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“Give me a word, any word, and I show you that the root of that word is Greek.”
–My Big Fat Greek Wedding
This one-year course is designed to give students a solid foundation for further study and reading of the New Testament in its original Greek. The bulk of our time together will be spent learning the basics of New Testament (or koiné) Greek, including the Greek alphabet, vocabulary, morphology, unusual word order, etc. By the end of the year, students will have several Greek memory verses under their belts (including the entire Lord’s Prayer!), and will have learned enough koiné that they may continue to study the New Testament, whether for Greek or Biblical scholarship, with increased facility and astuteness. Second year Greek is designed as a reading course, delving into the more intricate aspects of Greek syntax and semantics and even introducing the basics of Biblical exegesis.
There are no official prerequisites for first year Greek, though a good grounding in English grammar will be very helpful. Greek reinforces English grammar and vice versa, so taking Greek will help a student immeasurably with English.
The only required text for this tutorial is Ted Hildebrandt’s Mastering New Testament Greek CD-ROM (available at CBD) and elsewhere. I think CBD has the best deal for it, but feel free to check around for even better prices!). This is an interactive program with hundreds of pages of grammar texts, workbooks and lexical aids all on one CD-ROM. Dr. Hildebrandt was my Greek professor at Gordon College, and he actually created this program to save his students from the pecuniary plights typical of college life. By compiling all the need-to-know bits of introductory Greek into this CD-ROM, he has offered the equivalent of at least five or six text books, all for the price of that one disc! This is truly a great resource to have on hand, and even years after the initial acquisition of Greek, it is a highly accessible way of getting back into New Testament Greek.
Recommended but not required is Bruce Metzger’s Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek, also available at Christian Book Distributors (and again, theirs is probably the best price). Since MNTG has a digital lexicon we will not need a separate book for vocabulary. Lexical Aids is, however, a portable and very useful text that lists Greek words based on their frequency of use in the New Testament. Although I do strongly recommend that students have this on hand it is, again, not required. |
