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.
COURSE OBJECTIVES/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 hours. The first
class meeting of each week will be devoted to translation and discussion of a
passage of Greek text for which you 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: