DESCRIPTION: This course is designed to help students improve their ability to
read extended passages in the Greek New Testament with facility. Emphasis will
be on vocabulary development and rapid recognition of Greek word forms,
grammatical structures, and sentence patterns. Review of the basic elements of
New Testament Greek will be included according to the needs of the class.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Upon successful completion of this course, students will be
able to (a) identify all the relevant categories (i.e., to parse) all regular
forms and most of the irregular but frequent forms of the articles, nouns,
pronouns, adjectives, and verbs that occur in the Greek New Testament; (b) know
the most common meanings of about 700 words that occur most frequently in the
Greek NT, (c) know the patterns of Greek word formation and put this to use in
vocabulary development and reading, (d) understand and be able to recognize the
basic grammatical structures, sentence patterns, and styles of Koine Greek
sentences as found in the Greek NT; and (e) be able to use all of this to read
and translate extended passages throughout the New Testament with minimal use
of reference tools.
RELEVANCE FOR MINISTRY: One of the most basic elements in interpreting the
text of the New Testament is understanding the language in which it was
written. Students who successfully complete this course should be able to make
extensive use of the Greek text, with limited dependence on supportive tools,
as part of the exegetical task.
COURSE FORMAT: The course will meet twice each week for two-hour sessions. The
first class meeting of each week will be devoted to translation and discussion
of a passage of Greek text for which students have prepared in advance. The
second class meeting of each week will be devoted to translation and discussion
of an unprepared passage. In this exercise the instructor will work with the
students to help them develop sight-reading skills at the very time of their
encounter with an unfamiliar text.
REQUIRED READING: