Mastering New Testament Greek Textbook Ted Hildebrandt Baker Academic

© 2003 by Ted Hildebrandt version 1.4

a division of Baker Book House Company

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

To my father,

who instilled in me the basics of life:

discipline, persistence, a love of God’s word,

and the blessed hope of Christ’s return.

His glorious presence

be joyous!
Your grateful son,

Ted

Preface   6

Introduction   7

1. The Alphabet   13

2. Accents, Syllables, and English Grammar   17

3. Present Active Verbs   28

4. Second Declension Nouns   34

5. First Declension Nouns   41

6. Prepositions   45

7. Adjectives   53

8. Personal Pronouns   58

9. Present Middle/Passive Verbs   63

10. Future Verbs   68

11. Demonstrative, Relative, Reflexive, and Reciprocal Pronouns   72

12. Imperfect Verbs   77

13. Third Declension Nouns   82

14. Second Aorist Verbs   87

15. First Aorist Verbs   91

16. Aorist and Future Passive Verbs   96

17. Contract Verbs   101

18. Perfect Verbs   105

19. Present Participles   111

20. Aorist Participles   118

21. Perfect Participles   124

22. Infinitives   130

23. Subjunctive Verbs   134

24. Imperative Verbs   141

25. The -mi Verbs   145

26. Numbers and Interrogatives   150

27. Comparatives, Conjunctions, Adverbs, and Clause Types   154

28. Case Revisited   160

Commencement   165

Works Cited   169

Appendix 1: Vocabulary Lists by Chapter   170

Appendix 2: Paradigms   179

Appendix 3: Chapter Summaries   198

Appendix 4: Verb Principal Parts   262

Appendix 5: Total Review Quick Start Sheets 285

Appendix 6: Chants 294

Appendix 7: Lord’s Prayer 299

English-Greek Glossary   300

Greek-English Glossary   365

Vocabulary Builder down to 9 times 406

Greek-English Lexicon 449

Index 513

Preface

The potentials of the digital medium are just beginning to be realized. Recently there have been major upheavals in the music industry due to the MP3 format that allows the putting of hundreds of songs (rather than a dozen) on a single CD-ROM. Ebooks are beginning to appear on the web and elsewhere. Many of these technologies hold great promise for use by the Christian community.

This etextbook attempts to take what was formerly made available in my interactive Greek program and put it in an ebook format paralleling the interactive Greek program found on this disk. It can be universally viewed and/or printed using the Adobe Acrobat Reader (freely available at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html or as found on the CD-ROM). Mastering New Testament Greek is an interactive multimedia program that has proved quite effective in teaching first-year Koine Greek to thousands who have used it since it was published in the mid-1990s. I have seen a need in my own Greek classes at Gordon College for a hardcopy that the students can have at hand when away from the screen. The new ebook format makes this textbook option a possibility. In addition to the interactive multimedia program (which includes an interactive easy-reader with the full text of 1 John and John 1–5) and the textbook, the CD contains a workbook with exercises coordinated with the textbook, a vocabulary frequency list to aid in learning words that appear nine or more times in the New Testament, and a full Greek-English lexicon with definitions for every word in the Greek New Testament. These are printable in the Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format on any computer. The Greekth.ttf true-type font is provided for use in any Windows word processor. Additional learning resources are available free from http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/index.cfm including over three thousand pages of advanced grammars and a complete text of the Greek New Testament.

For instructors, an answer key to the workbook is available, as well as PowerPoint material for the presentation of the twenty-eight chapters.

I wish to thank Jim Kinney at Baker Book House for opening the door and shepherding this project through to completion. A great debt of gratitude is owed to Wells Turner and Dave Mathewson whose editorial suggestions, corrections, and oversight are evident on every page of these digital texts. Finally, I’d like to thank Dr. Roger Green and the rest of my colleagues at Gordon College for allowing me the pleasure of opening the door to Greek for students at Gordon, returning the favor that Dr. Robert Newman and Dr. Gary Cohen did for me in my own seminary training so many years ago.

The original goal was to give my students at Gordon College all the tools they need for first-year Greek in one disk. The goal now is to leverage the technology so that anyone who desires to can learn New Testament Greek.

Enjoy Greek!

Ted Hildebrandt

Why Study Greek?

The prophets also recognized that they spoke messages from God (Amos 3:8). Jeremiah, when asked why he prophesied, clearly stated, “The Lord sent me to prophesy” (Jer. 26:12). He heralded warnings against those who “are prophets of deceit, inventing everything they say” (Jer. 23:25f.). Many, even in our day, like to project their own thoughts into the mouth of God, feeling compelled to bend the text to whatever ideology or agenda they are seeking to promote. Learning Greek will help us reverse that process.

As a residual benefit, learning Greek will help us better understand English. Greek is a highly structured language and lies behind much of Latin, which in turn connects with English. Many have claimed that learning Greek has taught them much that was elusive in their previous study of English grammar.

Why Not Just Use Good Translations?

Many politically correct biases are currently being read into modern translations. Being able to read it in Greek for ourselves helps cut through those modern spins to hear the original voices more clearly. Thus, while translations are quite helpful, being able to read the original Greek has many benefits.

One final word should be voiced in terms of improper motivations for learning Greek. A person may want to learn Greek to get ahead of others or because it is impressive and authoritative to say, “In the Greek it means. . . .” Learning Greek must be coupled with humility or it will do more damage than good. It is also not good to learn Greek because we have some specific agenda we are pushing and desire to add a Greek cannon to blast out our theme. Listening to the voice of God needs to be the focus more than proving our particular point of view. Loving God and others is the goal, not putting ourselves up on an academic pedestal or putting others down because they do not share our “enlightened” perspective (Phil. 2:5ff.).

Why Do Many Say That Learning Greek Is Hard?

First, learning any new language is difficult. It’s like learning to play basketball. Initially one stumbles while trying to dribble and run at the same time. Air-balls are shot, and how each position works is a mystery. One initially feels uncoordinated. With repetition, practice, and good coaching, a mastery is gained, and the game becomes a source of fun and refreshment while still retaining a sense of challenge. Greek will follow a similar pattern. There are certain fundamentals (passing, dribbling, footwork, positioning, etc.) that must be mastered in order to enjoy basketball. So also in Greek there are several foundational skills that must be mastered in order to have the enjoyment of reading Greek.

Here are some hints. “Inch by inch it’s a cinch, yard by yard it’s too hard.” Applied to Greek, what this means is, Greek is learned best by taking little steps because large ones (staying up all night cramming) may trip you up. “The turtle wins the race” in Greek. Consistent daily study is better than pressure-filled weekly cram sessions that lead to quick learning and quick forgetting. “Step by step you scale the mountain.” When you do not understand something, ask for help or go over it until you understand it. If you don’t “get it,” work on it, but continue on. Frequently the picture will become clearer further down the road. Repetition, persistence, and small bites are the three keys. Be careful about missing a step. In some ways it’s like math. If you miss a step, it catches up with you later on.

Your mastery of Greek will depend on learning three things: vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. In order to retain the vocabulary, it is suggested that you write the words on flash cards. Recently, we have provided flashcards with graphics on them to help you remember using images. These cards can be carried with you and reviewed frequently in the brief moments between the activities of your life. If you enjoy using the web for review, there is an online Vocabulary Builder available at all times with free mp3 downloads that have musical backgrounds to help make the process enjoyable and relaxing. There are 5,437 different Greek words in the New Testament (the elexicon has all of them listed). We will learn those that occur most frequently. By learning the words used more than 50 times, 313 words, you will be able to read about 80 percent of the New Testament (Mounce, Basics, 17). It will be important to say the words out loud. The mouth can teach the ear. The interactive program will allow you to hear how Greek is being pronounced and drill you with biblical examples. Seeing is one way of learning, but hearing adds another gateway into your memory. You may want to make associations or wordplays in English or mentally picture the object to which the word refers. Repetition is the best teacher. The program and the Vocabulary Builder will help reinforce your mastery of the vocabulary.

The morphology (how the words are formed; e.g., book/books; “s” indicates a plural) and syntax (the grammar of how words come together into sentences: subject/verb/ object/modifier) will require brain aerobics. Here is where the mental wrestling will take place. Some of the concepts will be difficult to grasp initially. We will try to start with explanations from English and then move to Greek, showing how Greek makes a similar move. The problem is that many do not understand English grammar. We will build the language from parts of speech—nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, and prepositions. Many of these will take different endings, depending on how they are used. These ending and forms will be mastered in a series of twenty-something memorable chants. Mastering these sets of endings will be a good part of the course early on. “Inch by inch it’s a ________.”

The parts of speech will work in sentences. The syntax, or relationships between words, will manifest roles for words, such as subjects, verbs, objects, and modifiers. These concepts will be illustrated in the context of the drills and exercises taken directly from Scripture. Some of these concepts may not come initially but continue on, and the eureka moments will come as you look back. It is of great benefit to work out examples. Frequent reviews are also critical for making the connections. Small, frequent breaks, dividing and repeating the material in short study sessions, help avoid an overwhelming sense of frustration and gives the needed space to regain the motivation needed to continue on.

Another factor that has shown itself to be critical, if one is taking Greek in a class, is staying plugged into the community of those learning Greek. It is not advisable to skip classes or assignments as that often leads to serious difficulty. If you miss a step you may end up on your face because learning Greek is sequential. Catching up becomes harder and harder. Being in class has proved itself important. Be there!

Studying with a “buddy” is also very helpful. Two heads are better than one in trying to understand sticky points. Teamwork is frequently necessary if you want to play in the game, and it makes the learning task a little more enjoyable. This will provide incremental accountability as we move chapter-by-chapter through the material.

Time and consistency on this task is the key to mastering Greek. Learning Greek is a good time to tone your mental muscles. At points, the urge will surge to quit and give up. At those points remember why you are tackling Greek in the first place. Remember the inch-by-inch principle. Take one small step at a time. Do not worry about the big picture. Take the next little step and review, review, and review. After you’ve climbed a while, you may be encouraged to look back and see how far you have come. Giving up is fatal. You learned English, which in many ways is harder than Greek. It just takes time and energy. Hopefully, we will make that time fun, and you will be able to see some of the rewards along the way.

Several learning resources are available to help you. First, you will have access to printed materials in the form of easily printed materials in Adobe Acrobat PDF file formats. The printed materials will include this etextbook and an eworkbook. For each chapter in the book, a one- or two-page summary has been developed, distilling the essence of the chapter (see appendix 3). The book will teach and structure the concepts, and the workbook will allow you to practice and reinforce what you have learned. The Mastering New Testament Greek interactive program will present the same material in a interactive multimedia format, with sound and immediate responses. The benefit of this is that after presenting the material, the computer will drill you over the material, giving you immediate feedback on how well you have done. In the future we will have streaming video and interactive materials available online. Thus there are four ways to approach this: in-class instruction, printed materials and workbook exercises, interactive multimedia, and online resources. The point is to use whatever combination works best for you. The font supplied with Mastering New Testament Greek is also available in your word processor. Learning to type in Greek can be a real time-saver and looks impressive in other classes and papers.

There are two resources beyond these that may be helpful: (1) a Greek New Testament, either the UBS 4th edition or Nestle-Aland 27th edition New Testament text (the Westcott/Hort/Robinson New Testament text available online at: http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/index.cfm, and (2) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3d ed., by Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich (BDAG). William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek or Gerald Stevens’s New Testament Greek are both good first-year grammar resources if you want to supplement the materials here. There are several advanced grammars and mp3 audio resources at our web site for free. 1 John is found there with Mozart in the background which actually helps make it more memorable.

What Is Koine or New Testament Greek?

2. Classical Period (900–300 b.c.): The Classical Period was from the time of Homer down to Alexander the Great (330 b.c.). There were numerous dialects during this period (e.g. Doric, Aeolic, and Ionic). Attic, a branch of Ionic, became the predominant dialect at Athens and was used by most of the famous classical Greek authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Thucydides, and others.

3. The Koine Period (330 b.c.–a.d. 330): As Alexander unified Greece and needed a single Greek language for his army before he could begin to spread Hellenistic culture through the ancient world, many of the subtleties of classical Greek were lost. Greek was simplified and changed as it interfaced with, and was influenced by, other cultures. This common language came to be known as Koine (common) Greek. It was in this language that the Septuagint (LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament), the New Testament, and the works of the early church fathers were written. The nature of Koine eluded modern scholars because of its simplicity when compared to Classical Greek. This led some scholars in the nineteenth century to explain it as a “Holy Ghost” language, created just for the Bible. In the early part of the twentieth century, Deissmann, Moulton and others found that the recently discovered Egyptian papyri, inscriptions, and ostraca were written in the same common everyday language used by the New Testament. God speaks in the language of the people. At points the New Testament will manifest Hebraisms, where the influence of Hebrew and/or Aramaic may be seen.

4. The Byzantine Period (a.d. 330–1453): During the Byzantine Period, Greek was spoken in the eastern half of the Roman empire, which was centered in Constantinople. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Turks. That concluded this period. Tension between the Greeks and Turks persists until this day.

5. The Modern Period: The Modern Period dates from 1453 to the present. Modern Greek is closer to Koine than it is to Classical Greek. Modern pronunciation and grammatical structures, however, are quite different from the Greek that Jesus spoke. We will focus on Koine Greek. As recently as 1982, major changes have taken modern Greek further from its Koine roots. In the latest edition of Standard Modern Greek, established by the Center for Educational Studies in Greece, the number of accents has been reduced to one, the breathing marks dropped and the dative case, middle voice and optative mood are not present in modern Greek. The recent merging of katharevousa (hybrid of ancient and Modern used for official and academic purposes) has given way to the more populace oriented Demotic (ca. 1976) as Modern Standard Greek which is another step further away from Koine (vid. Holton, Mackridge and Philippaki-Warburton, Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language (Routledge, 1997) or Greek Today: a Course in the Modern Language and Culture (Dartmouth College Press, 2004) by Peter Bien, Dimitri Gonicas, et al. Those looking for advanced grammars on Koine should pursue books by Stanley Porter, Daniel Wallace and David Black, as well as the articles by James Boyer and books by A. T. Robertson, Moulton and Burton freely available on the web-site and this disk.

1

The Alphabet

24 Letters, the Gateway into the Language

Small/Capital
a / A	Alpha sounds like “a” in father.
b / B	Beta sounds like “b” in Bible.
g / G	Gamma sounds like “g” in gone.
d / D	Delta sounds like “d” in dog.
e / E	Epsilon sounds like “e” in met.
z / Z	Zeta sounds like “z” in daze when it begins a word, “dz” when it’s in the middle of a word.
h / H	Eta sounds like “e” in obey.
q / Q	Theta sounds like “th” in think.
i / I	Iota short sounds like the “i” in sit. Iota long sounds like the “i” in machine. Modern Greek uses the long “i” as in machine. In initial positions, it is often found in Hebrew personal names, where it has a consonant “y” sound: ]Ihsou?j (Jesus/Yesus).
k / K	Kappa sounds like “k” in kitchen.
l / L	Lambda sounds like “l” in law.
m / M	Mu sounds like “m” in mother.
n / N	Nu sounds like “n” in new.
c / C	Xsi sounds like “x” in axe.
o / O	Omicron sounds like “o” in not or “o” in omelette. Some pronounce it like modern Greek, with a long “o” as in obey, others like Hansen and Quinn (Greek: An Intensive Course) use the “ou” sound in thought. Modern Greek uses a long “o” as in ocean.
p / P	Pi sounds like “p” in peach.
r / R	Rho sounds like “r” in rod.
s / S	Sigma sounds like “s” in set. Sigma looks like j when it comes at the end of a word (final sigma)—sofo
t / T	Tau sounds like “t” in talk.
u / U	Upsilon sounds like “oo” in hoops. Modern Greek uses an “i”as in machine.
f / F	Phi sounds like “ph” in phone.
x / X	Chi sounds like “ch” in chemical.
y / Y	Psi sounds like “ps” in lips.
w / W	Omega sounds like “o” in tone.

We will focus on the lower-case letters, miniscules, although the early uncial (uppercase) manuscripts were written without punctuation or spaces between the words in all uppercase letters, majuscules (major writings). Be able to recognize the upper-case letters. Capital letters are used in proper names, to begin direct quotations, and at the beginning of paragraphs. You may want to use the Mastering New Testament Greek disk to work on the pronunciation of these letters and to drill yourself.

h—eta (with n)

n—nu (with v)

r—rho (with p)

x—chi (with x)

w—omega (with w)

qeoj—pronounced “the-OS” (theology)

profhthj—pronounced “pro-FA-tas” (two long a’s) (prophets)

Xristoj—pronounced “Kri-STOS” (Christ)

kardia—pronounced “kar-DE-a” (i = ee) (heart; cf. cardiac)

amhn—pronounced “a-MEIN” (ei = long a sound) (amen)

Short	Long
e	h
o	w

Can be either long or short: a, i, u

1. Iota short sounds like “i” in “sit”

2. Iota long sounds like the “i” in “machine” (= modern Greek)

3. When it is initial in a Hebrew name, it sounds like a “y”— ]Ihsou?j (Jesus/Yesus)