Passing the Greek Entrance Exam

There was one contingency in my acceptance to Bethlehem College and Seminary, that I must be able to pass a first year Greek exam. If you've been preparing to go to seminary by going to Bible college this may not be a big deal.  Or if your pastor seems to give a mini Greek lesson in every sermon.  For me, however, I was starting fresh.  The only Greek I really knew was what I learned in engineering school.

p = 3.14159

S - symbol for a series of equations

D - designates a change in value

m - symbol for micro-units

t - torsion

Turns out, people used to actually use these symbols to make words and communicate, not just to do math.  And since the New Testament was written in Greek, I guess it's a good idea to be able to understand it to better understand what the writers were trying to communicate.

So I set out to learn Greek, as quickly and cheaply as possible.  I didn't have time to attend a class and I didn't have money to pay for one either.  But due to my impeccable research abilities, I figured I could find some good free resources online.  You can find anything online, and most of it is true, too!

 My first try was this free flash-based class from Gordon College.

After a while, the woodenness of the flash video just became a little tedious.  Plus, there just wasn't much interaction with the Scriptures to make me feel like I was accomplishing much.  I got through the first 2 chapters and decided to move on.  I did learn the alphabet from him, however, and his recitation pattern is the one I know when reciting the alphabet.

Someone posted on YouTube an entire set of videos recorded during their New Testament Greek class with Jeff Jenkins.  This seemed like it would work well, as it was a little more interactive (at least with the people in the video) and real life.  For a while, I really enjoyed this.  However, I again had to quit as I didn't have the ability to interact with the materials he was referring to (books and worksheets).  I eventually fell behind what he was teaching and wasn't able to refer to anything else to get my questions answered.

I thought I was in trouble or would finally have to fork over the money to get a real koine Greek education.  Then, during my visit to BCS last fall, I met a first-year student, Brad Aust, who had the same challenge as me when he was first accepted.  He suggested I get a hold of the Greek I and Greek II DVDs from Gordon Conwell's Online Seminary program.  At $50 bucks a piece, it was better than spending a few hundred bucks for a full class. Even better than that, Brad let me borrow his Greek I disc, so all I needed was to purchase the Greek II disc.  Now we're talkin'!

Unfortunately, Dr. Hafemann's DVD courses are based on Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek; a book which I did not have and would need to purchase also. Plus, the homework is all from Mounce's workbook, which would cost extra as well.

But hooray for friends!  I put a call out on facebook for a copy to borrow, and sure enough, one of my newest friends said I could borrow both her textbook and the workbook.  Of course, I would need to keep my  notes and homework in a separate notebook, but in order to save a ton of money, it was worth the trouble.  She even had a copy of Mounce's Graded Reader I could borrow, which would get me more into the Scriptures as I learned.  This made it feel like the work was worth it and pushed me to continue.

After four months of studying, listening, and practicing, I took a practice test to prepare for the entrance exam.  I passed with flying colors!  Yess!  I'm in (I still have to take the official test proctored by someone who is not my wife).

Thank you Lord for the generosity of some new friends.

Along the way, I picked up a few more resources which helped me with parsing and vocabulary.  These were probably more helpful than I have time or space to give them credit for.

• Parse Greek App - I loaded this app onto my Kindle Fire from the Amazon Store.  It has all of the vocabulary from multiple curricula (including Mounce) and every possible parsing of each word.  It quizzes you by giving you a word and you choose the parsing details.
• Bible Flashcards App - I had to sideload this onto my Kindle Fire since it isn't available in the Amazon app store.  This app is simply a flashcard app for all the vocabulary from multiple Greek curricula.  There are a few spelling and accenting errors in the program, so you need to keep your eyes open.
• Biblical Greek: QUIA Games - I love playing the memory games on this site.  It moves things around a bit so you aren't always stuck with the same old flashcards.  You can choose the vocab to study by word type or frequency.  This helped me learn words down to 26 occurrences for the exam (which tests down to 30)
• BiblicalTraining.org - Mounce put some free lectures online for each chapter of his book.  It wasn't the most helpful, but it was good just to hear the information again from someone else after reading it myself.
• Audio of Greek New Testament - sometimes it is helpful to just read and listen through the New Testament just to get familiar with the words and the syntax; even if you don't understand it.  I found this exciting to listen to; as I began to learn more and more I started to understand more of what I was listening to while following along in my Greek New Testament.
• Quizlet - Many people created various flashcard sets on this site which were quite helpful.  The link is to the prepositions set that helped me when I struggled with the prepositions with different case endings.
• Greek Drills - This site is a wealth of information.  I liked how it organized its charts for various case ending and explained the morphology of some of the endings.  The self-test was especially helpful in preparing me for the entrance exam.
•  Polis Koine - I can't wait until this program is available in English.  I watched the sample videos and was astounded by how much I was learning by watching the entire class operate in Greek.  This is the way everyone should learn Greek, not through boring grammar/syntax study and rote vocabulary memorization.
• Living Koine Greek - Since finishing up with Mounce, I've continued to refine my understanding with this program.  The pronunciation is different than Mounce (supposedly more historically accurate for the koine period), but still, a much more natural way to learn.  This is a fun way to learn another language.