bunch of nouns.  These are fun, too ... some are obvious - some are fun to learn.

Nouns:
Angellos (ahn' - gel - lawss): the g in Greek is always hard, never a 'j' sound.  Angel
Apostolos (ah - paw-staw'-lawss):  Apostle  (notice how that might be close to the same thing as the verb above?  hmmmm ...

didaskalos (dih - dah - skah - lawss):  Teacher
thanatos (thah' na tawss):  Death
Logos (law' gawss):  Word
ochlos (awch' (hard ch sound) lawsss): Crowd
stethanos (steh - thah' - nawss):  Crown
chrusos (chrou' - sawss):  Gold

doron (doh' - rawn):  gift
euangelion (eu ahn ge' lee awn): gospel
paidion (pie dee' awn): child
teknon (tek' non): child
ergon (er' gon): work

biblos (bih' blaws): book
odos (o' dawss): road
eramos (eh' ray mawss): wilderness

Lucky you ... no quiz for you, but tomorrow I'll be working through the nouns - last week I worked through the verbs.  One of the fun things to do with the Greek language is to realize how many of these words translate into words we see every day - whether in full words or in parts of words we use.