When I was studying Greek at OCC, we used William D. Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek and its accompanying workbook for all of our first-year Greek studies. After that, we just used Metzger’s Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek, doing vocabulary tests throughout the following four semesters while translating 1 John and then the Gospel of John and using Greenlee’s A Concise Exegetical Grammar of New Testament Greek to fill in gaps in grammar. We didn’t spend too much time in the more complex examples of Greek writings that are present in the New Testament (specifically, Luke-Acts and Hebrews).
Because the writings of John are not all that complex in terms of syntax, we never really spent any time at all on the various forms of non-indicative verbs. We covered the subjunctive as it is treated in Mounce (memorized the endings -ω -ῃς -ῃ -ωμεν -ητε -ωσι(ν) like good little parrots) and it indeed appeared all over the place, but the only thing that we ever used the optative for was the famous expression of Paul: μὴ γένοιτο (“God forbid!” “May it not be!”). We were basically told in Mounce’s grammar that because the optative barely makes an appearance in the New Testament, it doesn’t really need to be learned in a first-year grammar class. The problem is: in three years of Greek classes, we never took a single class session to look at non-indicative moods of the verb, to talk about proper conditional forms, to look at how conditions, wishes and purpose clauses changed as we moved from Attic into the Koiné period. It was just ignored for three years of formal Greek study in Bible college!
I can truly understand the teacher’s perspective in avoiding the topic of the optative mood. I mean, it really isn’t used that much in the New Testament. In fact, there is no complete “less vivid future conditional” in the entire New Testament. Daniel Wallace lists four partial conditionals using optatives in his The Basics of New Testament Syntax (on page 314-315). Indeed, given the fact that most Bible college students who take Greek do it so that they can use it for sermons and not so that they can become linguists and classicists, it makes good sense that we didn’t spend extra time in grammar and syntax. Understanding this does not alleviate my frustration, though.
I always felt that I was missing out on something when I came to optatives, feeling that it was just a weird tense that didn’t fit in. I mean, Spanish, French, Latin and German (even properly spoken English!) all have subjunctives. But, what is the optative? Why don’t any of these languages (or even the later forms of Greek) have an optative mood? Shouldn’t the subjunctive be enough?
And then there was Greek: An Intensive Course by Hardy Hansen and Gerald Quinn. I worked through the first level of Greek to GCSE, as I mentioned previously in this blog, and I started the second level, but I just didn’t stick with it. Even in that series the optative is saved until late in the set of books. Not so in Greek: An Intensive Course, which I started yesterday. In the past two days I have worked through units one through three. In the course of these three units we have already covered primary and secondary tenses in sequence, including a discussion of purposes phrases and how the optative and subjunctive correspond to the primary and secondary tenses! In unit four, we are set to cover the standard conditional forms. I cannot believe that I’m finally learning this stuff after so many years of studying Greek! And, you know what?, it actually comes across clearly!
So, here’s the key: secondary tenses are those that take augmentation – that is: imperfect, aorist and pluperfect. All the other tenses are primary tenses. In purpose clauses, subjunctive goes with primary and optative goes with secondary. Simple as that! Whoever is reading this blog and isn’t too experienced with these things has just learned something that I wish I had come across years ago. Good for you!
The endings are also quite straightforward. So far we’ve covered only the active for verbs like παιδεύω, λύω and παύω (that is, -ω verbs), but this is essentially what they look like:
λύοιμι
λύοις
λύοι
λύοιμεν
λύοιτε
λύοιεν
The aorist is just as simple:
λύσαιμι
λύσαις (or λύσειας)
λύσαι (or λύσειε[ν])
λύσαιμεν
λύσαιτε
λύσαιεν (or λύσειαν)
The distinction between present and aorist is just like it is in infinitives. The present represents progressive, repeated or habitual action, while the aorist is unmarked action. Here are some examples of purpose statements, in which we will switch between subjunctives and optatives depending on the main verb tense:
With the subjunctive (primary sequence)
(the particles ἵνα, ὡς and ὅπως are interchangeable)
ταῦτα γράφω ἵνα πιστεύητε/πιστεύσητε. (I’m writing this so that you will believe.)
ταῦτα γράψω ὅπως πιστεύωσιν/πιστεύσωσιν. (I’ll write this so that they will believe.)
ταῦτα γέγραφα ὡς πιστεύῃς/πιστεύσῃς. (I’ve written this so that you will believe.)
With the optative (secondary sequence)
ταῦτα ἔγραφον ἵνα πιστεύοιτε/πιστεύσαιτε. (I was writing these things so that you would believe.)
ταῦτα ἔγραψα ὅπως πιστεύοι/πιστεύσαι/πιστεύσειεν. (I wrote these things so that he would believe.)
ταῦτα ἐγεγράφη ὡς πιστεύοιεν/πιστεύσαιεν/πιστεύσειαν. (I had written these things so that they would believe.)
With the past tense, we can see a distinction even in English, where I have translated them as “would” as opposed to “will.”
With this post, I just basically wanted to encourage others out there who might be like me. We were never taught the full verb system, never learned the optative, still feel poorly-equipped by our Bible college Greek studies to tackle more complex texts (even the higher texts in the New Testament). Be encouraged! There are materials out there than can make it clearer. I would highly recommend this textbook to anyone who has a good grasp on what you learned in Bible college but wants to get a fuller picture – and quick. This book really is intense, and I’m looking forward to working through the rest of the course.
ἔρρωσο,
Ἰάσων τοῦ Ἰωάννου
Because the writings of John are not all that complex in terms of syntax, we never really spent any time at all on the various forms of non-indicative verbs. We covered the subjunctive as it is treated in Mounce (memorized the endings -ω -ῃς -ῃ -ωμεν -ητε -ωσι(ν) like good little parrots) and it indeed appeared all over the place, but the only thing that we ever used the optative for was the famous expression of Paul: μὴ γένοιτο (“God forbid!” “May it not be!”). We were basically told in Mounce’s grammar that because the optative barely makes an appearance in the New Testament, it doesn’t really need to be learned in a first-year grammar class. The problem is: in three years of Greek classes, we never took a single class session to look at non-indicative moods of the verb, to talk about proper conditional forms, to look at how conditions, wishes and purpose clauses changed as we moved from Attic into the Koiné period. It was just ignored for three years of formal Greek study in Bible college!
I can truly understand the teacher’s perspective in avoiding the topic of the optative mood. I mean, it really isn’t used that much in the New Testament. In fact, there is no complete “less vivid future conditional” in the entire New Testament. Daniel Wallace lists four partial conditionals using optatives in his The Basics of New Testament Syntax (on page 314-315). Indeed, given the fact that most Bible college students who take Greek do it so that they can use it for sermons and not so that they can become linguists and classicists, it makes good sense that we didn’t spend extra time in grammar and syntax. Understanding this does not alleviate my frustration, though.
I always felt that I was missing out on something when I came to optatives, feeling that it was just a weird tense that didn’t fit in. I mean, Spanish, French, Latin and German (even properly spoken English!) all have subjunctives. But, what is the optative? Why don’t any of these languages (or even the later forms of Greek) have an optative mood? Shouldn’t the subjunctive be enough?
And then there was Greek: An Intensive Course by Hardy Hansen and Gerald Quinn. I worked through the first level of Greek to GCSE, as I mentioned previously in this blog, and I started the second level, but I just didn’t stick with it. Even in that series the optative is saved until late in the set of books. Not so in Greek: An Intensive Course, which I started yesterday. In the past two days I have worked through units one through three. In the course of these three units we have already covered primary and secondary tenses in sequence, including a discussion of purposes phrases and how the optative and subjunctive correspond to the primary and secondary tenses! In unit four, we are set to cover the standard conditional forms. I cannot believe that I’m finally learning this stuff after so many years of studying Greek! And, you know what?, it actually comes across clearly!So, here’s the key: secondary tenses are those that take augmentation – that is: imperfect, aorist and pluperfect. All the other tenses are primary tenses. In purpose clauses, subjunctive goes with primary and optative goes with secondary. Simple as that! Whoever is reading this blog and isn’t too experienced with these things has just learned something that I wish I had come across years ago. Good for you!
The endings are also quite straightforward. So far we’ve covered only the active for verbs like παιδεύω, λύω and παύω (that is, -ω verbs), but this is essentially what they look like:
λύοιμι
λύοις
λύοι
λύοιμεν
λύοιτε
λύοιεν
The aorist is just as simple:
λύσαιμι
λύσαις (or λύσειας)
λύσαι (or λύσειε[ν])
λύσαιμεν
λύσαιτε
λύσαιεν (or λύσειαν)
The distinction between present and aorist is just like it is in infinitives. The present represents progressive, repeated or habitual action, while the aorist is unmarked action. Here are some examples of purpose statements, in which we will switch between subjunctives and optatives depending on the main verb tense:
With the subjunctive (primary sequence)
(the particles ἵνα, ὡς and ὅπως are interchangeable)
ταῦτα γράφω ἵνα πιστεύητε/πιστεύσητε. (I’m writing this so that you will believe.)
ταῦτα γράψω ὅπως πιστεύωσιν/πιστεύσωσιν. (I’ll write this so that they will believe.)
ταῦτα γέγραφα ὡς πιστεύῃς/πιστεύσῃς. (I’ve written this so that you will believe.)
With the optative (secondary sequence)
ταῦτα ἔγραφον ἵνα πιστεύοιτε/πιστεύσαιτε. (I was writing these things so that you would believe.)
ταῦτα ἔγραψα ὅπως πιστεύοι/πιστεύσαι/πιστεύσειεν. (I wrote these things so that he would believe.)
ταῦτα ἐγεγράφη ὡς πιστεύοιεν/πιστεύσαιεν/πιστεύσειαν. (I had written these things so that they would believe.)
With the past tense, we can see a distinction even in English, where I have translated them as “would” as opposed to “will.”
With this post, I just basically wanted to encourage others out there who might be like me. We were never taught the full verb system, never learned the optative, still feel poorly-equipped by our Bible college Greek studies to tackle more complex texts (even the higher texts in the New Testament). Be encouraged! There are materials out there than can make it clearer. I would highly recommend this textbook to anyone who has a good grasp on what you learned in Bible college but wants to get a fuller picture – and quick. This book really is intense, and I’m looking forward to working through the rest of the course.
ἔρρωσο,
Ἰάσων τοῦ Ἰωάννου
