DESCRIPTION: This course is designed to help students develop and improve
their ability to read and translate extended passages in the Greek New
Testament with facility. Emphasis will be on vocabulary development; rapid
recognition of Greek word forms, grammatical structures, and sentence patterns;
and on development of good reading habits and strategies.
SIGNIFICANCE FOR LIFE AND 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.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: Students successfully completing this course will have
demonstrated to the ability 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) provide the most common meanings of about 700 words that occur
most frequently in the Greek NT; (c) recognize the patterns of Greek word
formation and put this to use in vocabulary development and reading; (d)
understand and recognize the basic grammatical structures, sentence patterns,
and styles of Koine Greek sentences as found in the Greek NT; and (e) read and
translate extended passages throughout the New Testament with minimal use of
reference tools.
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: