Koine: A GreekStudy Self-Study Course in New Testament Koine Greek

Koine Greek Study Group

NOTE: I am no longer leading this group. This was from 2003. I may at some point in the future lead another group, but I am not currently. Thanks for your interest!

The Koine group is coordinated by Gary Bisaga and its home is the GreekStudy mailing list.

This is a first-year course in New Testament Koine Greek. It does not assume any knowledge of Greek. However, knowledge of another inflected language is useful since it reduces the learning curve: Greek nouns/adjectives use a case system very similar to Latin's or Russian's and Greek has an inflected article like German's.

There is no cost to participate. However, the following two books must be purchased:

Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar by William D. Mounce
ISBN: 0310232112

Basics of Biblical Greek Workbook by William D. Mounce
ISBN: 0310400910

In addition to these two required books, I have found the following book is helpful as a source of additional readings. Note that this third book is not required for the course, and in fact there will be no formal reference to it at all in the course. Additionally, this book does not follow Mounce's presentation order of the material. It is intended to be a Koine Greek grammar in its own right, but I find the highly inductive teaching method doesn't work for me as a primary grammar. So why do I like it and use it? As a source of side readings, it is excellent: the inductive method means that it has many, many sample sentences. Mounce's book, like most grammars, doesn't really provide enough sentences to get comfortable with the constructions. Additionally, it has nice presentations of some grammatical points that I will point out from time to time during the course (e.g., its presentation of preposition usage is the best I have ever seen).

Learn New Testament Greek by John H. Dobson
ISBN: 0801030196

Please also note that this is primarily a self-study course. I am not a teacher, in fact I am just learning Greek myself, not too many chapters ahead of the rest of the class. I am simply the course coordinator: I coordinate assignments, you send me your submissions, and I collate everybody's submissions together and post them to the list. However, there are others on the GreekStudy mailing list who know Greek much better than I do so you should feel free to post questions about the group assignments or just any question about Greek in general to the list.

Assignments

Assignments are the exercises in the workbook. If you want some extra practice, I'd also recommend that you do the quizzes presented in the teacher's packet on Dr. Mounce's web site. See instructions below to get the quizzes.

In general, each week there will be one chapter's assignment (one set of exercises from the workbook) due. All course participants should first read the chapter in the textbook; then do the chapter quiz from Mounce's web site; then do the exercises and translations given in the workbook. You can, if you wish, check your answers against the exercise answer key, also graciously provided by Dr. Mounce on his web site; but I think that if post your original answers, mistakes and all, for the assignments, other people would get the most benefit.

Assignments are due each Saturday at about 9:00 AM Eastern Time (either standard or daylight savings), which corresponds to either 1:00 GMT (April to October) or 2:00 PM (October to April). I say "about" because I often do not collate the assignments right at 9:00 AM, but you should have them to me by then. Send them to me at gbisaga@yahoo.com; do NOT post them to the GreekStudy list.

Assignment schedule

25 Jan - Chapter 4 exercises
01 Feb - Chapter 5 study - no assignment
08 Feb - Chapter 6 study - no assignment
15 Feb - Chapter 6 exercises
22 Feb - Chapter 7 exercises
01 Mar - Chapter 8 exercises
08 Mar - Chapter 9 exercises
15 Mar - Chapter 10 study - no assignment
22 Mar - Chapter 10 exercises
29 Mar - Chapter 11 exercises
05 Apr - Chapter 12 exercises
12 Apr - Tax week - no assignment
19 Apr - Easter - no assignment
26 Apr - Chapter 13 exercises
03 May -
10 May - Chapter 14 exercises
17 May - Chapter 15 read - no assignment
24 May - Chapter 16 exercises
31 May - Chapter 17 study - no assignment
07 Jun - Chapter 17 exercises
14 Jun - Chapter 18 exercises
21 Jun - Chapter 19 exercises
28 Jun - Chapter 20 exercises
05 Jul - Chapter 21 exercises
12 Jul - Chapter 22 exercises
19 Jul - Chapter 23 exercises
26 Jul - Chapter 24 exercises
02 Aug - Chapter 25 study - no assignment
09 Aug - Chapter 25 exercises
16 Aug - Chapter 26 exercises
23 Aug - Chapter 27 exercises
30 Aug - Labor Day weekend - no assignment
06 Sep - Chapter 28 exercises
13 Sep - Chapter 29 exercises
20 Sep - Chapter 30 exercises
27 Sep - Chapter 31 exercises
04 Oct - Chapter 32 exercises
11 Oct - Chapter 33 exercises
18 Oct - Chapter 34 exercises
25 Oct - Chapter 35 exercises

How to Join the Group

There really isn't much of a signing-up process. To do this, here's all you have to do:

1. First, please make sure that you join the mailing list where the list is hosted (the "GreekStudy" list). That's where assignments and collations will be posted, and where discussion about the assignments (if any) takes place. To sign up, follow the instructions below.

2. Next, pick a 3-letter set of initials, preferably your own. Mine are GJB. Once you've done so, let me know what you've chosen so I can put you in the database and check for duplicates.

Send in your assignment to my email address, gbisaga@yahoo.com. Assignments are due each Saturday morning at about 9:00 EST/2:00 PM GMT. Each week I will send out an email that has a "skeleton" for your response. (The skeleton will look something like the example just below.) If you wish, you can just take my email, filling in your own initials and the answers, and send it in. Hopefully this will make the submission process very easy. Here's an example skeleton I might send out for a exercise with six questions total:

P 1 XXX Answer to the first parsing exercise question P 2 XXX Answer to the second parsing exercise question TR 1a XXX Answer to translation exercise question #1, part a TR 1b XXX Answer to translation exercise question #1, part b TR 1c XXX Answer to translation exercise question #1, part c TR 2 XXX Answer to translation exercise question #2

I would use question numbers like 1a, 1b, 1c, etc. if Mounce's exercise has a question #1 with multiple sub-parts called a, b, c, etc.

The format of your assignment is VERY important. Please make sure you read this to get it right. Our assignments must follow a special format because they're collated by means of a very useful Perl script created by Kirk Lougheed.

Each assignment is collated one exercise question at a time. Here is an example of a filled-in assignment as you would send it to me when you're finished:

P 1 GJB nom sing masc theo/s "God" P 2 GJB gen sing fem grafh=j "of love" TR 1a GJB In the beginning was the Word TR 1b GJB And the Word was with God TR 1c GJB And the Word was God TR 2 GJB For God so loved the world He gave His only-begotten son

That is, it consists of your answers, one question per line. Each line consists of three "tokens" (a few letters or digits followed by a space) and then the answer to the exercise question. Note that in this example, I am using the betacode method of sending the Greek text.

The first "token" on each line is a one or two letter abbreviation of the name of the exercise section. We'll be using the following section abbreviations:

Abbreviation Exercise section

P | Parsing

V | Vocabulary

TR | Translation

The second "token" on each line is a sequential number that is unique for each question of a given exercise section. Unfortunately, Dr. Mounce's exercises do not always have these numbers in a form that our collation software can understand. Therefore, when I send out the assignment, I will assign the numbers and put them in the "skeleton" so that you will know which one is for which exercise question. I will, of course, endeavor to make them the same wherever possible.

The third "token" on each line should be your initials: mine are "GJB", so that's what I used.

Finally, following the three "tokens", comes your answer to the exercise question itself. Sometimes these are translations, sometimes a parsed response. The format for this part is up to you, but following are some examples (note: for information on how to represent Greek letters in your answers, see the next item):

Abbreviation Exercise section Example exercise question Your answer

P Parsing | log/ou | nom sing masc "lo/gos" "of the word"

V Vocabulary | log/os | word, Word, statement, message

TR Translation | e)n a)rch/| h)n ho lo/gos | In the beginning was the Word

Please don't include the Greek you're translating in your assignment! The collation script can't tell the difference between Greek and English, so it gets very confused.

By default, the collation script will wrap the lines of your translation by length and not by sense (though it won't wrap in the middle of words, or anything of that kind). If you'd like to keep the line divisions you've made, put a space, followed by an ampersand (&) at the place where each line should end.

You may be as literal or as smooth in your English translations as you wish. I find that, in a given group, it is often useful to have people who do both - both fairly literal translations, and looser, more colloquial English translations. It takes all kinds to make a world.

ENTERING GREEK TEXT: The only way to really represent Greek characters is to display them in Unicode, which is a computer character standard that allows display of text in any language of the world (and even some that are out of the world, like Klingon). But you need a special Unicode text editor or mail program to type Unicode. Not everybody may want to set their computers up in this way (although it's not that hard).

Therefore, there are three ways to represent Greek characters (Unicode is one). Each one has plusses and minuses. Instead of me retyping in all the rules for using each of these three methods, I'll refer you to Gary Schultz's detailed information on entering Greek characters. But as a summary of the three ways that you can send me Greek text, along with the plusses and minuses of each and references to the places on Gary Schultz's page with more information about each one, are:

Method Example (approx) Advantage Drawback For more information...

ASCII transliteration    anthrwpos    Simplest. Doesn't require any special fonts or software.    Doesn't handle accents well. Difficult to read.    Transliteration Schemes

Betacode    a)/nqrwpos    Not too hard to type. I can convert it to Unicode so it will show up as actual Greek letters in the collations.    You don't get to see what the actual Greek will look like.    Submitting Greek Exercises Using Betacode

Unicode    anqrwpoV    No conversion on my part necessary. You get to see the Greek text yourself before you send in the assignment.    You need to set up a Unicode-capable editor. Technically, Microsoft Word should be able to generate Unicode, but it's a real pain to enter Greek characters with it, especially if you want to include all their accents. Much easier is a program called Unicorn, also written by Kirk Lougheed. It's simple to download, install and run.    Submitting Greek Exercises Using Greek Unicode

Make sure to include the word "Koine" in the subject line of all email message pertaining to the group. When you send in your assignments, use a subject line that looks like the following:

Koine Jan 25 assignment (XXX)

where "Jan 25" is replaced by the current assignment's due date, and "XXX" are the 3 initials you picked in step 2. This makes it easier for me to pick out the emails of people taking part in the group (and is used by my email program to automatically sort mails into folders).

Again, all emails about the assignments should have the word "Koine" in the subject line. This is good list citizenry, and allows other people on the list (of whom there are many!) to easily read or ignore our group's mailings. You'll appreciate other people doing this after you've been on the list for awhile!

Fonts

Fonts are always a tricky problem. You need at least two fonts on your machine, listed below. If you have a windows machine, I have included a link to download the fonts to your own machine. (These fonts will not work for Macintosh, only Windows. Sorry.)

Type Purpose Font (click to download)

Unicode | Displaying text in group collations. Other fonts are available - most complete Unicode fonts should work; but this is the one I use, so I know it works. | Vusillus Old Face

Mounce | Displaying Greek text in Mounce's quizzes | Mounce

Holidays

The weeks of Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day (the last Monday in May), Labor Day (first Monday in September), and Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday in November) are holidays in the U.S. No assignments will be due on the Saturdays closest to these dates (this is sometimes before and sometimes after, but the assignment list will always have this information).

Mailing List Sign-up Information

To subscribe to the GreekStudy list, send the command:

subscribe greek YourFirstName YourLastName

to listproc@lists.colorado.edu. Make sure you send this email from the email address where you want to get the list mailings. Shortly after, you will receive a confirmation message saying that you're signed up. If you have any problems, please contact the class coordinator and I will try to help.

To Get Quizzes

To get the quizzes for extra practice, first note that you must have a special font to view the quizzes. If you're using the Macintosh, you can download the required font right from the page below. NOTE:If you are using Windows, Mounce's web site is incorrect as to how to get the required font. To make it easier on you, you can download the required font from my web site. Once you download the proper font, install it as required for your system type.

To get the quizzes, go to Mounce's Teacher's Packet on his web site and download the quizzes. See the information under "Quizzes." Note that you will get an archive-type file (.HQX on Macintosh, archive .EXE on Windows) that you will have to explode into a local directory on your machine. Once you do so, you'll see one Microsoft Word file for each quiz in that directory. If you open the quizzes and you get junk (like little squares) where the Greek should be, then you probably didn't install the font right in the previous step. (Note: The chapter 9 quiz seems to be messed up, so don't look at that one. I'll work this issue out with Bill Mounce.)