20.141 Periphrastic Participles

Make sure you read Croy's notes in section 141.

The phrase "periphrastic" participle is used to refer to a construction in which a form of the verb "to be" is combined with a participle to obtain a new verbal expression. Since we do this constantly in English, you will have no trouble at all with these verb forms in Greek! Here are some examples of English constructions that contain a form of the verb "to be" and a participle:

We are leaving now.

She was telling us the whole story.

He was gone for two hours.

The water must be boiled.

The army was defeated.

Make sure you read through the Greek examples of periphrastic participle phrases in Croy. This construction is much more common in Biblical Greek than in classical Greek. As Croy notes, these constructions start to replace the imperfect and perfect verb tenses in Biblical Greek - although as English speakers, this will not seem strange to you at all, since we also have periphrastic constructions that we use for the past and perfect tenses in English.