Tag Archives: New Testament Greek

Dative Case Marker Words

Modern Greek differs from New Testament Greek in many ways, and one of the biggest differences is that there are no longer any Dative Case inflections or suffixes on words like there were in Koine Greek. Instead, marker words or helper words came to be used.

See for example Luke 21:23 txt τω λαω ℵ A B C D K L M N Π Ψ ƒ¹ ƒ¹³ 33 157 579 892 1241 2542 lat SBL TH ΝΑ28 {\} ‖ εν τω λαω E G H S U W Y Γ Δ Θ Λ Ω 2 124 346 565 700 1071 𝔐 syr-h TR RP ‖ επι τω λαω 1424 vg: ira populo huic (KJV) ‖ lac 𝔓⁴⁵ 𝔓⁷⁵ F P Q T 28.

Some recent translations of the Majority text render this “wrath among this people.” I disagree with that, and I render both the NA28 and Majority texts the same way.

So also, where the same construction is found in Romans 16:7, ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, it should be rendered “who are well known to the apostles, and were in Christ before me.”

Greek Cursive Ligatures

Quick-Reference Greek Ligature Guide

Many of us read printed editions or transcriptions of New Testament Greek frequently. But unless you are collating or reading minuscules often, you can forget the “ligatures” used in cursive manuscripts. Ligatures are the shorthand mergings or combinations of Greek letters that are found in cursive minuscule Greek manuscripts. I myself was reading minuscules often in the early 2000’s, but then after I stopped doing that, I have been forgetting the ligatures. So I use this guide myself when reading minuscules.

Here I offer free download of a quick-reference Greek ligature guide in PDF.  It has two narrow columns. So narrow, that you can make it a sliver on one side of your screen or monitor, and still have plenty of room for your mains documents. The first column is the more familiar form of a Greek letter or number, and on the right of that, a column showing various ligatures for that letter alone or ligatures for combinations of letters that start with that letter. It mostly uses Dr. Vernon Kooy’s character set, but also some others. I know that this will be useful to people in this group. The download is free, but you can also order a printed and bound edition from Lulu. Also, if someone has made a font or knows of a font that includes one or more ligatures than I have included in this document, please let me know, and I will add it to the document.

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