Study Chapter · XXII

Learning Koine Greek

From the Alphabet to John 1

Most Christians never learn Greek because the resources are pitched at seminary students who already know what a participle is. This is the on-ramp before that on-ramp: a single sitting that gets you reading John 1:1–5 in the original, understanding why the grammar matters, and k

Most Christians never learn Greek because the resources are pitched at seminary students who already know what a participle is. This is the on-ramp before that on-ramp: a single sitting that gets you reading John 1:1–5 in the original, understanding why the grammar matters, and knowing exactly which book to pick up next.

Koine (κοινή, "common") Greek was the everyday Greek of the eastern Roman world from about 300 BC to AD 300 — the language Alexander's armies left behind. It is the Greek of the Septuagint (the OT translation read by Jesus' generation), the New Testament, and the Apostolic Fathers. It is grammatically simpler than classical Attic and richer than modern Greek. You can learn enough to read the NT slowly with one good summer.

Three things you cannot get from an English translation, no matter how good:

1. Aspect, not tense. Greek verbs encode how the action is viewed (ongoing vs. completed vs. snapshot) more than when it happened. "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thess 5:17) is a present imperative — keep on praying — not a single act. English flattens this constantly. (See chapter IV for the full case.) 2. Word order is meaning. Greek can rearrange a sentence because the endings carry the grammar. What an author chooses to put first is what he is emphasizing. Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος in John 1:1c — God was the Word — puts Θεὸς ("God") first by choice. The word order is the theology. 3. Cognates and word fields. δίκαιος (righteous), δικαιοσύνη (righteousness), δικαιόω (to justify), and δικαίωμα (a righteous act/decree) all sit in one Greek word field. Paul uses all four in Romans 3–5 to build one argument. In English they read like four different topics.