Ἦν δὲ ἄνθρωπος (John 3:1)

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Title -> Now There Was a Man

The text is, “Ἦν δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων Νικόδημος ὄνομα αὐτῷ ἄρχων τῶν Ἰουδαίων”.

Ἦν -> third person, singular, imperfect, indicative verb -> there was

δὲ -> coordinating conjunction -> now

ἄνθρωπος -> third person, masculine, singular, nominative noun -> a man

ἐκ -> preposition taking the accusative for its object word -> of

τῶν -> masculine, plural, genitive article -> the

Φαρισαίων -> masculine, plural, nominative, proper noun -> Pharisees

Νικόδημος -> masculine, singular, nominative, proper noun -> Nicodemus

ὄνομα -> neuter, singular, nominative noun -> named

αὐτῷ -> third person, personal, masculine, singular, dative pronoun -> same one NRIEH*

ἄρχων -> masculine, singular, nominative noun -> a ruler

τῶν -> masculine, plural, genitive article -> of the

Ἰουδαίων -> masculine, plural, genitive, proper noun -> Jews

The meaning of this verse is,

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

**NRIEH:  For the sake of clarity the word is translated into English, but to avoid such odd constructions as applying a definite article (“the”) to a substantive sufficiently determined by its being a proper noun, or by the use of a qualifier other than the definite article. An example would be the basic translation “Peter said to the Jesus”; the word “the” is completely unnecessary. There are many examples of this in the New Testament. The designation NRIEH is equivalent to “Not Rendered Into English Here”.

Ἦν δὲ ἄνθρωπος (John 3:1) by Dennis Glover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.