# Learn New Testament Greek by John H. Dobson



## Authorised

I started recently to learn Greek from this book, which teaches the language in an extremely inductive fashion. One concern I had though is when I got to one lesson, it mentioned accents somewhat in passing. The author explained that one doesn't need to know too much about them to be able to read the NT. However, I also want to know how to pronounce these words...so far I think I have most of it correct, because when I sound out words I remember having heard them spoken from pulpits (and elsewhere), and my pronounciation is pretty much the same. 

Could anyone who knows Greek explain the accents though?


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## BobVigneault

Aaron,
for now just accent the syllable with the accent over it when you speak it. It's true that accents are not all that important for most practical purposes but you should learn them sooner or later. Hardcore Machenites will disagree with what I just said.

The pronunciation comes from the letters and dipthongs. There is only one way to pronounce each. 

The accent of the syllables probably once followed the shape of the written accent. The grave indicated the pitch went down, the acute went up and the circumflex went up and then down.

Some of the accents do give us a modicum of exegetical insight but they were not part of the original writings - they are helps. 

I'm not familiar with Dobson's text. I learned Machen in college and lately have been refreshing with Mounce. I like Mounce because he mixes inductive and deductive methods, has a workbook and an interactive cd-rom. Look for him on overstock.com to save some coin.

God bless you Aaron and happy parsing.


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## blhowes

Aaron,
I'm awfully tempted to get a book like the one you're using and see what I could learn. Everytime I hear or read an analysis of a Greek passage, like what Craig did in the other thread, I think how cool and useful it would be to learn. 

Regarding pronunciation of the words, have you checked online at all for resources? A while ago, I was just curious about the Hebrew language - just basics about whether it had an alphabet or if it used symbols like the Chinese use. I found an interesting site that's used to teach children (I think) Hebrew. It started with the alphabet and then built words from there. You could click on a word to hear what it sounds like. I'd bet there's probably something like that online for Greek as well. 

I have a general question about Greek resources. Craig's post about Matthew 28 got me curious and I wanted to see what I could glean from what he said, and see how many of his steps I could retrace. I downloaded an interesting Greek module for E-sword that has the Greek, strong's numbers for each word, what part of speech the word is, and some other detailed abbreviations about that part of speech. My question is, does anybody know of any handy resources online that would tell me what these abbreviations are and what they mean? Its no substitute for learning the language, but it'll be a start to satisfy my curiosity.

Here's an example of what's displayed after the first word in Matthew 28:19:

4198 V-AOP-NPM

It tells me the word is a verb, but I'm looking for a resource to explain what comes after it.

Thanks,
Bob


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## blhowes

I think I may have found the [u:77e0997a74][b:77e0997a74]resouces[/b:77e0997a74][/u:77e0997a74] I was looking for. There are a bunch of links in the grammar section that I think will be helpful.

I followed a bunch of the links that give tables for conjugating verbs, declining nouns, parsing, etc. At first glance, its bit overwhelming, but I think its definitely something I'd like to learn in time. 

I'm curious about those of you who have studied Greek in seminary or wherever. There are so many different moods and voices and tenses,etc. Do you actually remember all the endings for all the different combinations and what each variation of the tense means, or do you need to use Greek grammar books to jog your memory?


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## BobVigneault

Bob, here is another little chart that helps to describe the letters you are encountering for what they are worth. They will help more when you have learned your Greek. You really should because it's a fascinating way to get you "wrestling" with scripture.

http://www.stillvoices.org/downloads/files/Parsing.txt

The letters you gave as an example are a verb parsing code. There are a few patterns folks use for these. The one you listed orders the parsing V-tense-voice-mood-case-number-gender. So your word "poreuomai" is a verb in the aorist tense, passive deponent voice, participle mood, nominative, plural and masculine. Not very edifying but now you know.

God bless


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## blhowes

[quote:5d944f8f1b="maxdetail"]Bob, here is another little chart that helps to describe the letters you are encountering for what they are worth. They will help more when you have learned your Greek. You really should because it's a fascinating way to get you "wrestling" with scripture.[/quote:5d944f8f1b]
Bob,
Thanks for the link. 
There's something about the idea of learning Greek that intriques me. I think I may check into it. 

[quote:5d944f8f1b="maxdetail"]
The letters you gave as an example are a verb parsing code. There are a few patterns folks use for these. The one you listed orders the parsing V-tense-voice-mood-case-number-gender. So your word "poreuomai" is a verb in the aorist tense, passive deponent voice, participle mood, nominative, plural and masculine. Not very edifying but now you know.[/quote:5d944f8f1b]
Cool. Right now its like a jigsaw puzzle that was just dumped out of the box. I'd imagine that when you put all the pieces together it can yield some pretty impressive pictures.


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## Authorised

I, for one, am quite happy with this book I'm using...I've taken five years of German in high school, yet I feel a lot more confident with Greek grammar than I do with German...I wish more foreign languages were taught like this. It is HIGHLY inductive though...he has you use all the forms before he even tells you whether its masculine, feminine, neuter, or whether its nominative, accusative, genitive, or dative. That could get a little frustrating because it seems like a really long joke with no punchline. 

Seriously though, I found it pretty helpful when using index cards of all the new words, going over it everyday before I start translating, and then throwing away the ones I have down pat. Sadly, school is about to take up eight hours of my day so I wont have as much time with it either...


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## BobVigneault

Bob, another thing to keep in mind (and Aaron hints at this when he speaks of Greek being easier than German) is that you are not trying to learn the whole language. You are learning to translate the words that appear in the NT. If you learn approximately 320 words you know about 80% of the whole NT. 320 words is how many you will learn in a first year Greek course.

Get started today. I again want to plug Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek. I hope to run across Dobson soon so I can check out his style.

God bless you


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## blhowes

[quote:a7813dc2b5="maxdetail"]Bob, another thing to keep in mind (and Aaron hints at this when he speaks of Greek being easier than German) is that you are not trying to learn the whole language. You are learning to translate the words that appear in the NT. If you learn approximately 320 words you know about 80% of the whole NT. 320 words is how many you will learn in a first year Greek course.
[/quote:a7813dc2b5]
Thanks for the advice. 

[quote:a7813dc2b5="maxdetail"]
Get started today. I again want to plug Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek. I hope to run across Dobson soon so I can check out his style. God bless you[/quote:a7813dc2b5]
In another thread, it was mentioned that there are different kinds or dialects of Greek. How can you tell which is which?

I dusted off a book I bought a long time ago called [i:a7813dc2b5]An Introduction to Greek[/i:a7813dc2b5], by Crosby and Schaeffer, and started reading it. Anybody ever heard of this book? Is it best to work from a text book specifically geared for the New Testament, or would this cover the same things? There's a mixture of translation examples, some of which are from the scriptures, and the majority are from other Greek writings. The intro says there are 600 vocabulary words - would that most likely cover the ones used in the NT?

Well, for now I'll use this book until I hear otherwise. I figure I can't go wrong learning the alphabet and getting an overview of diphthongs, breathings, inflection, etc. 

Anybody have any advice about whether I should continue using this book, or get another that's more geared to the NT?

Thanks,
Bob


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## BobVigneault

Bob, I had no idea that you were so new to NT Greek. You definitely want to pursue New Testament (also called Koine) Greek. And if you don't want to get a hold of Mounce's book (very user friendly) then give this site a try and see if you still want to pursue the language. It gives a nice overview as well as some well organized lessons - for free!

http://www.inthebeginning.org/ntgreek/learn.htm

When I said start today I didn't think you would actually start today, but it's that kind of enthusiasm that will bring the pay off. If you can find someone to study with it makes it a whole lot easier. Take care.


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## blhowes

[quote:ab1d9c4281="maxdetail"]Bob, I had no idea that you were so new to NT Greek. [/quote:ab1d9c4281]
Like the saying goes, "Its all Greak to me". About all I know about it is how to spell the word.

[quote:ab1d9c4281="maxdetail"]
You definitely want to pursue New Testament (also called Koine) Greek. And if you don't want to get a hold of Mounce's book (very user friendly) then give this site a try and see if you still want to pursue the language. It gives a nice overview as well as some well organized lessons - for free!
[/quote:ab1d9c4281]
For now, I think I'll go through the online lessons. I've checked out the site and I think it'll be ideal for my purposes at this time. 

What a bummer! I went to their online forum and I ended up being the second person to post on it. The first post was from the administrator apologizing for any inconvenience caused by the hacker who got into their site and totally corrupted the forum's database. They had to start from scratch!

[quote:ab1d9c4281="maxdetail"]
When I said start today I didn't think you would actually start today, but it's that kind of enthusiasm that will bring the pay off. If you can find someone to study with it makes it a whole lot easier. Take care.[/quote:ab1d9c4281]
I'm not getting any younger, so I figure there's no time like the present to get started. Looks like a big mountain to climb - I'm looking forward to the view I can see along the way.


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## panicbird

Re: 320 words = ~80% of New Testament.

While technically true, this is somewhat misleading - at the very least, it gives a false hope to a beginning Greek student. It is true that in learning a mere 320 words you will have mastered 80% of New Testament vocabulary, but what the beginning student does not realize is that there are over 5000 words in the New Testament, words which you will come upon more often than not. Knowing the 320 is good, but by no means will you be able to sit down with a GNT and start reading. Two of those 320 words are the Greek words for "the" and "and". Together, these two words account for almost 21% of New Testament word occurences. So, you could correctly say that you know 21% of New Testament vocabulary. While technically true, you can no more read the GNT than I can read Syriac.

Do not let Mounce fool you: you need more than his 320 words in the first year! You could easily learn 5 new words a day; 5 new words a day, six days a week (excepting the Lord's Day), 52 weeks a year = 1560 words. Now THAT is a good start.

Lon


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## blhowes

[quote:c42cef22dd="panicbird"]Re: 320 words = ~80% of New Testament.

While technically true, this is somewhat misleading - at the very least, it gives a false hope to a beginning Greek student. [/quote:c42cef22dd]

Thanks for putting things into perspective. Personally, when I read about about the 80%, the first thoughts that came into my mind is that there's more work to be done after that (who wants to be able to read 80% of the scriptures?) and, the second thought was that the 20% that's left over are probably the most difficult words that'll be the most challenging.

[quote:c42cef22dd="panicbird"]
Do not let Mounce fool you: you need more than his 320 words in the first year! You could easily learn 5 new words a day; 5 new words a day, six days a week (excepting the Lord's Day), 52 weeks a year = 1560 words. Now THAT is a good start.[/quote:c42cef22dd]
So, bottom line is learn the mechanics well and don't scrimp on vocabulary words.

Thanks for your advice,
Bob


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## panicbird

[quote:d585cf2b6a]the 20% that's left over are probably the most difficult words[/quote:d585cf2b6a]

It is not that they are difficult, it is just that they are so numerous. There are over 3700 words that occur 5 times or less! 

[quote:d585cf2b6a]So, bottom line is learn the mechanics well and don't scrimp on vocabulary words.[/quote:d585cf2b6a]
That is exactly right.

Lon


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## BobVigneault

Actually if you take 20% of what Lon said, only 80% of it was true.  

KIDDING!!!!

I'm just a 'glass is half full' kind of guy. Call me unrealistically optimistic but I even believe that man will one day walk on the moon.

Have a great and rich Lord's Day!


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## blhowes

[quote:402df434ef="maxdetail"]
I'm just a 'glass is half full' kind of guy. Call me unrealistically optimistic but I even believe that man will one day walk on the moon.[/quote:402df434ef]
Bob,
Up until now, you had me convinced that what you said was true in your previous posts. Then, you made the above statement, and in my mind your credibility became very suspect. I mean, give me a break, a man walking on the moon? It'll never happen!

[quote:402df434ef="maxdetail"]
Have a great and rich Lord's Day![/quote:402df434ef]
You too.


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## Authorised

btw...I've also noticed Dobson is very, VERY fond of the dynamic equivalency philosophy of translation. He mentions it nearly every lesson as if it were dogma. That's irritating, but the book is still good.


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## blhowes

[quote:21c78a023c="Authorised"]btw...I've also noticed Dobson is very, VERY fond of the dynamic equivalency philosophy of translation. He mentions it nearly every lesson as if it were dogma. That's irritating, but the book is still good.[/quote:21c78a023c]

This may be a dumb question (that's never stopped me before), but what does dynamic equivalency mean? 

Trivia (trivial) question: Why are there two lower case sigmas in the Greek alphabet? I know the one that looks like an 's' is always at the end of the word, so I thought it might be an aid in determining where one word ended and another started (when there were no spaces between the words - or was that just when they just used capitals). Then, I thought, this probably wasn't the case, since there are so many word endings that don't have an s on the end...not a show stopper, just something I was curious about.


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## blhowes

Now here's something a little more my speed. The Greek alphabet to the tune of Mama's Little Baby".

http://www.teknia.com/free/songs.html

How many of you could sing the [i:7afa97a8e1]Doxology[/i:7afa97a8e1] or [i:7afa97a8e1]Jesus Loves Me[/i:7afa97a8e1] in Greek without looking at the words? Don't answer too quickly, you may be called upon to prove your expertise at a moment's notice.


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## Authorised

Dynamic equivalency is the philosophy with which the NIV was translated. The emphasis is upon the "meaning" of the words rather than a slavishly literal translation. 

in my opinion, NIV does better in the Old Testament because Hebrew is more flexible than Greek. 

I think it is even sillier when Greek has a mark to indicate an 'h' sound, but then also has a mark to indicated there is not an 'h' sound. What's the purpose of that?


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## daveb

[quote:f71bb9c2de]Trivia (trivial) question: Why are there two lower case sigmas in the Greek alphabet? I know the one that looks like an 's' is always at the end of the word, so I thought it might be an aid in determining where one word ended and another started (when there were no spaces between the words - or was that just when they just used capitals). Then, I thought, this probably wasn't the case, since there are so many word endings that don't have an s on the end...not a show stopper, just something I was curious about.[/quote:f71bb9c2de]

You've got it Bob, the one that looks like an 's' is used at the end of a word, the other within a word.


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## panicbird

[quote:5a89cac6d0]I think it is even sillier when Greek has a mark to indicate an 'h' sound, but then also has a mark to indicated there is not an 'h' sound. What's the purpose of that?[/quote:5a89cac6d0]

If I had to guess, I would say precision. You could say the same thing about the accents: there is one to indicate the pitch going up (acute) and one to indicate the pitch going down (grave). Why have both? To be more precise.

Bob, I do not know why there are two sigmas. I know how each of them is used; I do not know why there would be two different ones. It could be as a help to identifying the end of one word, as only nu, rho, and sigma are the only consonants that can stand at the end of a Greek word (with some exceptions, like the proclitics), but there are only two sigmas in "lower case" Greek. "Upper case" Greek has but one. Since everything was written in "upper case," a second sigma in "lower case" would not be very helpful (kind of like this answer).

Lon


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## Authorised

Quote:
"The Greek alphabet to the tune of Mama's Little Baby."

So pi is pronounced "pee"

Now that's useful information...I'll remind my calculus teacher next time it comes up.


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## blhowes

Thank-you all for your answers to my questions. 

[quote:ce4598c290="Authorised"]Quote:
"The Greek alphabet to the tune of Mama's Little Baby."
So pi is pronounced "pee"
Now that's useful information...I'll remind my calculus teacher next time it comes up.[/quote:ce4598c290]
Aaron,
I hadn't listened to the tune enough to notice that. Thanks for pointing that out. I'm glad you pointed this out so I can learn the alphabet correctly..."pee...pee"

Seriously though...I've been learning the alphabet through the online lessons given earlier in the thread. Your comment made me curious about what the lesson said about the letter. There's a table that summarizes some of the information about all the letters. In the 'English' column, the letter is spelled 'pi', with a long mark over the 'i', and its pronounced as I've always seen/heard it. In the 'Sounds As' column, its spelled 'peeh'. I thought that was pretty strange, especially since the information in this column for the rest of the letters is pretty much as I would have expected it to be.

There's link at the site to a page that lists all the letters, shows you how to draw them, and how they're pronounced. I was surprised when I clicked on the mp3 link to hear what it sounds like. Here's the link:

http://www.inthebeginning.org/ntgreek/alphabet/pi.htm

Any thoughts why its pronounced this way?


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## blhowes

Ok. Here's my theory. 'Peeh' is probably the correct pronunciation instead of 'pie'. Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't a long 'I' sound in Greek as we know it, so the 'I' is pronounced as it would be in Greek, with the long 'I' sounding like the 'I' in machine. 'Pie' is how its English equivalent is pronounced.

How far off-base am I?


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## panicbird

Bob,

You are pretty "on base." Though we cannot be 100% certain of the pronunciation of ancient or koine Greek (for two big reasons: one, it is thousands of years old; two, the pronunciation varied from region to region), it is fairly certain that the iota never had the value that would result in the letter pi being pronounced "pie." There is a way (phonetically) to say "pie" in Greek (at least a rough equivalent; using the diphthong "ai"), but it is not with the letters pi and iota. The correct pronunciation is "pee," like our letter p.

I do not know how it got changed from "pee" to "pie," though. Any language history buffs out there?

Lon


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## Galahad

blhowes - what was the online resource you found for teaching children Hebrew? That's more my speed. Thanks


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## blhowes

[quote:79ba41b75f="Galahad"]blhowes - what was the online resource you found for teaching children Hebrew? That's more my speed. Thanks[/quote:79ba41b75f]
Jeff,
If I were to try and learn Hebrew, that'd be my speed, too. Since one of the drawbacks of trying to learn Hebrew, Greek, etc., at home is that you can't ask a professor questions or hear the correct way to pronounce stuff, I think the interactive nature of this CD is the next best thing (for me, anyway) .

The online resource is http://www.hebrewresources.com/?affid=8&track=811


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