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Reddit mentions of Greek: An Intensive Course, 2nd Revised Edition
Sentiment score: 7
Reddit mentions: 13
We found 13 Reddit mentions of Greek: An Intensive Course, 2nd Revised Edition. Here are the top ones.
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- Fordham University Press
Features:
Specs:
Height | 7 Inches |
Length | 9.9 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | January 1992 |
Weight | 3.31 Pounds |
Width | 1.7 Inches |
Go for Hansen and Quinn’s Ancient Greek textbook.
https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-2nd-Revised/dp/0823216632
Two book suggestions:
I used Greek: an Intensive Course as my last textbook (of 4) in college and found it very useful. It’s not specifically biblical Greek, however. If you’re just trying to get a head start or just want to focus on biblical Greek, another option like Mounce may be good.
https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-2nd-Revised/dp/0823216632/ref=asc_df_0823216632/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312242453238&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9067174210130564718&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011805&hvtargid=aud-799728744414:pla-449076143506&psc=1
Gunch is right, Koine is much easier, but it's also much less satisfying and less useful if you want to read anything besides the New Testament. There is actually a sub-reddit devoted to this, /r/IntroAncientGreek, that you might want to check out, and /r/AncientGreek will be a better place to crowd-source an answer for this. If you want hardcore grammar learning, I would suggest Hansen and Quinn but I also recommend Cecilia Luschnig's book Intro to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach which will have you reading actual Ancient Greek texts MUCH sooner than Hansen and Quinn. It's a rather difficult language that will be difficult to learn without supervision and someone to answer your questions, so maybe get an answer key? Best of luck, and Χαῖρε!
My Greek professor strongly recommends against using Athenaze, and I'm not a fan of the "Reading ____" series myself. (I'm currently using the "Reading Latin" books.) I would recommend Introduction to Greek by Cynthia Shelmerdine.
Edit: Here it is if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Greek-Cynthia-W-Shelmerdine/dp/1585101842
There is also this book: http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-Hardy-Hansen/dp/0823216632. I haven't personally used this one, but a couple professors have recommended it.
Chase and Phillips is pretty decent (though definitely reflects the period when it was written):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0674616006/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Hansen and Quinn is also good:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0823216632/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all
I’ve taught with H&Q and used C&P as a supplement when I started to learn Greek.
For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:
Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus
You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.
I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.
I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.
Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs
Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs
Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.
That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.
The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.
Athenaze: Book 1
Athenaze: Book 2
Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube
Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.
Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.
Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:
*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)
Plato: A Transitional Reader
Kaegi’s Greek Grammar
Smyth’s Greek Grammar
Plato Apology
Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners
Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader
Basics of Biblical Greek
A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek
Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES
These 118 lectures are free, and if you want to also have a book, the lectures follow the structure of this one.
there are a large of number of online resources; start with the wikipedia entry and then focus on learning the alphabet. from there, and a little googling, you can discover out of date complete textbooks, online courses etc...
if you want to be shady, you can always download (or buy) the most current textbooks. i believe this one is the most popular
sorry for being lazy, but there's literally a ton of resources just a click away.
The textbook everyone seems to use is http://www.amazon.ca/Greek-Intensive-Course-Hardy-Hansen/dp/0823216632 -- my friend the classics professor and my friend the classical philosophy professor both learned ancient Greek from the Hansen and Quinn.
Free glossed readers: http://www.faenumpublishing.com/available-texts.html
Ancient Greek Alive: https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greek-Alive-Paula-Saffire/dp/080784800X
Teach Yourself Ancient Greek: https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greek-Teach-Yourself-Publishing/dp/0844237868
Intensive Course: https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-2nd-Revised/dp/0823216632
Athenaze (as metioned by others):http://en.bookfi.net/book/710288
AND FOR INSTANT MOTIVATION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fA6dTnyrE and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX_MSrE9WtE
> I was wondering if anyone has some solid, unbiased sources for serious Bible study?
They don't exist. Everyone has biases. The very best scholars are those who can divulge their biases and give reasons for them and reasons against the biases of others. That's part of the scholarly conversation.
For background stuff, maybe check out:
David Aune's The New Testament in Its Literary Environment
I liked Shaye Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah when it comes to understanding "Judaism" in the first century AD.
NT Wright's The New Testament and the People of God is very good.
I also really liked Brant Pitre's Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of Exile - a reworking of his Ph.D dissertation at Notre Dame (under David Aune).
Mark Goodacre's work on Q is good. I read it early in my academic career and it has kept me from believing in the Q theory since.
The biggest journal in the field is probably Journal of Biblical Studies. New Testament Studies is another big one (from Cambridge).
Edit: Also, learn Greek. There are grammars specifically for New Testament Greek (Koine) like David Alan Black's Learn to Read New Testament Greek - which is fine for an NT Greek grammar (though he barely covers the optative since it's so little used in the NT). I would just learn Classical Greek using something like Hansen and Quinn. If you can read Classical Greek, nothing in the Bible (either LXX or NT) will give you a problem.
For a real "nuts and bolts" approach, I would use Hanson and Quinn's "Greek: An Intensive Course". It's intense indeed, but it shows you everything behind the curtains since it is a grammar based approach. The are a lot of other books. Some like Athenaze try to use a more intuitive (and slower) approach, with a lot more vocab. I'm sure people here will have other suggestions, but I don't have experience with Reading Greek.