[eternalworship]

My question for anyone who would like to answer for motivational purposes is why would I learn to read greek thoroughly, rather than just learn very basic elements of grammar than study sentences while studying particular verses and passages. Why learn the whole language rather than some basic principles and study from there when studying particular passages?

[stephenR]

I think that the point of learning NT Greek is to better appreciate the text of teh original scripture - the subtleties of participles and of infinitives, teh flow of words, the interplay between main and subordinate clauses.

Basically the more you learn, the better you will appreciate all these. If you feel that all you want is just the basic grammar, then you will miss out on these things, and run the risk of arrogance: 'A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.'

One example of this is the first line of St John's Gospel, where some misinterpret the absence of the definite article to read it is 'The Word was A God'.

Stephen

[eternalworship]

[stephenR]

Memorizing words is always difficult.

Two strategies that I find helpful:
1) Little and often - just ten minutes each day in the Greek NT will get you familiar with spotting grammatical structures and gradually get you recognising words. I find the Reader's Greek NT published by Zondervan very good for this, because it gives footnotes for all but the 100 most common words in the NT: so you only need to memorise 100 words!

2) Get a Greek NT and bring it to Church. When the pastor is reading a scripture, try to follow it in Greek while he reads it. This will get you reading faster as well!

Stephen