>> I am still working my way through John Dobson's "Learn NT Greek"
>> and have found it very easy to read and use. He also gets you into
>> reading the Biblical text very early. Does anyone else have any
>> experience with/comments on Dobson's primer???
For what it's worth, I liked Dobson's book, because:
1) it made me read out of the Greek NT early on;
2) the exercises in each chapter seemed to be designed to reinforce
things I had learned in earlier chapters;
3) it had introductions to related topics (e.g. textual criticism)
along with pointers to books on those topics.
That said, I need to make a disclaimer. I'm just a "little Greek" who
has been trying to teach myself Koine Greek over the past couple of
years. My first foray into NT Greek was with a workbook called
"Biblical Greek in 30 minutes a day" by Jim Found (I think). This
workbook is good as an introduction to someone who is initimidated by
the thought of learning NT Greek. But it doesn't have much depth
(probably by design). However, it did encourage me to continue studying
Greek. Next, I used Dobson's book. It basically got me to dump the
interlinear and use NA 26. Since then, my approach has been to read a
couple of NT books (I've done Galations and am in the middle of Mark and
1 Peter), using several intermediate-level grammars as reference
material.
Needless to say, I've discovered how problematic teaching myself can be.
On the positive side, I am improving as I read the NT. However, my
vocabulary is still pretty minimal, which forces me to go to a lexicon a
lot. And I'm finding that I'm starting to forget some of the basics I
learned from Dobson's book. This is mostly because I'm not as
disciplined as I'd like to be about reading the GNT often.
So I'm at a point where I feel I need to refresh my Greek basics again.
The ideal would be to take a Greek class but that won't be possible for
a little while yet. So I'm debating whether I should study Mounce's
"Basics of Biblical Greek" or perhaps find a classical Greek primer. My
reasoning behind studying classical Greek is that I won't be able to
"cheat" as much, e.g. with NT Greek, I can sometimes recognize the verse
from a few of the Greek words and spout back a translation that is
pretty close to the NIV :-) In addition, "Greek To Me" may be a
reasonable option, too.
Are there any opinions about what would be a good next step for me?
Thanks.
--Greg W
====
Greg Williams
gwilliams@softlabna.com