Learn New Testament Greek

I have tried a number of textbooks of New Testament Greek, and this is the best. Clear explanations, a sensible pace,, good exercises, and encouragement from a relatively early stage to tackle Bible passages in Greek. I found the print size comfortable for my ageing eyes - I cannot say the same of some of this book’s competitors.Learning any language requires effort, but this book makes things as easy as they can be.

This is a good book to use if you want to start learning New Testament Greek, but I think you need something to complement it. I bought this book in 2010, and put in on the shelf as I was busy with other things. Now, I have a bit more time and started using it about four weeks ago. It's laid out in an easy workable format with introductions and exercises that are just about right for the beginner and you can make quick progress. For instance, by Lesson 22 you should be able to translate sections of John's Gospel without too much trouble.Where it's not so good is there no vocabulary exercises, and words and phrases are introduced as you need them - I think learning vocabulary is essential for learning any language. In addition, concepts are introduced in a way that has you recognise the words, know what they mean, but with little grammatical context. This might suit some readers, but I like grammar, am not afraid of the odd subjunctive or two, nor of verb and noun stems too. The other thing that helped me is I read Latin at school and so declensions and conjugations are not new to me.However, and much more positively, this book is by far the easiest way I have found to learn New Testament Greek, having tried before and given up. I've used it in conjunction with David Alan Black's "Learn to read New Testament Greek", which for me fills in some of the detail Dobson's book lacks. Nunn’s much earlier book is good too, but quite formal. I'm not too bothered with the accompanying CD as I want to learn to read NT Greek not speak it, but some will find it useful.

I have been teaching myself New Testament Greek for a year now and this was the first book I purchased. John Dobson offers some very helpful advice and initially I found the book extremely encouraging. The fact that it comes with an audio CD was initially helpful and makes this book very good value. He does not follow the normal more systematic approach to learning a language but his approach is more inductive. I would rate this as an excellent book but have not given it 5 stars because initially I got lost after about 17 chapters. I would have preferred there to be summary lists of vocabulary at the end of each chapter so that I could check that I knew the words so far covered. The index of words at the end of the book refers back into the book rather than giving a brief definition, and this makes it time consuming to look up words. Rather than give up after 17 chapters, I purchased The Elements of New Testament Greek by Jeremy Duff. I successfully worked my way through this book to the end and highly recommend it. Duff's systematic approach suited my learning style better. I then came back to John Dobson's book and worked my way the whole way through it. This time I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot.I summary, I highly recommend this book but be aware that it may not suit your learning style, at least initially. This means that you may need to get another more traditional book to supplement it.

This is a wonderful introduction to ancient Greek. It composed of short lessons in which the author teaches you new vocabulary and tenses, always consolidating your new knowledge with extracts from the New Testament. It starts with the Greek alphabet, explaining the pronunciation and illustrating the easiest way to write the letters. It also explains the use of diacritics (little marks above the letters) and dipthongs. It progresses at a steady pace, never introducing more information than you can handle, as most lessons are no more than 2 pages long. There is a grammar reference and an index of words at the back for convenience. The font was perfectly readable also. This is a useful introduction whether one is studying classical Greek or if one just wants to read the New Testament. For anyone looking for a Greek Bible to go with this course, I would suggest the hardcover Koine Greek New Testament: Textus Receptus. The paper is a bit thin but it costs a fraction of the price of other Greek Bibles. This particular Dobson edition is much cheaper than the others on Amazon. All in all I'm very satisfied with this purchase.

I had already followed the JACT Reading Greek course to the halfway point with the OU which is quite hard going. I decided to try this book as I wanted to see how different Koine Greek is from Classical and I wanted to consolidate my learning. I was able to race through the early chapters but it soon gets more challenging. You need a Greek text of the New Testament and an English translation to complement the book but these are freely available on the internet. I have to say that NT Greek is more straighforward that Athenian plays or Plato or Homer (for sure!). But it is still a thrill to be able to read a historical text just with the light support that the book provides. Dobson has succeeded in producing a book that is fun to learn, makes you feel like you're making progress and is cheap into the bargain. The CD is also useful - it has a lot of material to help your pronunciation. And the book comes in a sturdy hard cover which makes it great for commuting. There's no excuse for not buying this book!