Lesson 3 | Present Participles
[1] About Present Participles
Participles are verbal adjectives. That is, participles are verbs that function like adjectives. Like verbs, they communicate actions and states. Like adjectives and adverbs, they describe other words. Our journey into the Koine Greek verbal system begins with participles because participles are like a bridge between verbs and non-verbs. They contain elements of verbs, but they also contain some of the same elements that you learned about with nouns and adjectives. Each participle communicates five pieces of information:
- Verbal Part: (1) tense-form, (2) voice,
- Adjective Part: (3) case, (4) gender, and (5) number.
There are four tense-forms that participles use in Koine Greek: present, aorist, perfect, and future. Future participles rarely occur in the Greek NT. So, we will not learn about them in this course.
In this lesson, we will learn about present participles. Present participles communicate imperfective aspect. However, the participle’s time depends on the main verb. As a result, they communicate an action that occurs during the main verb’s action. For example, take Matthew 4:18.
περιπατῶν δὲ παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας εἶδεν δύο ἀδελφούς (ΝΑ28) Now while walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers.
I bolded and italicized the participle in this example. The main verb is in the past: he saw (εἶδεν). The present participle (περιπατῶν) happens during the action of the main verb: while walking, he saw.
Notice that the participle does not have a built-in subject. Rather, the subject is understood from the main verb. Often, we may include the subject when translating into English for the sake of clarity (for example, "while [he was] walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers"). However, it is important to know that the subject is identified by the main verb, not by the participle itself.
Notice also that we have connected the participle to the main verb. Though we call participles verbal adjectives, it is important to understand that they can modify verbs as well as nouns. As adverbs, participles can describe the main verb’s action in many ways. Participles can describe the main verb’s cause, manner, and means. However, as beginning students, you can focus on translating present participles in a simple way that shows the present participle occurs during the main verb’s action ("while _ing..."). Adverbial participles use the main verb’s subject and are usually in the nominative case. Adverbial participles never have an article.
As adjectives, participles can be either attributive or substantival just like the adjectives described in this step of Greek I. They must match the word they modify in case, gender, and number.
Since participles combine components of both verbs and adjectives, they can take many forms. Instead of memorizing a chart for each kind of participle, the next step will focus on the three key features (the stem, the tense former, and the ending pattern) that form each kind of participle.