How to Read Jesus’ Said in Greek

Reading the NT in Greek

Learn to read Greek New Testament at seventy

Learning to read the Gospels in the original language New Testament Greek is not that difficult and so rewarding. How would you like to know what Jesus really said without being modified in a translation. 

Why bother?

Can I really understand the Greek Bible better than the Bible translators experts?

Can I really do it?

Reading the New Testament in the language it was written in is not that difficult because, particularly for the Gospels you know what it says. That is totally different to learning a language in the conventional way, I was hopeless at learning French at school and remain totally mono lingual at 75, but I can read and understand what Jesus said in the Gospels.

The Greek New Testament is written in an early form of  the language Koine meaning common, made the common language of much of the known world by Alexander the Great. The New Testament is quite a small book containing only 6000 unique words. Of those recognizing only about 800 will allow to understand 95% of all the content. 

You don’t need to learn the grammar because you understand that from your knowledge of the document in English. You don’t even need to have the vocabulary in your active memory just be able to recall it in context as you read.

So the only really important task is to learn to recognize in context about 800 Koine Greek words. A wonderful App that will help enormously is Flash Greek, costs about £6. It’s a sort of electronic queue card system that allows you to lean the words in their frequency of occurrence. Brilliant.

Once you’ve learned a few words, have a go at reading a familiar passage like John 1. Initially you can read it from an Interlinear free version such as Bible Hub. Then when you got an idea move to a Greek English parallel translation eg free Blue Letter Bible App. Read the Greek in the left column and when you get stuck glance across at the English. See picture

Be led by the Holy Spirit.

Benefits

Now look