What's with an Article?: Greek Geekery, Part 1

**Warning: Linguistic nerdiness to follow. Proceed at your own risk.

This term I've been teaching a seminary elective course called "Biblical Greek for Ministry". In it we are taking a look at ambiguous, interesting, and/or controversial passages in the New Testament and exploring the ways in which the Greek illuminates new avenues of interpretive possibility that simply isn't apparent in the English translation. It's a challenging but very rewarding endeavor, and one that I'll be sharing here in a couple posts. 

The great Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, saw study of the original scriptural languages as crucial to understanding and experiencing the Gospel of Jesus Christ: 

Let us be sure of this: we will not long preserve the gospel without the languages. The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit [Eph. 6:17] is contained; they are the casket in which this jewel is enshrined; they are the vessel in which this wine is held; they are the larder in which this food is stored. . . . If through our neglect we let the languages go (which God forbid!), we shall . . . lose the gospel. ("To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools," 1525)

Should every single Christian clergy, scholar, and layperson endure the rigor of learning these languages? Probably not. However, there is a directness to reading any text in the language in which it was originally written that reading a translation simply doesn't convey. As one of my past biblical Greek professors used to say, "Reading a translation is like kissing your lover through a screen door; it's the same act but a very different sensation." Having some Bible nerds around who have done the hard work of language study provides a valuable resource for other clergy, scholars, and laity in the creative process of discovering new, practical understanding and meaning for today.

I'd like to share an example to get the ball rolling. One principle that you learn when studying biblical Greek is the significance of the presence or absence of the article. In English, we have both a definite ("the") and indefinite ("a/an") article. In Greek, there's only the article, which is like our definite article (the indefinite is implied when the article is absent). 

The basic function of the Greek article is to point out a definite, particular, known something, to call attention to it, or to emphasize it. When the article is present it means that the writer wants to distinguish that individual something from other things like it. And when the Greek article isn't present that's equally important. It means that the emphasis is more on the general quality or character of the noun. If the author wants to talk about "what something's like" s/he would usually not use the article. 

Let's look at Matthew 5:3, which of course is the very beginning of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the "Beatitudes." The text says,

Makarioi hoi ptōchoi tō pneumati, hoti autōn estin hē basileia tōn ouranōn.

Blessed     the poor      in the spirit,  for  theirs   is   the kingdom of the heavens. 

Looking for the articles in the text, I've noted them in red. Let's just focus on the first two: "Blessed (are) the poor in the spirit." There are Greek articles present before "poor" and "spirit." At first this may not seem significant, but remember that the presence of the article in Greek has a very particular emphasis. 

"The poor" means that the writer isn't talking about "poverty" in general. If this is what he wanted to say then the article would've most likely been omitted to focus on the quality or character of "poorness." Instead, the article is present, so the reference is specifically to "the poor," a particular known group of people that the writer has in mind and assumes the audience recognizes. What is being called blessed is not poverty itself as a socio-economic condition, but rather the human beings, the individual persons who happen to find themselves oppressed by a system of injustice and domination. 

"The spirit" carries a similar kind of meaning. The writer isn't talking about some general, abstract, unknown spirit. It's the spirit - the Spirit of God that the writer and audience know about, the presence of God's Spirit at work in the people. Those considered "nobodies" by those in power, those squeezed out of society as human "junk" are blessed and find blessing through the Spirit of God always moving in and among them. 

This is simply one example of how looking at the Greek original can open different dimensions of understanding that would either be missed or unavailable otherwise. May the illumination of this kind of reflection help us further experience the presence of God in Christ, uplifting and transforming us in new powerful ways.