Learning Greek?

There are excellent translations available, and using a few of them together will give you a fine understanding of the meaning of the Scriptures.

But, I encourage everyone who has an interest to learn koine Greek and read the New Testament in its original language. Learning to read Greek is not terribly difficult. It really only takes two years. In the first year of Greek you learn the basics of grammar and syntax and acquire a working vocabulary.

The second year of Greek takes about 8 years.

Really, learning Greek only takes the dedication to work at it steadily.

The advantages of learning to read the New Testament in Greek include seeing the underlying structure of some passages, recognizing wordplays and puns, and having new meanings opened up as you read. Reading in Greek also forces one to struggle with a text and it slows one down enough to truly comprehend what they are reading.

So, in a word, learning Greek is by no means necessary, but it is beneficial. If there is a course offered nearby, try it. See how you like it. (I recommend taking a course, but, if you need to learn on your own, I can suggest some excellent resources.)

The 8 years is kind of a joke. You can get the basics of Greek down pretty quickly but to read with comprehension takes lots of practice. I try to read Greek an hour a day at least 6 days a week.

My suggestions for self-study:

Start with "Learn New Testament Greek" by John Dobson. It is a highly inductive approach to learning Greek: ie. you learn to read Greek by reading Greek. It is well-organized, has lots of exercises, and the key to the exercises is in the back of the book, so you don't need any other materials. (Some people prefer Mounce's "Basics of Biblical Greek" but I don't find it nearly as useful for self-study).

Since you can't really learn Greek using only an inductive approach, there is a cludgy old computer program called "Greek Tutor" from Parson's Technology that uses a completely deductive approach (learn Greek by memorizing paradigms). I think that this program has been reissued with additional materials under a different name. It used to be that you could get college credit by working through the entire program. It has lots of exercises, too. It really needs an update, but it's the best thing I know of. Use it to learn the alphabet and pronunciations before you start on Dobson's book, then supplement what you learn from Dobson with the rest of Greek Tutor.

For Vocabulary acquisition, I recommend a two CD set from Zondervan titled "New Testament Greek Vocabulary" by Jonathan T. Pennington. It comes with a little booklet containing all the words on the discs, so you can read, listen and learn.

Eventually you will want a Greek New Testament. Zondervan publishes "A Reader's Greek New Testament" which has footnotes on each page for unfamiliar words on each page. If you get this book, make sure you get the second edition which has a more readable typeface. Or, better yet (though more expensive) is the United Bible Society's "The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's Edition" which is better laid out and has the standard UBS4/NA27 Greek text.


That's enough to get you started on learning New Testament Greek.

Eventually you will want a good Lexicon and a reference Grammar, but that's down the road a ways.

Another suggestion: see if you can get someone to learn Greek with you. It helps to have someone to check your work and hold you accountable.

God bless!

Oh yeah...Codex Sinaiticus. It is really difficult to read those old manuscripts because they were written without any punctuation or even spaces between words. They also used some goofy abbreviations back in the day...I'll look at it, but I don't really think I'll be reading it much.