Starting the Greek New Testament Training Plan

What do I do if I get stuck? And what do I do if I can’t translate the entire passage?

More than two thousand people have downloaded my complexity-graded Greek New Testament Training Plan!

I don’t know how many of you are actually planning to follow through with the reading plan, but I certainly hope you are. And I’ve already heard from several hundred people who are starting this plan tomorrow.

What If I Get Stuck?

As you work through the opening chapters of John’s Gospel, don’t have any English text accessible to you. Otherwise, you’ll be tempted to peek at the English instead of struggling through the Greek.

So what should you do if you get stuck?

Go to Daily Dose of Greek, find the verse there, and let Rob Plummer guide you through the grammar and vocabulary. The entirety of the Gospel According to John is available at Daily Dose of Greek in one-verse increments. And so, especially if your Greek is rusty, I recommend translating the text along with Daily Dose of Greek throughout the first few chapters of John’s Gospel.

By working through these verses with Daily Dose of Greek, you won’t get discouraged, but you also won’t short-circuit your learning by looking at an English Bible.

What Do I Do If When I Get Behind?

If you only get through a few verses one day, don’t try to catch up the next day. Instead, mark off that reading and move to the next reading the next day. Wait for the flex days to try to catch up as much as you can.

For a while, it might be that you only get through the first half-dozen verses of each reading.

If so, that’s fine!

If you make it through those few verses while watching the Daily Dose of Greek videos, your capacity will grow little by little, and you’ll soon find yourself moving to ten or twelve verses and eventually to translating the entire daily reading. Learning any language is a process that’s long and slow, but the process of learning New Testament Greek leads to the joy of a new skill that will multiply your love and knowledge of God’s Word.

The Joy of Reading Your New Testament in Greek

Before you begin, pause and think for a moment about what’s happening when you read the New Testament in Greek.

When you read the words of the Greek New Testament, you are reading the actual words that were written and read by people who walked with Jesus, talked with Jesus, and touched Jesus.

Thirty-one years after I took my first Greek class, I am still in awe when I remember that I am reading the actual words of people who personally knew Jesus.

The text of your Greek New Testament is the closest you will ever be—historically speaking—to the living, breathing Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.

What better motivation could there be for learning to read the Greek New Testament as fluently as possible?