John 8:27 — ExegesisTAB

The sentence opens with the negative particle ouk {οὐκ | ouk} placed before the aorist verb egnosan {ἔγνωσαν | égnō-san} ‘they knew’, producing a concise statement of collective ignorance. The conjunction hoti {ὅτι | hó-ti} introduces an object clause that gives the content of what they failed to grasp, forming an indirect discourse structure. Within this clause, the verb elegen {ἔλεγεν | é-le-gen} ‘he was saying’ is in the imperfect, suggesting ongoing or repeated speech in the past. Its subject is an implied third person singular, contextually referring to Jesus as the ongoing speaker in the discourse of John 8. The phrase ton patera {τὸν πατέρα | tón pa-té-ra} functions as the accusative object of the prepositionally unmarked verb ‘was saying’ in the sense “was speaking about the Father,” with the article marking a specific, known referent, namely God as Father. The dative pronoun autois {αὐτοῖς | au-toîs} indicates the recipients of this speech, “to them,” highlighting that the misunderstanding lies not in the clarity of what was said but in the audience’s perception. In English, the implicit subject of elegen is rendered explicitly as “He,” and the hoti-clause becomes “that He was speaking to them about the Father,” preserving the indirect statement while smoothing the syntax into natural English word order.