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I mentioned earlier that there was one tiny part of the Quick Start Guide that I recommend you memorize. That one part is the article (those twenty-four little words, all translated “the”). Here they are:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nom Sg	ὁ	ἡ	τό
Gen Sg	τοῦ	τῆς	τοῦ
Dat Sg	τῷ	τῇ	τῷ
Acc Sg	τόν	τήν	τό
Nom Pl	οἱ	αἱ	τά
Gen Pl	τῶν	τῶν	τῶν
Dat Pl	τοῖς	ταῖς	τοῖς
Acc Pl	τούς	τάς	τά

Why are these twenty-four words so important that they warrant such attention? Because they will serve as lighthouses in the fog of Greek sentences. Sometimes you’ll find yourself uncertain of this or that noun form. But when you locate the article, you can be confident about the case of that word because you definitely know the case of the attached article. Moreover, when you have a ready familiarity with the articles, you can more quickly identify the parts of the sentence. For example, if you know that τήν is the accusative feminine singular article, you will know immediately when you see it that you are looking at the direct object of the sentence.12 The more familiar you are with the articles, the more easily you can make out which part of a Greek sentence is which.

I recommend that you memorize the Greek article by reciting the words out loud, moving across the rows (not down the columns). Why should you read across rather than down? Because reading across highlights the case of each form, whereas reading down highlights the gender. Although both case and gender are important, knowing the case is usually more helpful for understanding the meaning of a Greek sentence.

So, I urge you to memorize the Greek article extremely well. Memorize it so well that the words just roll off your tongue without giving much thought to it. This level of familiarity with the Greek article will pay great dividends in the long run. (Besides that, spending time memorizing is a concrete way of making visible—or should I say, “audible”—progress toward your goal of refreshing your knowledge of NT Greek. Some days ahead, you may feel like you haven’t really learned anything going through all this. But at least you will be able to point to your memorization of the article as tangible progress.)

The article is the only thing in this book that I am asking you to memorize through “brute force.” The rest is accomplished by simply reading and focusing reflectively on your reading.

Exercise 8

Read the articles out loud several times. Read across the rows, not down the columns. Write them out several times. Continue working on these until you can recite them out loud in under thirty seconds.

As time permits, read the following verses. Use the articles to quickly locate the subjects and objects in each verse.

1. Luke 3:21–25

2. Rev 20:7–10

3. Eph 3:8–13

4. 1 John 5:5–12

12. You may remember that there are other uses of the cases than the ones we discussed so far, so it is possible that this is not the direct object. Nevertheless, this only serves to strengthen the point—it is all the more useful to know the articles so that you can have great confidence in your identifications of the cases of words.