Greek Summer Reading
One question I get a lot is “how do I keep up with my Greek?” At the risk of over-simplification, my answer is… wait for it… read Greek!
Lee Irons has a variety of resources on his site to make such reading less intimidating for the beginner to intermediate Greekling. To get started, check out his introduction to his reading program. You will also want to download his more detailed Greek Reading Calendar. Most importantly, pick up a copy of his Greek Syntax Notes, which he promises to distribute in installments throughout the year.
Also, I highly recommend Young’s Intermediate NT Greek, which is concise. comprehensive, linguistically-aware, and easy to use. All together, it is an excellent reference that should be on everyone’s bookshelf, and will be enormously helpful in those tough-to-read sections.
Finally, I am making some of my beginner Form and Function guides available here. They are still a work in progress, and only cover the basics of Greek syntax, but they can serve as a good resource for reminding you of what you already know. These are highly indebted to Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek, Machen/McCartney’s NT Greek for Beginners and Young’s aforementioned Greek grammar (many of the terms of several of the guides have been directly lifted from the last two of these, since they are both used in my Greek class).
- Rules for Verb Forms
- Form and Function Guide
- Moods Function Guide
- Adjective Function Cheat Sheet
- Use of Autos Cheat Sheet
Stay tuned! I plan on posting a variety of Greek resources in the near future, including a guide to typing in Greek and an introduction to diagramming with Bibleworks. So if you haven’t subscribed to the site, do so!
Related posts:
- Reading Greek Online
- How to Type in Greek Part II: Setting Up the Microsoft Greek Polytonic Keyboard
- How to Type in Greek Part III: The Best Greek Fonts
- Which Greek Text?
- New Digital Greek Text Available
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Comments
Young steers pretty clear of theological discussion in his book; at least I haven’t seen anything “dispi”-ish. I like the book because he brings modern linguistic insights to bear on his handling of syntax, which is both rare and invaluable.
And his discourse-analysis section in the back is worth the price of the book, and then some.
This is a pretty late comment (but it's just been that long since I've worked on my Greek!). I was looking over these forms today and found them really helpful. Your organization of the verb charts is well done. Also, the examples in the form and function guide are great. Have you considered adding some examples from Scripture to the "Moods" sheet? It might help put some legs on an otherwise abstract subject. All in all, these are a wonderful resource.
Also, have you checked out Lee Irons Greek NT syntax notes lately? He recently finished them for every book of the NT.
Ross, thanks for your comments. Glad these materials were helpful. All these documents will probably get a serious overhaul in the next couple of months due to my teaching Intermediate Greek at Westminster. The Lee Irons stuff is excellent, and should be downloaded in full ASAP as he is thinking about publishing some of it, and while I am sure he has a heart of gold, publishers may not. I think I mentioned his stuff in a subsequent post, but if I didn't shame on me.
Thanks for the recommendations. The Moods sheet will no doubt get an update, and I will try to incorporate more "real world" examples at that time.
Have you seen this book: http://www.wtsbooks.com/product-exec/product_id/6...?? I found it very helpful.
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These are some very helpful resources. Thanks for posting them. Interestingly, Young was(and may still be) a professor at Bob Jones University. BJU’s seminary has a failry impressive language department. You have to watch out for some of the dispi-end times syntactical stretches however.