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Greek Vocabulary

We've uploaded the vocabulary from the first 13 chapters of David Alan Black's book Learn to Read New Testament Greek to a site called "Study SEBTS". Later, we'll add the vocabulary from the second half of the book. For now, you can use the links below to help you retain your vocabulary from the first semester.

Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13

Chapters 3-13 combined

The "combined" list includes all the words that you should know at the beginning of the second semester of Greek - GRK2620.

Present, Future, Imperfect, Aorist Patterns

Since we're learning to recognize verbs morphologically, if you can remember a few patterns, you will quickly be able to recognize the tense, voice, and mood of the verb. So far, we have studied the present, future, imperfect, and aorist tenses in the active voice and the indicative mood. Here are the patterns for those verbs:

Present: lexical morpheme + neutral morpheme (optional) + person-number endings (primary active)

Future: lexical morpheme + σ (futuristic morpheme) + neutral morpheme (optional) + person-number endings (primary active)

Imperfect: ε (past time morpheme) + lexical morpheme + neutral morpheme + person-number endings (secondary active)

Aorist: ε (past time morpheme) + lexical morpheme + σα (aoristic morpheme) + person-number endings (secondary active)

2nd Aorist: ε (past time morpheme) + lexical morpheme (2nd aorist) + neutral morpheme + person-number endings (secondary active)

If you can remember these patterns, and the new patterns we will learn soon, it will help you recognize the tense, voice, and mood of a verb when you are translating from Greek to English.

Introducing Textual Criticism

This week, we began our discussion about textual criticism. Primarily, we discussed writing and copying manuscripts in the first century. We also discussed some of the usual scribal errors (both unintentional and intentional). Finally, we talked about the various text types or families of manuscripts. If you would like to learn more about textual criticism, start with the book that you are required to read: New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide by Dave Black. Another great resource is the Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism. We will continue discussing textual criticism throughout this semester.

First steps in translation

Now that we've learned a few verbs, a few nouns, and a few prepositions, we can begin translating Greek sentences. This will be the focus of our exam on Friday. When you begin translating a sentence in Greek (or in any language), it is very important that you find the subject and main verb of the sentence.

Start by looking for the main verb in the sentence. So far, we only know Present Active Indicative and Future Active Indicative verbs. They both have the same endings, so you should be able to recognize the verb in the sentence based on the primary active ending.

Next, look for a noun in the nominative case. This will be the subject of the sentence.

Once you've found the subject and main verb of the sentence, you can examine the remainder of the sentence word-by-word and phrase-by-phrase. Remember to determine the case of every noun. Noun usage in Greek sentence is determined by the case of the noun, not by word order. So, look for an accusative as the direct object and a dative as the indirect object. Translate prepositional phrases together without separated the preposition from the noun that acts as the object of the preposition.

Once you have determined how each word and phrase is used, place your translation into a correct English sentence. The order of the words in English will probably be different that the order of the words in Greek. This is why it is so important to determine how the Greek word is used in the sentence.

If you follow these steps, it will make translation easier, especially as we add more verbs, nouns, pronouns, conjunctions, etc.

English Grammar Aid

As we get deeper into this semester and deeper into the grammar of New Testament Greek, you may find some of the grammatical terms to be unfamiliar. Tense, voice, mood, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, preposition, subject, direct object, indirect object, present, future, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, participle, infinitive, etc. If these terms cause consternation, you may be interested in a book called English Grammar to Ace New Testament Greek by Samuel Lamerson. This book is available at the bookstore and online.

This is the description of the book: "This book is for students of biblical Greek whose trouble understanding English grammar hampers their ability to learn Greek." So, if you could use some help with English grammar, this book is one option.

Reading the Greek New Testament

The best way to get comfortable seeing, speaking, and hearing Greek is to read the Greek New Testament aloud. Here is something that may help you read your Greek New Testament. CCEL ("Christian Classics Etheral Library") has audio files (mp3's) of the entire Greek New Testament being read aloud. You can find links to the mp3 files at this url:

http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/gnt/home.html.

Pick a passage in your Greek New Testament (i.e. John 1). Listen to the audio file of the passage as you read along. Then read the passage aloud for yourself. Finally, listen to the audio file of the passage again as you read along.

The more time that you spend reading your Greek New Testament, the more comfortable and familiar you will become with this language.