Greek

In his final letter to his foremost disciple, the apostle Paul made this solemn appeal: “Be diligent to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15). The message is clear: Timothy (and, by implication, all teachers of God’s Word) must work hard to arrive at a correct interpretation of any given passage of Scripture. Such careful attention to correctly interpreting Scripture was to set Timothy apart from false teachers such as Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim 2:17). Since the NT was written in Greek, and since inerrancy and inspiration extend specifically to the Scriptures in the autographs (original manuscripts), a good working knowledge of NT Greek greatly enhances one’s interpretive skill.
In this book, we hope to stir in you a passion, and to provide you with the necessary tools, to “go deeper” in your pursuit of your mastery of NT Greek. You’ve taken a course or two in elementary Greek, or perhaps taught yourself by using some of the many helpful tools that are available. You’ve memorized the most common Greek vocabulary, learned the basic forms of the Greek noun, adjective, and verb, studied foundational principles of Greek syntax, and tried your hand at translating NT texts of increasing difficulty. But you know that you’ve got more to learn. We want to help you take your knowledge of NT Greek to the next level, not as an end in itself but as a means to correctly interpreting and teaching God’s Word. So are you ready? Let us take a moment to get oriented, and then we’ll be off and running in our quest to “go deeper” with NT Greek.

A GRAMMAR DESIGNED TO BE READ, NOT MERELY REFERENCED

If you are a student who has been assigned this textbook, it is our prayer that it will help instill in you a passion for reading the Greek New Testament. After all, what is more exciting than reading the very words that God inspired? Our advice to you at this point is to follow carefully your instructor’s advice. If you are using this book for self-study, start each chapter by watching its brief overview video via the web links provided. After that, read the chapter, study the material, and test your mastery by doing the practice exercises at the end of the chapter. Answers to the exercises are found at the back of the book. Additional free materials are available for you at beginninggreek.com.

We wish we could also provide you with dozens of inspiring quotes or stories, advice on study habits, and many effective memory techniques. In fact, we do provide such a “personal trainer in paperback” for your Greek journey in our volume, Greek for Life: Strategies for Learning, Retaining, and Reviving New Testament Greek (Baker, 2017). We encourage you to read that volume along with this one.

Here we turn to address a broader audience—especially the professors who might adopt this textbook for classroom use. “There is no end to the making of many books” (Eccl 12:12). The biblical sage’s observation is especially true of New Testament Greek grammars penned in English. More than 100 introductory Greek grammars have been published in the last century. Why one more?

• Advances in technology now enable the production of a textbook seamlessly integrated with other pedagogical resources, greatly improving student learning. (Note the web links throughout the book whereby students can immediately watch mini-lectures and listen to Greek vocabulary pronounced.) We recommend that you immediately check out beginninggreek.comto see many other free resources prepared for both students (vocabulary flashcards, PDFs of PowerPoint files, links to videos and other resources, etc.) and professors (tests, quizzes, PowerPoint files, syllabi, etc.).
• Beginning Greek students need to be informed accurately and engagingly of the growing consensus among Greek scholars on verbal aspect, discourse functions of tenses, and middle voice/deponency. Recent decades of linguistic analysis have helped Greek scholarship to speak more precisely and objectively about patterns that the best Greek grammarians have observed for centuries. We are hopeful that students who use our textbook will never wander through the wasteland of confusion over these topics.
• Though most beginning grammars do not discuss text criticism, commentaries, critical editions of the Greek New Testament, diagramming, Greek word studies, or digital resources, we have included a brief introductory essay for each one of these topics. A professor may choose to cover all, part, or none of these matters in the classroom, but students will have been provided with accurate, up-to-date information on critical matters—with recommendations of additional resources to explore the topics further.
• The vocabulary lists at the end of each chapter provide working vocabulary for the followingchapters. This simple and innovative tweak to the traditional method of learning Greek vocabulary enables students to focus on new grammatical concepts without the distraction of learning many new words at the same time.
• Without sacrificing accuracy or essential detail, this textbook streamlines and consolidates essential Greek grammar into 24 chapters—giving professors maximum flexibility in choosing to cover the material in one or two semesters.

Though not original to our grammar, we also think the following features help increase its pedagogical effectiveness:

• Each chapter begins with a “significance” section—looking at specific text from the Greek New Testament that illustrates the meaning payoff of the new grammatical category that is being introduced.
• Chapters contain multiple practice exercises that isolate specific new skills before applying them to translation sentences.
• All translation sentences come directly from the Greek New Testament—a great encouragement to students who are learning Greek in order to read the Bible more faithfully. If you find the exercises at the end of the chapter are taking your students too long, feel free to assign only a percentage of them.
• An answer key is provided in the back of the book, allowing students to check their work immediately.

We love seeing students ablaze with a passion to read, understand, believe, obey, enjoy, and teach the Greek New Testament. It is our prayer and hope that this textbook aids in igniting that fire in many hearts.

Welcome to the study of Greek! The goal of this book is to help you learn to read and understand the Greek New Testament, even if you have never studied a foreign language before. Whether you are trying to write a solid expository sermon, prepare an accurate Sunday School lesson, express proper theology in the lyrics of a song, or translate the New Testament into a foreign language, New Testament Greek is a guide without which you are likely to stumble, or even miss the way. The focus throughout this book is on those aspects of grammar where Greek offers its greatest contributions to understanding the New Testament, contributions that are generally not attainable from an English translation.

The principles and methods used in Learn to Read New Testament Greek will enable you to make rapid progress in your studies. New information is introduced in small, manageable units, and points of grammar are fully explained and lavishly illustrated. After seventeen lessons you will begin reading selected passages from the Greek New Testament, and by the end of the course you will be able to read much of the New Testament without constant reference to a dictionary. You will also have an understanding of the structure of the Greek language, an ability to use commentaries and other works based on the Greek text, and a growing capacity to plumb the depths of God’s revelation for yourself.

In Learn to Read New Testament Greek, rote memorization of grammatical forms has been kept to an absolute minimum. Instead, you will learn to recognize recurring patterns in words and how to interpret these through linguistic principles. This will equip you to read even unfamiliar passages from the New Testament with confidence. In addition, by learning the basic word lists, nearly seventy-five percent of the words of the New Testament will be familiar to you, and the rest will be within reach of an intelligent guess.

As you use this text, follow these simple instructions:

(1) When you begin a new lesson, read it through quickly. Then study it section by section, pausing at the end of each short section to assimilate its contents. Never begin a new lesson until you are thoroughly familiar with the previous one. If you are a member of a Greek class, ask questions on any point you do not understand. Your teacher will be pleased that you are sufficiently concerned to ask.

(2) When you feel you have understood the lesson, begin the exercises. To benefit most from the text, do all of the exercises. Each has been designed to give you extensive practice in using a specific Greek structure. If you are part of a Greek class, be careful not to fall behind in the exercises, since “catching up” is extremely difficult in an elementary course.

(3) Never write the English translations of words in your textbook. If you do, you will remember the English and forget the Greek. Instead, do all the exercises on a separate sheet of paper. Then read the exercises again, preferably aloud, until you are able to translate them easily and quickly.

(4) Finally, enjoy your studies and take pleasure in your progress. Don’t get impatient if your pace seems slow. Learning a foreign language requires a great deal of time and effort. Claims of miracle-methods by which languages can be learned in a few days or weeks are utterly irresponsible and unfounded. On the other hand, if you make proper use of your instruction, you will be surprised how rapidly you progress. By the end of the course, you will actually be reading your New Testament in the original Greek!