Below Dan speaks of the value of learning New Testament Greek and introduces the Online Greek course.

Why Learn New Testament Greek?

“There are a number of reasons for thinking that ancient people were no less intelligent than ourselves, and one of the most obvious is in their mastery of languages. Many if not most people in the period of the New Testament were at least bi-lingual, and not a few of them knew three or more languages. Most of them knew Greek, which is why the New Testament, which was composed in Greek, was able to be used so widely across the Roman world.

Learning New Testament Greek is a task not to be neglected in the modern world. There are at least two reasons why this is true. While it might be supposed that contemporary English translations of the Bible are quite adequate, and indeed they are quite adequate for general study, it still remains that when one wants to delve more deeply into the meaning of the New Testament, and especially to avoid misrepresenting the text, a knowledge of the Greek New Testament is indispensable. Beyond that, one must remember that in the modern world as in the ancient one, there will be those who will attempt to co-opt the text of the New Testament to support an agendum at cross purposes with the apostles and evangelists, and such distortions can only be defeated by one who actually knows what the Greek text says.

How Does the Course work?

This online course seeks to train the student in the basic language of the New Testament. You will learn to understand the grammar of 1st-century Greek in order to be able to read the gospels and letters of the New Testament in the language in which they were composed. This is no small task, for ancient languages are generally more difficult than modern ones. Still, the rewards in the end are well worth the discipline and work required.

The course is set up in two sections, the first focusing on basic Greek grammar and the second on advanced nuances and translation. As a student, you will be expected to work through the 30 grammar lessons consecutively, working from English to Greek, over a period of about 8 months. Here, the exercises will largely be taken from shorter passages in the Greek New Testament. This section of the course will approximate the same learning experience of a 1st year New Testament Greek student in either university or seminary, and you should expect to spend about 12 hours per week in these studies. The advanced section is shorter and will require an additional 4 months. Here, the focus will be on translating longer passages from the Greek New Testament from John, Mark, Paul, and Peter, one of which will be a full letter of St. Paul.

Online studies always require the student to have an extra dimension of self-initiative and self-discipline, since you will not be in a traditional classroom. At the same time, it makes possible distance learning that might not be possible otherwise. It is to be assumed that as a student you already have a solid command of the English language, and the lessons are composed with this assumption in mind.

As your teacher, I have written all the materials for this course. Each element of New Testament Greek grammar will be covered in consecutive written lessons along with MP3 audio files for learning to pronounce Greek vocabulary. For each lesson, there will be exercises that you will complete and post on Moodle for grading. I will correct your work and post my corrections and comments on the university Moodle site. Alongside these lessons, you will be memorizing all words in the New Testament occurring 25 times or more at about the rate of 12-15 per week. I will be continually available to you by email throughout your study, both to answer questions and to examine and comment on your work. 

In the end, the goal is for you to be able to read the New Testament in its original language as well as to access scholarly tools that are composed for those with a working knowledge of New Testament Greek. Many scholarly works about the Bible are written at a level that expects the reader to be so conversant. Such works are inaccessible to those who are confined to the use of preliminary and simplistic resources like Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and similar publications for the non-professional. If you complete this year of online study well, you will be able to match the capabilities of other students across the world who have completed their two years in New Testament Greek in various universities and seminaries. It is a worthy goal, and I commend you for considering it!”

Dan Lewis, M.A.
University of Detroit-Mercy