In John 14:6, Jesus says in most English translations, “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Anyway, I’ve been here in China for a copule years and their language doesn’t have the word “the” in it. My question is simple.
Does Greek have “the” and if not, is there an indication in the original Greek that Jesus means “the” for each of the three parts of his sentence?
Diogenes the Cynic should be along to provide more detailed information, but until he gets here: Greek does have definite articles, and they are used similarly to the way English uses them, with a few twists. (Think of how French articles don’t quite fit English usage for clarity on that.)
“…Ego eimi he hodos kai he aletheia kai he zoe…”
All of the bolded “he’s” (pronounced “hay”) are definite articles.
It has to be said, however, that Koine Greek did not have an indefinite article. There were no words for “a” or “an.” You couldn’t say “Jesus was a carpenter,” you could only say “Jesus was the carpenter.”
So while Greek had an abundance of indefinite articles (and grammatically, you have to use the indefinite article every single tome you use the noun…this gives you constructions that would sound jarring in English. “The brown dog,” for instance would be, “the brown the dog”) it doesn’t necessarily have the same emphatic or exclusive connotation that it has in English.
That should have said “definite.” Greek has an abundance of definite articles.
Gads, when will I learn to use the preview function? :smack:
You have to use the definite article every time you use the noun.
So, how does a language get by without definite and/or indefinite articles?
How would you render “This is a cup, one of the many cups I own.” in Koine Greek?
How would you render “This is the paved road, the only one in town.” in Chinese (which dialect, Mahaloth?)?
Obviously, word-for-word translations aren’t possible. How would you render the ideas expressed in those sentences?
Chinese (Mandarin) has indefinite articles. You can say “This is a road”, for example.
And to specify that there is only one road, you use the word for “only”. “This is (the only) road.”
I can’t speak
You would have to say, “This is the cup, the one of many I own,” but you would more likely see something that would translate to somrething like “this is one of my many cups.”
Someone else willhave to answer the Chinese question.
Oops, to be clear, you would actually say “This is only road”. There is no “the”, as you know.
Diogenes, Reply: Thank you for your amazingly prompt replies. 
Just thought I would answer these for Japanese as well. Japanese is quite lacking in things like “a” and “the” as well as not really having a way to indicate items in plural. Though my translations will be slightly off as I am not a native speaker.
This is a cup, one of the many cups I own. -> This is cup. One of many cup that is mine. <- Kore ha kappu. Watashi no motteiru samazama na kappu no naka no hitotsu desu.
Note that the subject is also dropped in the second sentence. This is fairly standard, and an “It is” is assumed to exist.
This is the paved road, the only one in town. -> This road is only paved road of this town. <- Kono michi ha kono machi no yuuitsu peevu-ka* sareta michi desu.
Though the sentence order is a lot different. My understanding is that Chinese follows as a similar sentence structure as English. “This road is only paved road of this town” is actually closer to “This road, this town’s only pave-done road is.” with the verb as the very last item. Think Yoda.
Just to offer some perspective, Russian lacks both definite and indefinite articles. (Which is why the very bad russian accent in English is often rendered articleless)
The language does quite well through context and different cases/declensions.
When, in English, one would use “the” for emphasis, in Russian you would use “only” or “main”. When in English one would use “a” for emphasis, in Russian you would use “any”. If you’re not using the article for emphasis, most of the time, it’s unambigious, so there’s no problem.
I guess I should have mentioned that Greek uses “this” and “that” a lot where English might use indefinite articles.
Hebrew, in turn, doesn’t have indefinite articles - indefinite is the default.
So, “This is a cup” would be “This is cup”, or, as Hebrew dos not use the verb “be”, “This cup” - Ze cos. OTO, if you actually wanted to say “This cup”, it would turn out “The cup the this” (Ha-kos ha-zo).
Actually, the “he” is pronounced the same as the “i” in the word “pit” or “spit”.
You *can *say “Jesus was a carpenter”:
“O Christos itan ksilourgos”
or
“O Christos itan enas ksilourgos”
which literally translates to,
“Jesus was carpenter” and “Jesus was one carpenter”
and both mean
“Jesus was a carpenter”.
You don’t have to use the definite article every time.
You can say
“O kafe skylos”
or
“O kafe o skylos”
which literally translate to
“The brown dog”,
“The brown the dog”
but both just mean
“The brown dog”
Note: the above hold for modern Greek, so I’m not sure how it was for ancient Greek.
I guess the answer is that in Greek you use “ena” (one) to denote “a”, and use the definite article to denote “the”.
“This is a cup, one of the many cups I own.” ==
“Afto einai ena potiri, ena apo ta polla potiria pou exo”
“This is the paved road, the only one in town.” ==
“Aftos einai o stromenos dromos, o monadikos stin poli”
I think that if Jesus meant “I am a way, a truth and a light”, (i.e. he was not the unique way, truth and light), he would have said
“Ego eimi mia hodos kai mia aletheia kai mia zoe…”
or something like that (where “mia” means “one”), and he wouldn’t have used the “he”.
But – slight hijack, sorry – even if Jesus explicity stated them in the definite form, you can still wonder: The way to what? The truth of what? The light that illuminates what?
What if there was more than one destination, more than one way to reach the truth, and a darkness that isn’t really all that scary to begin with?
I’m pretty certain all the Chinese languages lack definite articles, so you’d just say something like “This is town’s only paved road.” Certainly it’s how it would work in Mandarin. (The indefinite article is really just “one” - “This is one paved road.”)
I would translate it as “this is (one) paved road, this town’s only one paved road”. “(one)” in Chinese is more like “this (one)”, rather than the numerical “one”. Sorta like how you can’t say “this two”.