For an Informed Love of God
Bill Mounce
Mark 1:1–28
Many of the exercises in The Basics of Biblical Greek were drawn from the initial chapters of Mark so much of this chapter may feel familiar. There are a large number of comments in the Exegetical Discussion section for this chapter, so please be sure to have your Cheat Sheet out and learn the categories in bold.
Mark 1:1–8
| Mark 1:1 | The main thing to learn in this verse is the difference between a subjective and an objective genitive. |
| Mark 1:2 | The Greek is pretty easy, but there is an interesting problem with the attribution of the quote to Isaiah and the textual variant reflected in the TR. |
| Mark 1:3 | Why does a masculine participle (βοῶντος) modify a feminine noun (φωνή)? |
| Mark 1:4 | The only issue in v 4 is the presence of the article᾽ὀ and how that changes the form of the verse, but not really its meaning. |
| Mark 1:5 | Another straight–forward verse except that you will learn about circumstantial participles. |
| Mark 1:6 | Watch out for both participles that form a periphrastic construction |
| Mark 1:7 | The only challenge here is the long relative clause. |
| Mark 1:8 | This verse is a good example of the use of personal pronouns to add emphasis by way of contrast. |
Mark 1:9–13
| Mark 1:9 | The verse is quite straightforward. No surprises. |
| Mark 1:10 | Except for the strange placement of a participle, Mark 1:10 is pretty straightforward. |
| Mark 1:11 | You will have to decide if ὁ ἀγαπητός is adjectival or substantival, and you will see the best example of a constative aorist in the New Testament. |
| Mark 1:12 | In this verse you will see our first historic present. |
| Mark 1:13 | So much fun stuff in this verse like an adverbial participle, accusative of time how long, and an inceptive imperfect. |
Mark 1:14–28
| Mark 1:14 | Be sure you are up on how to translate prepositions with an articular infinitive. |
| Mark 1:15 | Do you know the two ways ὅτι can be translated? |
| Mark 1:16 | This verse has yet another example of why you can never talk about texual criticism without also talking about significance. |
| Mark 1:17 | How are you going to translate "fishers of men"? |
| Mark 1:18 | The only real challenge in this verse is trying to identify one of the words. |
| Mark 1:19 | Along with one difficult form to identify, this verse also shows us the two basic ways in which καί can function. |
| Mark 1:20 | Except for a somewhat difficult participle to parse, the verse is straightforward. |
| Mark 1:21 | We will meet a new use of the dative called the ”dative of time,” specifically, the ”dative of time when.” |
| Mark 1:22 | In this verse, we will look at a periphrastic construction and spend a little time in a dictionary. |
| Mark 1:23 | In v 23 we will learn about the "Preparatory use of 'there.'" |
| Mark 1:24 | There are several unusual constructions in this verse, and we also meet the infinitive of purpose and nominative of appellation. |
| Mark 1:25 | The verse is pretty straightforward, but it does contain a good lesson about etymology. |
| Mark 1:26 | The trick with this verse is to find the subject and its verb. |
| Mark 1:27 | Quite a bit of “stuff” going on in this verse. |
| Mark 1:28 | A pretty simple verse. |