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You are here: Home / 101Study Help / Greek / Prepositions – Biblical Greek

Prepositions – Biblical Greek

December 3, 2020 by Krisan Marotta

Biblical Greek: Prepositions - Bible Study Tools | WednesdayintheWord.com

Anyone else find Greek prepositions to be slippery little beasts? Some propositions fit nicely in a range of meanings. Others seem to vary widely.

Basics

  • A preposition is a word that indicates the relationship between two words (e.g. under, over, with, in, out, etc.)
  • The word that follows the preposition is called the object of the preposition.
  • A prepositional phrase is the preposition, its object and any modifiers (e.g under the bed).
  • In Greek, when a preposition has a specific meaning, its object must be in a certain case. In translating, look at the case of the object, which typically follows the preposition.
  • The preposition itself is not inflected; its form does not vary, but its ending can contract depending on the following word.
  • The article is often omitted from Greek prepositional phrases.

Here’s my running summary of Greek prepositions and their main meanings depending on case.

PrepositionAccusativeGenitiveDative
ἀπό (apo)
G575
.from,
away from
.
ἀντί (anti).instead of
on behalf of
.
διά (dia)
G1223
on account of
for the sake of
through (of place & time);
by means of
.
ἐκ, ἐξ
(ek or ex)
G1537
.from
out of
.
ἐν (in)..in, on,
among (sometimes with)
εἰς (eis)
G1519
into
towards
..
ἐπί (epi)
G1909
on, to,
against,
towards,
upon
upon, over, on,
at the time of
on the basis of,
at, against, on
κατά (kata)
G2596
according to,
down to,
during,
through
against,
down,
from
.
μετά (meta)
G3326
after (place & time)among, with (accompaniment).
πρός (pros)
G4314
to, towards,
at, with
in the interest of
(very rare)
at, near (very rare)
παρά (para)
G3844
beside,
alongside of
from, by,
from beside
beside, in the presence of,
near, with
περί (peri)
G4012
around (place & time)
about
concerning,
about,
on account of
.
σύν (sun)
G5862
..with, together with
(accompaniment)
χωρίς (choris)
G5565
.without,
apart from
.
ὑπέρ (huper)
G5228
above, over,
beyond,
more than
on behalf of,
for, concerning
.
ὑπό (hupo)
G5259
underby (of agent),
under
‘

Summary

The preposition chart below is from Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar by William D Mounce


More: Biblical Greek

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Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

(This article has been read 1,432 times plus 29 today.)

Related posts:

  1. Grammar for Biblical Greek students
  2. Cases – Biblical Greek
  3. Verbs – Biblical Greek
  4. Punctuation & Accents – Biblical Greek
  5. Should I learn Greek & Hebrew?

Filed Under: Greek Tagged With: Greek

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