When we observe the Bible, one fundamental thing to take notice of is the grammar. Grammar always matters, as language cannot function without it. But in instructional literature such as epistles, grammar’s importance is elevated to the point where grammar always wins.
But what is it, precisely, students of the Bible ought to know about grammar? I’ve already written about the parts of speech. This post will now explain the concepts of inflection and tense, which function like personality traits for words.
Definitions
Inflection refers to the minor changes in words to signal their functions or attributes. For example, the word “run” can change to runs, ran, or running to signal how the word functions in a sentence. Those differences are called the inflection.Words can change inflection based on many factors, including:
- Number. Singular or plural.
- Gender. Masculine, feminine, or neuter. In English, it is typically only pronouns that have gender built into them (he, she, it).
- Person. First person (talking about oneself: I, me, we, us), second person (talking to someone: you), or third person (talking about someone: he, she, it, they).
- Case. Subject (I, we, he, she, they), or object (me, us, him, her, them).
Tense refers to different verb forms and functions. In English tense almost always has to do with time (past, present, or future), though the original languages of the Bible use tenses in ways other than with respect to time.
- Past tense refers something that completely in the past. I ran. He swam. They believed.
- Present tenses refers, believe it or not, to something taking place in the present. I run. He swims. They believe.
- Future tense refers to actions completely in the future. I will run. He will swim. They will believe.
Some tenses add more nuance to this simple sense of time:
- Present perfect tense refers to something that happened the past that has ongoing ramifications in the present. I have run. He has swum. They have believed.
- Past perfect tense refers to something that happened in the distant past that had ongoing ramifications until the near past. I had run. He had swum. They had believed.
- Past progressive tense refers to something in the past that was continuing for a time or was incomplete. I was running. He was swimming. They were believing.
English has 6 more tenses that are much less common, especially when it comes to Bible study. So I will spare you further detail.
Why It Matters
Inflection and tense are some things we ought to observe of the words in a passage to help us follow an author’s train of thought. For example, notice how Paul shifts between second person (“you”) and first person (“we”) in Ephesians 2:1-10. Many people read right through the paragraph without noticing the shifts, but some have suggested that the shifts carry interpretive weight. Could it be that “we” refers to Jewish believers and “you” refers to Gentile believers among Paul’s audience? Eph 2:11, 14 suggests that there may be something to this. But we must observe closely in order to be able to evaluate the argument being made.
The verb tenses in a passage such as 1 Peter 5:1-5 highlight the passage’s argument. The brackets of what happened in the past (1 Pet 5:1) and what will happen in the future (1 Pet 5:1b, 4) ought to motivate a certain set of behaviors in the present (1 Pet 5:2-3). Paul uses a similar past-present-future approach to craft his argument in 2 Timothy 1:8-18. Know how the grammar works, and you’ll be better equipped to come along for the ride.
I hope these aren’t silly questions:
How valuable is learning about English grammar when interpreting the Bible, since we are looking at translations from Hebrew, Greek, etc.? Don’t translations sometimes grammatically disagree with each other? Aren’t we losing some of the nuances of the original languages if we rely on the grammar of the translations?
Admittedly, I’m an English grammar nerd who really wants to learn Biblical Greek. I’m working on Mounce’s “Greek for the Rest of Us.”
Thanks!