INTRODUCTION

The uniqueness of this edition of the Greek New Testament, and the feature that justifies the word analytical in its title, is the grammatical analysis associated with each word of the Greek text.

Every "grammatical tag" consists primarily of capital letters. The first letter indicates whether the Greek word is a noun (n); verb (v); adjective (a); determiner (i.e. definite article) (d); preposition (p); conjunction (c); or particle (q). The category of "noun" includes both nouns (n-) and pronouns (np). That of "adjective" includes those used substantivally, or "pronominals," (ap); adverbs (ab); and attributive and predicate adjectives (a-).

Subsequent letters in the tag, then, further specify the form of the Greek word. For example, the tag for a noun begins with N. The next place tells whether the word is a pronoun (p) or not (-). The third place specifies the case; the fourth, gender; the fifth, person; and the sixth, number. A noun (n) that is not a pronoun (-) and that is nominative (n), feminine (f), and singular (s) would have associated with it this tag: n-nf-s. Chart I outlines for other parts of speech what has just been explained concerning the noun. For a complete listing of abbreviations used in the tags, see the chart following this introduction. The more complete one’s mastery of those abbreviations, the more useful the Analytical Greek New Testament will be.

To further illustrate how to read the abbreviated grammatical analysis, the first seven words of John 3.16 are reproduced, with tags, below, after which the seven tags are deciphered:

CHART I

noun (subcategory) case gender person number

verb mood/mode tense voice case gender person number

adjective (subcategory) (type) case gender person number

determiner case gender number

preposition case

conjunction (type)

particle (type)

Other and less frequent kinds of complex tags are connected by a slash (/) meaning "or"; an exclamation mark (!), also meaning "or"; and an ampersand (&), meaning "and." The slash and exclamation mark indicate that two analyses are possible; the exclamation mark is used in preference to the slash when the order of alternatives possesses significance. The ampersand conjoins two tags neither of which would be adequate by itself, as in the case of crasis.

A plus sign (+) immediately before or after a tag indicates a close relationship between the word associated with the tag and another word, as in cases of verbal periphrastics. The sign appears on the side of the tag on which the pairing occurs. A minus sign (-) precedes a relative pronoun tag when there is no overt antecedent in the text.

For a full explanation of the abbreviations and symbols used in the grammatical analysis, as well as of the assumptions underlying that analysis, one should refer to the appendix. All serious readers will want to read at least sections 1-3 of the appendix.

The Greek text employed in this volume is that of the fourth edition (revised and corrected) of The Greek New Testament (1994). This is identical to the text of the twenty-seventh edition of Novum Testamentum Graece (1993) except for differences in punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing. The Analytical Greek New Testament does not reproduce the textual apparatus, punctuation apparatus, cross-reference system, or subheadings in The Greek New Testament. It does, however, follow the latter in its use of boldface type for quotations from the Old Testament and of editorial bracketing (both single, [ ], and double, [[]]) within the text itself. The shorter ending of Mark (which follows 16.8) and the longer ending (16.9-20) are the only portions of the text set off and identified by comment in this volume.

The third line of this analysis presents the citation or dictionary form (lemma) for each Greek word. Each of these lemmas is identical in form to that assigned in ANLEX, to which of course it points. (There are a few noncongruencies between the AGNT/ANLEX lemmas and those of other reference works, for example, BAGD. These are all well motivated and usually readily apparent to the user.) The fourth line, not yet presented in this unpublished form, is an English reference gloss of each item in question.

Barbara Friberg