Koine Foundations

⁶ Aren’t five sparrows sold for two copper coins? Yet not one of them goes unnoticed by God. ⁷ Indeed, even the hairs of your head are all counted! Don’t be afraid – you are worth more than many sparrows. (Luke 12:6-7)

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An important part of learning any language is learning numbers and counting. The list below shows the numbers from one to ten in Koine Greek used in the New Testament. (m) stands for masculine, (f) for feminine, and (n) for neuter, which is explained below.

Many words in Greek have different forms, called inflections, which are simply changes in spelling. In a sentence, an inflection identifies the function of a noun (subject, direct object, etc.), the tense of a verb, or the grammatical gender of a word. To illustrate, English uses some inflections to show gender (prince / princess, actor / actress), and to show if a word is singular or plural (car / cars, mouse / mice). Greek does this to a much greater extent. You probably noticed that the numbers one, three, and four listed above have different masculine, feminine, and neuter forms (inflections). So, for example, for the number “one” you use the form that matches the grammatical gender of the noun it modifies:

The verses at the top of this post record the words of Jesus. He reassures the listeners (and future readers) that God cares for His people. It is an argument from lesser to greater. If God cares for seemingly unimportant small birds that are sold cheaply* for food, how much more is He concerned for the people He loves. In fact, God has counted the hairs of their heads. What is important about this is not how many hairs there are, but that God cares enough to know even the smallest details about those He loves.

*Two copper coins: Two of the very small Roman copper coin called the assarion in Greek. It is difficult to give the value of these coins in today’s currency, but they were not worth very much. Many English translations say “two cents” or “two pennies” which gives a good sense of how cheap it was to buy five sparrows for food.

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Pronunciation Note: The rough breathing or “h” sound at the beginning of some Greek words that begin with a vowel is not pronounced in Koine Greek. In fell out of the language during the Koine period. This “h” sound is represented in the Greek spelling of a word (even through it is not pronounced) by a rough breathing mark placed over the beginning vowel or digraph, such as over the ε (epsilon) in ἑπτά. The rough breathing mark looks like a backwards apostrophe. When the Greek word is transliterated into English letters, the convention is to spell the word with an “h”. So ἑπτά is transliterated as hepta with the initial h. However, the “h” is silent. This is similar to the silent “h” in the English word “herb” – it is spelled with an “h” but not pronounced. So, there is no “h” sound pronounced at the beginning of εἷς / heis (m), ἕν / hen (n), ἕξ / hex, or ἑπτά / hepta.

Unless otherwise noted, English translations of Bible verses are by the author from the Greek text and are not quotations from any copyrighted Bible version or translation.