Tag Archives: 1 Corinthians 10:28

1 Corinthians 10:28 — ἐὰν δέ τις ὑμῖν εἴπῃ…

In this lesson we treat Paul’s conditional warning as a live linguistic doorway into how a Greek speaker of the first century would actually respond, not merely parse. Our aim: to help you produce Koine while understanding its Classical ancestry.

I. The Living Clause

ἐὰν δέ τις ὑμῖν εἴπῃ, τοῦτο εἰδωλόθυτόν ἐστι… Here Paul uses a protasis of real potentiality—precisely the kind likely used in daily speech: “If someone should say to you, ‘This is idol-offering…’”

The Koine conditional system evolves from the more baroque Classical one; however, it preserves the functional clarity of ἐάν + subjunctive while increasingly disfavoring elaborate optative structures.… Learn Koine Greek