Preface

This is the companion volume to Basics of Biblical Greek: Grammar. Most chapters divide into six sections.

1. “Parsing” contains ten individual words to parse.

2. “Warm-up” contains short phrases that center on the grammar learned in the current chapter.

3. “Translation” gives you ten verses, usually from the New Testament (rarely from the LXX or Apostolic Fathers). I trust that by translating the Bible from the first day, you will be encouraged. Any word you don’t know is defined in the text in parentheses.

4. “Additional” gives you another ten sentences to translate. The first five are either made-up or are from the Septuagint or Apostolic Fathers. As a general rule, if you can translate these you are doing really well. Exercises 11 and 12 are made-up sentences by my friend and editor, Verlyn Verbrugge. The last five sentences are from a variety of sources, including my imagination. I single-spaced these exercises to save paper, and because many teachers do not require students to do all the exercises.

In sentences 11-15, if you don’t know the word but could figure it out from its lexical form, its lexical form is given in the footnotes. If you can’t figure out the word, its meaning is defined in the text in parentheses. In sentences 16-20 you are expected to use the lexicon. If the form is too difficult, or if the word is not in the lexicon, then I either give the lexical form in footnotes or the meaning in the text in parentheses.

5. “Summary” covers new grammar learned inductively in the exercises. I encourage you to write out what you have learned in the Workbook in the margin in your Grammar in the section, Workbook Summary.

6. The verse references to the biblical examples are listed in “References.” Putting them here and not with the exercise helps you not think subconsciously about the verse in English. If the verse reference has a parenthesis around it, this means I altered the biblical passage a little. If there is a dash, one of my friends or I made it up.

There are two different ways to work through the textbook. Track One follows the normal order by covering all the noun system and then moving on to verbs. Track Two allows you to cover some of the verbal system earlier. The chapters in the textbook are the same. A fuller discussion is in the textbook, pages 73-74.

The Workbook closes with two optional chapters that should encourage you by showing how much you have learned.

I would like to review a few suggestions I made in chapter 2 of the textbook, since they are so important.

1. Treat these exercises as if they were a test. Learn the chapter, and do the exercises without looking back. If you are stuck on a parsing or a verse, then move on. When you are done with the exercises, go back and review the textbook, and then come back and try to finish the exercises. If you do the exercises with the textbook open, flipping back and forth, you will not get a clear picture of what you know, or don’t know.

2. Remind yourself constantly why you are learning Greek. If you forget that you are trying to gain a facility in learning God’s Word, you will most likely become discouraged.

3. Be consistent in your studying. You cannot learn Greek by cramming, unless you are an exceptional learner.

4. Work with someone. It is difficult to learn Greek on your own.

5. Pay close attention to the footnotes in the exercises. They will give you hints, fine-tune your grammar, and point out theologically interesting facts.

6. Have fun! Greek is a great language. Remember that. Don’t lose sight of your goal. Laugh a lot. My second year Greek class was nicknamed “The Zoo,” taught by Dr. Walter W. Wessel at Bethel College. It was a great class, and I have always tried to maintain that same combination of levity and seriousness in my own classes; it works.

A special thanks to Verlyn Verbrugge, Matthew Smith, Juan Hernández Jr., Glen Riddle, Jonathan Pennington, and Hauna Ondrey for their help.

William D. Mounce