What's the Subject?

ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος

When we were reading John 1:1 and we came to the third clause after the second "kai," i was pointing out the two nominatives and said that, "the one with the article is the subject."
I was listening to a tape of Jim's class and there was one of Croy's practice sentences where there was a demonstrative pronoun used as the subject and the nominative that had the article was a predicate nominative rather than the subject.

Soooo.....maybe this is not a hard and fast rule. I'll try to do some more checking on this.

Grounds for Divorce

After our reading at Winebrenner on Tuesday, a brother asked me about the greek in Mtt. 5:32 where Jesus says, "But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (RSV)

I went to Zack Hubert's Greek site (www.zhubert.com) and did a word study on "porneia," which is the greek word used here for "unchastity." I am going to try to paste the results here and will bring it to Winebrenner next Tuesday for those who might be interested.

I also created a vocabulary list for John's prologue from the same site and will bring that as well.

Here goes my attempt to paste: (note: I removed the word study on 10/2/2007 because it was so long. If anyone wants a copy I would be happy to get it to them if requested.)

Daily Greek Reading

I believe that learning the Koine Greek of the New Testament is truly a blessing. I was moved to tears the first time I read John 1:1 in Greek and have been trying to learn ever since that time. Having had only 1 year of Greek at Winebrenner, my understanding is not unlike that of a 1 year old child, but I want to grow and not lose that Greek that I have already learned.

In just a few short months of not studying and not reading in the Greek New Testament I find that I am forgetting far more than I would like, so this blog and a study group at the seminary are an attempt to ward off the atrophy resulting from lack of use.

By spending some time each day reading and trying to parse and translate, it seems to me, that a Greek learner can continue to grow. It seems more important to spend some time rather than huge amounts of time just reading in Greek.

My hope is that this blog will provide a forum for discussion, questions, insights and commiseration for those studying Koine Greek, and especially for those (although not exclusively) who would like to meet together at the break between classes for some informal time reading in the gospel of John.

Being a neophyte myself (is that from Greek?), I am wanting to facilitate, but am not qualified to truly teach. Hopefully some who are qualified will be willing to assist with difficult questions should they arise.

Additionally, I have posted on some blogs in the past, but have never created one so this, too, will be a learning experience and I ask your patience in that regard.

So, welcome to this blog. Please post and lets generate some discussion about the Greek New Testament and Koine Greek.