[B-Greek] Learning Greek

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Wed Jun 13 22:24:23 EDT 2007


I agree with George - reading every day is key. I like to work through a 
book from start to finish. I had done that with much of the New 
Testament quite a while ago, but I've just started up again, and am 
doing it with Luke.

For me personally, it's also really helpful to do something concrete 
with the text. Just recently I've begun phrasing the texts as I go, and 
write down any questions I have, as discussed here:

http://ibiblio.org/koine/greek/phrasing/phrasing-greek-text.html

I am finding this extremely helpful. So I might take a text and lay it 
out like this as I read, noting questions with ** after a line

05 Καὶ ἀναγαγὼν αὐτὸν
ἔδειξεν αὐτῷ πάσας τὰς βασιλείας τῆς οἰκουμένης
ἐν στιγμῇ χρόνου ** ἐν στιγμῇ χρόνου?
06 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ διάβολος,
Σοὶ δώσω τὴν ἐξουσίαν ταύτην ἅπασαν
καὶ τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν,
ὅτι ἐμοὶ παραδέδοται
καὶ ᾧ ἐὰν θέλω δίδωμι αὐτήν
07 σὺ οὖν ἐὰν προσκυνήσῃς ἐνώπιον ἐμοῦ, ** force of σὺ?
ἔσται σοῦ πᾶσα.

05 KAI ANAGAGWN AUTON
EDEIXEN AUTWi PASAS TAS BASILEIAS THS OIKOUMENHS
EN STIGMHi CRONOU ** EN STIGMHi CRONOU??
06 KAI EIPEN AUTWi hO DIABOLOS,
SOI DWSW THN EXOUSIAN TAUTHN hAPASAN
KAI THN DOXAN AUTWN,
hOTI EMOI PARAdEDOTAI
KAI hWi EAN QELW dIDWMI AUTHN
07 SU OUN EAN PROSKUNHSHiS ENWPION EMOU, ** force of SU?
ESTAI SOU PASA.

If I'm pretty confident how the phrases fall out, I don't bother looking 
up words yet, but if I don't see how to phrase something, it may mean 
that I'm missing the fact that a particular verb is passive, for 
instance, so I check the parse codes of the verbs from Tauber's 
MorphGNT. Once I get the text laid out, I read it out loud a few times. 
In the process I start to grasp things I hadn't grasped before, and a 
question or two solidifies. At this point I turn to Grosvenor and 
Zerwick's Grammatical Analysis of the New Testament 
(http://www.amazon.com/Grammatical-Analysis-Greek-New-Testament/dp/8876535888/), 
or Robertson's Word Pictures to quickly look up words or phrases I 
hadn't grasped. If you have the Grammatical Analysis, it's keyed to 
Zerwick's intermediate grammar, which is very convenient.

If my questions not answered by these books, I have been posting them 
here to B-Greek, where bigger Greeks can help. For instance, for this 
passage, I posted the following:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2007-June/043274.html

The discussion on the list often goes way beyond anything I could have 
discovered on my own.

So far, this approach seems to be working well for me. We each have our 
own learning style, so do what works for you. Good luck with it!

Jonathan




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