Hello. Working through Mastronarde’s 6th unit, and pretty much memorized the prepositions he gives. I found that annotating this diagram (by hand), and trying to reproduce it (with the additional meanings in Mastronarde) has made good practice.
The meanings on the diagram correspond to at least one of the meanings given by Mastronarde. This diagram was made for Koine, but so far it is compatible (or at least adaptable) to classical Greek.
Source of diagram: Metzger’s Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek
This looks very good and useful. And yes, it works just fine for classical Greek too, except for υπο (w/ gen. & dat., out of use in koine). Of course one could make additions, as n.2 acknowledges, e.g. προς with dat. and gen., or παρα w/ acc. But for most common uses this is well worth mastering. Note e.g. εις:προς::εκ:απο.
Textkit poster cb kindly linked to this text some time ago, F. A. Adams’ The Greek Prepositions [Studied from Their Original Meanings as Designations of Space].
It’s a lovely treatise, beautifully written, and it forever changed the way I think about prepositions, especially in relation to compound verbs.
If nothing else, I think I now understand why the Ανάβησις is called the Ανάβησις! Hope this is helpful and best of luck with your studies. That Mastronarde chart is quite nice, too.
thanks for the link. definitely more advanced reading that i’m prepared for at the moment, but looks to be a good reference if i have additional questions on preposition use (which is bound to happen).
also, the chart is not from Mastronarde, but from Metzger’s Lexical Aids for NT Greek, which is mainly a vocabulary frequency list. Mastronarde introduces probably 15 preposition formulas with maybe 8 prepositions (para+gen/dat/acc; pros+gen/dat/acc; epi+gen/dat/acc, meta+gen/acc; dia+gen/acc, and a handful more). Then provides 40+ examples. A thorough presentation, but I find an aid like Metzger’s–though simplified–provides a structure that makes the initial memorization a little easier.
