Additional prepositions

Prepositions are small words carrying a great deal of a sentence's logic. In chapter 5 you met four of them — ἐν, εἰς, ἐκ and ἀπό — and each one took a single case.

Most of the common prepositions are not so simple. They take two cases, and two of them take three, and the case is not decoration. διά with the genitive means through; διά with the accusative means because of. Same word, different case, different logic. So reading a preposition means reading two things — the word, and the case of whatever follows it.

Two cases, two meanings

Six prepositions carry most of this weight. The proportions are counted from the text itself, and a preposition's commoner case is the one to reach for first.

Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν κατὰ τὰς γραφάς

"Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." Both prepositions here are doing exactly what their case says. ὑπέρ has the genitive, so it is on behalf of; κατά has the accusative, so it is according to. Put κατά with a genitive instead and the same sentence says Christ died against the Scriptures.

ἐπί and παρά: three cases each

ἐπί is the fourth commonest preposition in the New Testament — 885 occurrences — and it takes all three cases: accusative 480 times, genitive 220, dative 183, and twice before an adverb: ἐπὶ τρίς, three times (Acts 10:16; 11:10). The honest thing to say is that the distinctions have largely worn away, and all three can mean simply on.

Μὴ θησαυρίζετε ὑμῖν θησαυροὺς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς

οὐ πεσεῖται ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν

"Do not store up treasures on earth"; "will not fall to the ground." Genitive in the first, accusative in the second, and the case is not what separates them. With ἐπί, the case will not tell you the meaning; the sentence has to.

παρά is the opposite. It occurs 193 times, and all three of its cases are still clean.

πᾶς ὁ ἀκούσας παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς

εὗρες γὰρ χάριν παρὰ τῷ θεῷ

Περιπατῶν δὲ παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν

Genitive, from the Father. Dative, with God. Accusative, beside the sea. One word, three cases, three plainly different things.

The picture behind the case

Those three παρά phrases are not a coincidence. Underneath them is one idea that makes the whole list easier to hold.

Broadly: the genitive is movement away from, the dative is position at, and the accusative is movement towards. From, at, to.

You have already met it without being told. Chapter 5's prepositions are the same picture in miniature — ἐκ with the genitive is out of, ἐν with the dative is in, εἰς with the accusative is into. παρά does all three at once.

It is a picture and not a rule. κατά with the accusative means according to, and nothing is moving anywhere. Use it to remember the pattern, not to argue a point in a sermon.

The ones that take a single case

Five more, each keeping to one case — πρός very nearly — which makes them the easiest words on the page.

Genitive: πρό, before (47) · ἀντί, instead of (22).
Dative: σύν, with — 129 occurrences, 129 datives.
Accusative: πρός, to or towards (688 of its 696) · ἀνά (13).

ἀνά is worth a line of its own, because a lexicon will gloss it "up" and the New Testament never uses it that way. Eight of its thirteen occurrences are distributive — ἀνὰ δύο, "two by two" (Luke 10:1); ἀνὰ δηνάριον, "a denarius each" — four of the other five are the fixed phrase ἀνὰ μέσον, "in the midst of", and the last is ἀνὰ μέρος, "in turn" (1 Corinthians 14:27). None of them is "up".

πρός is worth singling out: the fifth commonest preposition in the New Testament, and accusative in all but a handful of its occurrences. With ἐν and εἰς, it is one of the few genuinely reliable case-signals in the text.

δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν

"To give his life a ransom in place of many." Twenty-two occurrences, and ἀντί is the plainest word Greek has for one thing standing where another would have stood.

By whom, and through whom

Two of these prepositions divide up a job English does with a single word. ὑπό with the genitive names the one who did it; διά with the genitive names the one it was done through.

τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου

"What was spoken by the Lord through the prophet." Both prepositions inside five words, and the distinction is deliberate: the Lord is the speaker, the prophet the means. Matthew uses the formula again at 2:15.

πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο

"All things came into being through him."

Do not press the line harder than it will bear — Greek can use διά where English says by. But where a writer sets the two side by side in one clause, as Matthew does, he means the difference.

Compound verbs

A great many New Testament verbs are a preposition glued to the front of a simpler verb, and the preposition usually still means what it means.

ἔρχομαι, "I come", is the clearest case. On its own it occurs 631 times, and it heads a family of seventeen compounds worth 759 more between them: ἐξέρχομαι go out (216), εἰσέρχομαι go in (193), ἀπέρχομαι go away (117), προσέρχομαι come to (86), διέρχομαι go through (41), συνέρχομαι come together (30). Learn one verb and you have read most of a page.

The same trick works elsewhere: βάλλω is "I throw", so ἐκβάλλω is "I throw out".

But it is a hint and not a proof, and this chapter's own vocabulary supplies the counter-example. ἀναγινώσκω is ἀνά plus γινώσκω, and it means "I read" — not "I know up".

Where the augment goes

The augment marks past time and belongs to the verb, so in a compound it lands inside the word, between the preposition and the stem.

Καὶ εἰσῆλθεν Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὸ ἱερόν, καὶ ἐξέβαλεν πάντας

"And Jesus entered the temple and threw out everyone." The augment is buried in both verbs — εἰσ-ῆλθεν and ἐξ-έ-βαλεν — and ἐκ has become ἐξ before the augment's vowel, the adjustment chapter 5 described.

So when a word will not give up its stem, look past the front of it. ἀπέθανεν, "he died", is ἀπό plus the augment plus the aorist stem of ἀποθνῄσκω, and staring at the first three letters will never produce it.

One more thing sits in that verse: εἰσῆλθεν … εἰς. Greek often repeats the preposition after a compound verb, and it adds nothing. Translate it once.

What to watch for

Three habits.

Read the case, not only the word. The noun that follows is doing as much of the work as the preposition is.

Expect the shortened forms. Chapter 5 covered why they happen; what it could not say is how often — διά occurs 666 times and is written δι’ in 149 of them. Add ἀπ’ and ἀφ’, κατ’ and καθ’, μετ’ and μεθ’, ἐπ’ and ἐφ’, ὑπ’ and ὑφ’, παρ’, and ἀνθ’ for ἀντί. Only περί, πρό and ἀνά never shorten.

ἀράτω τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καθ’ ἡμέραν

"Let him take up his cross daily." καθ’ ἡμέραν is κατά with the accusative, set hard as an idiom, and you will meet it seventeen times.

And do not build on a compound. The preposition tells you where to look. The sentence tells you what it means.