At this point, you should have gained a working knowledge of a number of the essential skills involved in a basic concept of Koiné Greek, especially from the standpoint of Greek word recognition. As I have attempted to impress upon you, the Greek language is not the language of illiteracy. For a number of years, some believed Koiné Greek was the product of uneducated men who simply attempted to express themselves in writing. We talked about this in our introduction to the Greek language. I have been a student of Greek for many years and I never cease to be amazed at the simplicity and also complexity of the language, the syntax and detailed information imparting ability. Some Greek grammarians have considered the Greek verb to be the most important part of Greek grammar. As has been my practice heretofore, I shall only mention the bare essentials relative to the matter of Greek verbs. However, our treatment of verbs should be sufficient to enable you to linguistically function and to advance to higher levels, if such is desired. You must remember, though, that regardless of how much you learn, there are still the recognized authoritative works in Greek (Lesson Eight). By processing a basic knowledge of Greek grammar, however, you will not have to blindly trust the authorities and you can do a great deal of your own research.

     You will probably experience different reactions as you study the Greek verb. You must remember that any new knowledge is progress. Even if you do not master the total concept of verbs, you will know more than you did before you began Lesson Five (assuming you had no prior knowledge).

     Blackwelder wrote thus regarding the Greek verb: "The Greek verb is an intricate piece of word mechanism. As an interpreter studies it analytically, he is thrilled at the many shades of meaning set forth by its various forms. Since it is the main word in a sentence, the verb is capable of more changes and hence of expressing a greater variety of meanings than the other words," (Light from the Greek New Testament, pg. 51).

     As is true with many languages, the Greek verb has five areas of importance. The trained student will learn to be aware of these areas as he analyzes a sentence or verse of scripture (I shall have a section on sentence structure in Greek in Lesson Eight). These five areas of importance are: tense, voice, mood, person, and number. We shall examine the first three of these aspects of the verb and briefly address the remainder.

     The Greek verb and tense. The emphasis of this lesson shall be on verb tense. In the matter of tense, the English verb pertains primarily to time. However, the tense of the Greek verb has two elements of consequence, time of action and kind of action. Simply worded, the verb expresses the state of the action. Perhaps no other language distinguishes the various relations of the verb so accurately as the Greek, because tense has had its greatest development in the Greek verb.

     Allow me to deviate momentarily by saying that verb information is imparted through conjugation. In English, one conjugates the present tense verb "be" as I am, you are, he is, we are, you are, and they are. This is sort of what I mean by verb conjugation. However, because of the precision and capability of Greek verbs, the providing of the subsets of the inflected forms in a fixed order can be more involved. The distinctions between first person (person speaking), second person (person spoken to), third person (person spoken of), and between singular and plural numbers, which in English are indicated for the most part by subject pronouns, are indicated in Greek by the endings (more in Lesson Six). Hence, by a series of suffixes and prefixes the various tenses, modes, voices, persons, and numbers are clearly expressed in the Greek verb. Therefore, no pronoun is necessary to translate the verb luo (I loose) and luomen (we loose, this is a simple illustration of the person and number capability of Greek Verbs, I shall illustrate the conjugation of luo later).

     There are three essential kinds of action expressed by the Greek tenses. They are: action considered in a single perspective, as a whole, this is called point action (momentary or punctiliar are the terms used by scholars); action regarded as in progress, as a line (you will see the terms linear or durative in different works); and action presented as perfected, which emphasizes its results or abiding state. Simply stated and as a rule, corresponding to these three basic tenses are the aorist, present (in the indicative mood), and perfect (indicative mood). Point action is denoted by the aorist tense; linear or action in progress is suggested by the present, imperfect, and future tenses; and action in a state of completion is denoted by the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect tenses (I am getting a little ahead of myself).

     The Greek verb involves seven tenses. They are the aorist, present, perfect, imperfect, future, pluperfect, and the future perfect. I want us to briefly consider the four most common of these tenses: the aorist, present, perfect, and imperfect tense.

     The aorist tense in Greek is very common. The aorist is the simple past tense (outside the indicative mood and participle form). Without attempting to become too complicated, allow me to mention that a verb in the aorist may emphasize the beginning of the action (ingressive aorist), the conclusion (culminative aorist) or the action as a whole (constative aorist). I am mentioning these matters to you because you need to be aware of these considerations in your studies and in using reference works, but I also mention them to illustrate the developed and sophisticated nature of Greek verbs.

     We are told, "Jesus wept" (Jn. 11: 35). Many scholars remark that the aorist tense of "wept" is the ingressive aorist. Hence, some translate the verse, "Jesus burst into tears" (New Testament Commentary, by Hendriksen, Vol. 4). The culminative aorist is seen in the statement, "…I have gained beside them five talents more" (Matt. 25: 20). The aorist used as action as a whole is seen in, "…he gave…" (Jn. 3: 16).

     The Holy Spirit taught and enhanced many truths by carefully using verb tense and the Koiné has preserved these truths for us. Take, for example, Jesus teaching in Matthew 19: 9:

     One more example of the present and then we will consider the perfect tense. We reference Galatians 1: 6, 7 when we talked about "another." Now consider the verses from the slant of the verb used.

     The imperfect tense. "The imperfect may be regarded as a sort of auxiliary to the present tense, functioning for it in the indicative to refer its significance of continuous action to past time," Dana and Mantey's Grammar, pg. 186. The aorist tells the simple story, the imperfect draws the picture. We are told regarding Joseph and Mary that Joseph "knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son…" (Matt. 1: 25). "Knew not" is imperfect; hence, Joseph was not intimate with Mary throughout the past time. The use of the imperfect in this case, implies Joseph and Mary had a normal marriage subsequent to Jesus' birth (cp. Mk. 6: 3). Observe A. T. Robertson's comments on Matthew 1: 25: "Note the imperfect tense, continuous or linear action. Joseph lived in countenance with Mary till the birth of Jesus. Matthew does not say that Mary bore no other children than Jesus…" (Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. 1, pg. 12, mentioned in Lesson Eight).

     There are some aspects of Greek verbs that I do not deem necessary to mention in this lesson. At the beginning of this lesson, I mentioned that the Greek verb has five areas of importance: tense, voice, mood, person, and number. We have emphasized tense, now allow me to just briefly mention the other four features.

     The quality of the verb which indicates the relationship of the subject to the action is voice. The active voice means the subject is acting, and the passive voice means the subject is passive or being acted upon. Sometimes the context over rides the voice feature of the verb (see Acts 2: 40, cp. 37-39). Unlike English, the Greek verb can have the middle, which expresses the action returning to the subject. Mood is the aspect of the verb that shows the relation of the action to reality. Mood (sometimes spelled mode) tells whether the action is actual or potential. In Greek, there is only one mood which demonstrates the reality of action, the indicative mood. There are three potential moods, the subjunctive, optative, and imperative. The indicative mood is the most common, as you have probably noticed from the grammatical information I have presented to illustrate tense. Person is the concept of whether the subject is speaking (first person) is being spoken to (second person), or is being spoken about (third person). The final aspect of the Greek verb is number. Simply stated, number tells if the subject is plural or singular.

     Earlier in this lesson, I mentioned the conjugation of Greek verbs. Conjugation can be very involved and require much memory commitment time. However, you do not have to memorize all the various conjugations. A basic understanding of conjugation, though, will help you to understand and use reference works.

     Let us consider one more conjugation.  This time observe the imperfect active indicative of luo.