The article

What Greek has and does not have

Greek has a word for "the", the definite article, but no word for "a" or "an". In John 8:34, δοῦλός "slave" has no article, and English supplies "a slave". So a missing article does not mean "a"; it only means the writer did not point to the noun with "the". The translator decides from context whether English needs "a".

The article's most useful feature is that it agrees with its noun in case, number and gender. It is also the most common word in the New Testament: ὁ and its forms occur about 19,800 times. That makes it the reader's best clue. A noun's ending may be ambiguous, but the little word in front of it usually settles the case and the gender.

Three genders

Every Greek noun is masculine, feminine or neuter. This is its gender, and the article shows it most easily. Read John 1:4.

ἡ (hē) ζωὴ (zōē) is "the life", feminine. τὸ (to) φῶς (phōs) is "the light", neuter. And in John 1:1 we already met ὁ (ho) λόγος, "the Word", masculine. So ὁ, ἡ and τό are the masculine, feminine and neuter "the".

One warning. Grammatical gender is a label on words, not a statement about men and women. In the Lord's Prayer, ἡ βασιλεία (basileia), "the kingdom", is feminine, and τὸ ὄνομά (onoma), "the name", is neuter. A kingdom is not female and a name is not "it" in any deeper sense; the words simply belong to those classes, and the dictionary and the panel tell you which.

For reading, you need only one habit: when you meet a noun, glance at the article in front and read the gender and case from it. Learn nouns together with their article, "ἡ ζωή", "τὸ φῶς", and the gender comes free. Later it will also help you to see which noun an adjective is describing.

The article table

Here is the whole article. For now, learn only the bold rows, the nominative and genitive; the others you can look up in this table whenever you need them. The article has no vocative form of its own. When someone is addressed, as in "Our Father in heaven", the nominative form ὁ is used, and the panel labels it vocative by its use.

Agreement means the article and the noun share their case, number and gender. In 1 John 1:1, τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς is "the Word of life". The first pair is masculine genitive and the second pair is feminine genitive, and each article tells you the gender of its own noun. The plural works the same way: in John 2:11, οἱ μαθηταὶ means "the disciples", as subject.

When the article shows the subject

Now the last clause of John 1:1, one of the most discussed in the Bible.

Both θεὸς and λόγος are nominative. In a "to be" sentence two nominatives sit side by side, so how do you know which is the subject? The article tells you. ὁ λόγος, with the article, is the subject. θεός, without it, says what the Word was: the Word was God. Putting θεός first also gives that description weight. Since Greek has no "a", the missing article does not by itself turn this into "a god". A few translations do render it that way, but most, like the BSB, read "the Word was God".

Because this clause has been studied so closely, explanations differ in emphasis. Many scholars say the article-less θεός stresses what the Word is: He shares the very nature of God. Many also point out that if θεός had the article too, "the Word" and "God" would sound interchangeable, which would clash with the line just before, where the Word was "with God". The grammar to take from this lesson is simple: the article marks the subject, and θεός without it tells you what the Word was.

The article has one more use worth a sentence now. It can mean "the one who". In John 3:16, ὁ πιστεύων is "the one who believes". We will meet this again in the lesson on participles.

Words in this lesson

Besides the article itself, ὁ, you have three new nouns, all just read: ζωὴ "life", φῶς "light" and βασιλεία "kingdom".

Summary

Greek has "the" but no "a". The article agrees with its noun in case, number and gender: ὁ is masculine, ἡ feminine and τό neuter in the nominative. Grammatical gender is a classification of words, not of people. In a "to be" sentence, the noun with the article is usually the subject.

Words in this lesson

• ὁhothe/this/who19,812 times in the NT
• ζωήzōēlife135 times in the NT
• φῶςphōslight73 times in the NT
• βασιλείαbasileiakingdom162 times in the NT

Practice