[B-Greek] Interlinear Greek-English NT

Eric Weiss papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Tue Dec 27 16:52:39 EST 2005


My suggestions:
  
  1. Learn your vocabulary. If visual learning works for you and you have  a decent recall of grammar after 20 years, I recommend The Greek Memory  System picture vocabulary cards that go along with (but can be used  separately from) Story's GREEK TO ME grammar. The cards cover almost  all words that occur 25x or more (625 words or so, i.e., double the 313  or so words that occur 50x that Mounce teaches). 25x or more can get  you through a fair amount of the easier books in the NT without having  to use a lexicon. Of course, you should probably eventually try to  learn all words that occur 10x or more, for which Metzger's slim  Lexical Aids (Baker) is an inexpensive and very handy tool. Its word  counts differ only slightly from Trenchard's more recent and accurate  book (based on NA-26), and the words listed are the same, with  Trenchard maybe including a couple more words in the 10x or more words.
  
  2. If you don't have a decent recall of grammar, then I think it  behooves you to regain your basic knowledge of Greek grammar before or  while you are reading your Greek NT. Unfortunately there is no shortcut  here, but Story's GREEK TO ME with its great audio-visual CD and the  above visual vocabulary cards can make learning the basic grammar  easier than many books, and in less time [e.g., 24 chapters (including  the introduction) versus Mounce's 33 (chapters 1 and 2 of Mounce don't  count, as they are just intro information]. I can email you info on  acquiring this book.
  
  3. IMO, rather than an interlinear, get a diglot - one that has the RSV  on one  page and the NA-27 on the facing page (American Bible Society), or the  larger/bulkier but easy to read NET Bible version that has the NET  translation on one page and the NA-27 on the facing page. It's less of  a potential crutch than an Interlinear, and easier to read the Greek  text, too.
  
  4. If you can find a copy, Perschbacher's out of print (Moody) REFRESH  YOUR GREEK presupposes a knowledge of all words that occur 50x or more  (listed at the beginning of the book), and includes the entire GNT (UBS  3rd Corrected = NA-26/27), and tells you in what order to read the  books to increase your vocabulary accordingly. It also has  supplementary vocabularies at the beginning of each book, and gives  translations as well as grammatical information for each word you do  not yet know each time such a word occurs. It also has a 100+ page  grammar and syntax summary in the back and additional helps. However,  the text is Greek only, not an interlinear or diglot. Zondervan has A  READER'S GREEK NEW TESTAMENT that defines for you every word that  occurs less than 30x, but that means you'd first need to learn every  word that occurs 30x or more. It, too, is Greek only. It's based on the  reconstructed Greek text that underlies the NIV, with NA-27 readings  listed where they
 differ (Zondervan tried but failed to get permission  to use the NA-27 text before having to go to print with this).
  
  Good luck!
  


Eric S. Weiss


		
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