For my Greek Reading course with David Kiefer, Fuller Seminary’s Registrar, we will (naturally) be diving into Greek for this next quarter. Here are the Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes from the syllabus:
Upon successful completion of this course, you should 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 900 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.
To do that we’ll be focusing on two things primarily: vocabulary development and translation. For our vocabulary development we’ll be using Thomas Robinson’s Mastering New Testament Greek: Essential Tools for Students (for a review of the new edition, see this one in RBL). The major portion of the book (section 2, pp. 11-113) is a grouping of Greek words found in the New Testament under cognate groups, which are listed in order of frequency. First, though, we’ll be memorizing prefixes, prepositions and suffixes that are listed out in sections 3 and 4. We will also be memorizing irregular verb forms from a list that David will provide and discussing various areas of Greek morphology.
For translation we will be doing both prepared and unprepared translation. The class meets twice a week and the first day will be devoted to the prepared translation, while the second day will be devoted to “sight reading.” David said that he didn’t really like that phrase because it connotes a stressful “on the spot” kind of “test” of knowledge. He prefers us not to fret about it and just be willing to put ourselves forward, not worrying about making mistakes. I’m still going to call it “sight reading,” because, well, that’s what it is. For the prepared translations, we’ll be given a schedule (we don’t have it yet) of texts and we will read through taking notes on the things that puzzle us and interest us in the passage. We will also keep a reading and rereading log of the texts that we read for the first time for the following week, read for the second time for the present week, and read for the third time for the past week. A lot of reading! We’ll also have weekly quizzes and a final exam on the material.
Overall, it should be a lot of work, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s a smallish class and I think we’re going to have some fun with it. I’m definitely looking forward to getting some of my foundations more solidified in Koine Greek.
