Storied Theology

It’s o.k.

I know what happened.

And I understand.

In seminary (or undergrad) you were forced to take Greek when… lo and behold! you enjoyed it. And by “enjoyed,” of course, I mean that you got As in your courses.

And your fate was sealed.

What is someone with As in Greek going to do besides be a New Testament scholar? The world is before you!

But…

The Greek at which you excelled was the Greek of Mounce.

Mounce of many blessed gifts.

Mounce of reading the NT as quickly as possible.

And, Mounce of “you don’t need to know anything about Greek accents.”

Here is where I have some bad news for many of you. And I hate to be the one to bring it. But here goes: if you want to be a NT scholar, or someone who ever uses Greek in written communication such as a term paper or article, you’re going to have to move beyond Mounce and start figuring out those little grommets.

Today, as my gift to you, I have but two pieces of accent advice, and send you off to discover the other wonders of the Greek accent system on your own.

1. No Greek word, standing on its own, should have more than one accent.
2. No Greek word, standing on its own, should have a grave accent.

Why are these things important to know? Because these are the times when cutting from your Bible software and pasting into the body of your paper can introduce an error because you’re removing the Greek word from the context in which its accent was determined.

On point 1.

Let’s say that you’re dealing with Mark 10:35, James and John’s request of Jesus:

θέλομεν ἵνα ὅ ἐὰν αἰτήσωμέν σε ποιήσῃς ἡμῖν

If you want to talk about the second verb, you might be tempted to cut and paste this into your paper: αἰτήσωμέν. But the reason that the second accent is there is because the verb is supporting the pronoun σε which does not carry its own.

So, if you want to talk about αἰτήσωμεν on its own, you should drop the second accent.

Now what about the grave thing?

The reason that Greek words end in a grave accent (`) is because a word that, on its own, would have had an acute (´) on the final syllable is followed by another word in the same sentence that does not depend on the word for its accent. Got it?

So, back to the Greek sentence above, you’ll notice the phrase ὅ ἐὰν αἰτήσωμέν σε. If you want to talk about the “if” particle, I know what you’re going to want to do. You’re going to want to cut and paste ἐὰν.

Resist this temptation with every fiber of your being.

A Greek word standing alone will not have a grave accent. Change it to an acute: ἐάν.

When my eye sees the acute, it knows that it can rest. It need not look beyond the word for another word to come.

So what I’m saying is this: Mounce is fantastic at getting you off and running with your Greek. But if you want to be able to write something using Greek from the New Testament there is a bit more to be done in order to display your facility and competence with the language.

So for the love of all that’s holy, please learn your accent rules.