Learn to Read New Testament Greek

David Alan Black

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780805463859
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Reference

An academic staple updated for the first time in fifteen years, David Alan Black 's user-friendly introduction to New Testament Greek keeps discussion of grammar as non-technical as possible. The simplified explanations, basic vocabularies, and abundant exercises are designed to prepare the student for subsequent practical courses in exegesis, while the linguistic emphasis lays the groundwork for later courses in grammar. Revisions to this third edition include updated discussions and scholarship, further back matter vocabulary references, and additional appendices."A streamlined introductory grammar that will prove popular in the classroom."— Murray J. Harris, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

"Clear charts, clear examples, clear discussion—what more could one want from a beginning grammar!"— Darrell L. Bock, Dallas Theological Seminary

"... combines the strengths of a fairly traditional sequence of topics, in generally manageable chunks with clear explanations fully abreast of modern linguistics."— Craig L. Blomberg, Denver Seminary

"Pedagogically conceived, linguistically informed, hermeneutically sensitive, biblically focused—unique among beginning grammars. It sets a new standard."— Robert Yarbrough, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

1

THE LETTERS AND SOUNDS OF GREEK

The first step in studying New Testament Greek is learning how to read and write the Greek alphabet. Learning the order and sounds of the Greek letters will help break down the strangeness between you and Greek, enable you to find a word in a Greek-English dictionary, and reveal the relationship between Greek and English words.

1. The Language of the New Testament

You are embarking on the study of one of the most significant languages in the world. Its importance lies not so much in its wealth of forms as in the fact that God used it as an instrument to communicate his Word (just as he had earlier used Hebrew and Aramaic). History tells us that the ancient Hellenes first settled in the Greek peninsula in the thirteenth century B.C. Their language consisted of several dialects, one of which—the Attic spoken in Athens—became the most prominent. It was largely a descendent of Attic Greek that was adopted as the official language of the Greek empire after the conquests of Alexander the Great, which accounts for its use in the New Testament. This new world language has been called the “Koine,” or “common,” Greek since it was the common language of everyday commerce and communication. In the city of Rome itself, Greek was used as much as Latin, and when Paul wrote his letter to the Roman Christians, he wrote it in Greek. This, then, is the language of the New Testament, a language belonging to the living stream of the historical development of Greek from the ancient Hellenes to the modern Athenians, a language spoken by common and cultured people alike, a language uniquely suited to the propagation of the gospel of Christ when it began to be proclaimed among the nations of the world.

2. The Greek Alphabet

The first step in studying Greek is learning its letters and sounds. This is not as hard as you might think. All the sounds are easy to make, and Greek almost always follows the phonetic values of its letters. We should mention that the pronunciation you are learning is something of a compromise between how the sounds were probably produced in ancient times and how they are spelled. This scheme of pronunciation has the practical advantage of assigning a sound to only one letter, so that if you can remember the pronunciation of a word, you will generally be able to remember its spelling.

Below you will find the Greek letters with their closest English equivalents. When you have studied them carefully, cover the fourth and fifth columns and try to pronounce each letter.

Name	Uppercase	Lowercase...