Particle: εἰ

SyntaxParticle – εἰ

When we introduced the conditional ἐάν (32.4.3.1), we said that there were four classes of conditional statements in Greek, and two of them were with εἰ and a verb in the indicative mood. These are the first- and second-class conditionals. In the first class, εἰ combines with any verb form and takes the negator οὐ, whereas in the second class, εἰ must combine with a past tense verb, and the negator, if present, is μή. The meaning of first-class conditionals does not include the idea that the protasis is assumed to be true, though this kind of statement is sometimes said about first-class conditionals in Greek. They are thus sometimes wrongly translated ‘since.’ We already said that conditional statements are modal by virtue of them being conditional statements, which means that they are not asserted or presupposed as true. They state that the apodosis holds (the then -statement) whenever the protasis holds (the if -statement), but they do not say anything about whether the protasis holds or not. Although there might be some difference in meaning between first- and third-class conditionals (those with εἰ and ἐάν), there is at least a high degree of overlap between the two in that neither assume that the protasis holds without the apodosis holding:

• (330) Apodosis holds whenever protasis holds (1^st class)
• εἰ οὐ ποιῶ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πατρός μου, μὴ πιστεύετέ μοι (John 10:37)
• If I do not do the works of my father, you should not believe in me

fromLesson 34.4