Can you give me some Greek advice?

In the NT theos is usually translated to God.

Sometimes the original Greek is slightly different and we have theon, or theos, or theou. The difference is in the last Greek letter. Can someone tell me the difference between the three Greek spellings?

Thanks David

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Bruce Dunning

The endings you noticed indicate the case of the noun.

theon is accusative
theos is nominative
theou is genitive

Hope that helps.

Rich DeRuiter

In the NT theos is usually translated to God.

Sometimes the original Greek is slightly different and we have theon, or theos, or theou. The difference is in the last Greek letter. Can someone tell me the difference between the three Greek spellings?

Thanks David

The Greek language is a declined language. English is mostly not a declined language. There is a bit of this left with things like "who" and "whom," "he" and "him." But generally, English retains the form of a noun regardless of it's grammatical function.

In Greek that is not true. So there are several forms for the same word, that depend on their function in the sentence. It would be difficult to explain all of this without talking about Greek grammar, case endings, etc. If you want to study Greek, you will have to deal with this. For us Logos users, we can take some short-cuts by relying on translations, and using the reverse interlinears to help us recognize the dictionary form (lemma) of a word.

I know I'm oversimplifying. But I don't want to make this overly complex either. If you have more questions, feel free to ask.

MJ. Smith

Greek has declensions which show the case (and number) of a noun/adjective/pronoun. In English we use position in sentence or prepositions to give the same information. If you have a Greek grammar in Logos, do a search on "declension" to get enough details to orient yourself.

Milford Charles Murray

In the NT theos is usually translated to God.

Sometimes the original Greek is slightly different and we have theon, or theos, or theou. The difference is in the last Greek letter. Can someone tell me the difference between the three Greek spellings?

Thanks David

Peace, David! *smile*

Welcome to the Logos Community Forums where (mostly volunteers!) from the four corners of the world try to help, support, encourage, and inform one another -- 24 hours a day! --

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One question of you ... ??? Have you learned the Greek Alphabet yet!

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/535714#Comment_535714

This link will take you to a list of some of the possible endings for second declension masculine nouns like Theos and Logos.

http://www.memrise.com/course/92319/koine-greek-noun-paradigm/1/

David Thomas

Cases have been explained by others, maybe some examples would help

Accusative - Direct object "I asked God..."

Nominative - Subject "God so loved the world..."

Genitive - possessive (and other uses) "God's Spirit filled the place"

Lonnie Spencer

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/535782#Comment_535782

English always has the word order of subject, verb, and object in the sentence. A sentence in Greek does not always follow the word order pattern of English. The subject and object in Greek are determined by the word endings.

Mike Childs

Good explanations.

Regardless of the case of the word, indicated by the ending, one would always look the word up in a lexicon (dictionary) by its standard lemma form. With the word "God" that would be "theos". The words "theon" or "theou" would be counted as occurrences of the same word, "theos"

David Griffith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/535706#Comment_535706

Thank you for your help it helps me a lot. David