Last Updated on August 8, 2022 by Team College Learners

Biblical Greek represents one of the most valuable skills a person can develop for studying the Bible.

The Greek of the New Testament and Septuagint (a translation of the Old Testament into Greek) is known as Koine Greek. “Koine” is a Greek word that means “common.” After Alexander the Great spread Greek language and culture throughout the known world, this Common Greek became the language of wider communication for the entire Greco-Roman world.

Learning Koine Greek not only connects you to the original text of the New Testament but also to the Septuagint (that the writers of the New Testament quoted regularly), as well as to the cultural, social, and historical world in which the good news of the gospel spread.

Greek Alphabet and Pronunciation

Greek alphabet

There’s no difference between a biblical Greek alphabet and the modern Greek alphabet. You’ll want to learn both how it’s printed in modern fonts as well as how to handwrite it.

The Greek Alphabet (Lower Case)
The Greek Alphabet (Upper Case)
Logos Alphabet Tutor

Much ink has been spilled over the years over what “the best” pronunciation for Greek should be for students of the New Testament. Some people prefer Modern Greek because of its strong connection to the living Greek language. Others maintain that the traditional Anglicized Erasmian pronunciations used in most seminaries have more practical value for interacting with other Greek students. Finally, some people also choose to use a historically reconstructed pronunciation to accurately speak and read the language the way it would have sounded to the writers of the New Testament period.

None of these three choices is wrong or worse than the other. They simply prioritize different values. Whatever you choose, learning the letters of the alphabet doesn’t need to be difficult. You can hear what the alphabet sounds like in each of them.

Koine Greek Alphabet Songhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/ac29qW_hrDU
Erasmian Greek Alphabet Songhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/Jwgz4lc-TFU
Modern Greek Alphabet Songhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/HMGlEeFl1qo

Greek in Bible Study

Greek grammars

Learning a language, especially for the purpose of Bible study, makes grammar resources essential. Introductory grammars guide you through the basics and present the paradigms and details you need to understand basic sentences. They provide a foundation for basic concepts and vocabulary so that you can start your journey into the text of the New Testament. Intermediate and advanced grammars, then, become essential for understanding difficult topics, finding answers to questions, and making wise decisions for how complex or ambiguous Greek phrases and sentences should be interpreted.

Learning Koine Greek, the Greek of the New Testament, can be fast and fun.

But not when taught the usual way.

There’s a reason people say of the incomprehensible: “It’s all Greek to me!” Greek is reputed to be a difficult language to learn, especially for native English speakers. To that, we say: “It doesn’t need to be!”

Using our cutting-edge, interactive digital textbook and live, online classes, students will encounter Greek in a fresh way — not as a museum piece, but as itself: a rich and beautiful ancient tongue that was always meant to be understood, not merely decoded.

Whatever your age, level of education, or goals, we can meet you where you are and make it so Greek is no longer “All Greek to me!”

What Level of Koine Student Are You?

Beginner

This course is best for students who have no prior experience with Greek. Read, write, and speak in Greek from day one. You will learn grammar and vocabulary with an interactive digital textbook and meet in a live, online class.

Intermediate

This course is best for students who have some experience with Greek, but aren’t comfortable reading primary Greek sources. Take your acquisition to the next level. By the end of this course, you will be reading primary texts with ease!

Advanced

This course is designed for students with at least two years of Greek under their belts. Students will customize their own curriculum and pursue the texts that interest them. This course equips you for independent study! See All Ancient Greek Classes

How We Teach Koine

In most Greek courses, you could sit through weeks of rote memorization before you ever read a real text. Even then, texts tend to be short, dull, and they take a back seat to paradigms, vocabulary, and grammar. Too many students complete a course with only a set of “conversion formulas” to show for it, and they think they’ve learned Greek!

That’s like forcing you to memorize a cookbook before letting you step foot in a kitchen — and once you do step foot in the kitchen, you’ve never even held a knife before!

We think there’s a better way.

We think that proficiency in Greek requires reading early, much, and often. In our courses, you start reading Greek as soon as possible, and reading, not rote memorization, takes first importance.

That is the better way. And that’s why the Ancient Language Institute exists.

This program will deepen your understanding of the New Testament for preaching, teaching, and personal study.

You’ll gain foundational knowledge for reading and understanding the New Testament in Greek—and you’ll be well-positioned for advanced language study.

Whether you prepare sermons, lead Bible studies, or teach the Bible in a classroom study, there’s simply no better way to get equipped with the skills you need for serious study of the biblical text.

By completing this 2-course sequence, you will gain:

a firm grasp on the building blocks of New Testament Greek, including the Greek alphabet, pronunciation, and punctuation
foundational knowledge of Greek nouns, pronouns, prepositions, and verbs
the foundational knowledge required to begin studying the New Testament in its original language
deeper familiarity with and knowledge of the building blocks of New Testament Greek, including the Greek alphabet, pronunciation, and punctuation
more extensive knowledge of Greek verbs and their various forms

How this course helps you succeed in learning Greek:

Work at your own pace.

Take as much time as you need to work through each lesson—up to 12 months. We’ll walk you through every lesson, step-by-step, to make sure you understand each concept before you move on. Pause and rewind video lectures, work through the review sessions as many times as you’d like, and study at the times of day that work best for you. With this program, you’ll get the flexibility to learn in a way that’s best for you.

Learn from seasoned teachers and scholars.

Your instructor is William D. Mounce, author of the most widely used Greek grammar, Basics of Biblical Greek. Dr. Mounce has taught Greek for decades both in traditional classroom settings and online. Everything in the course has been expertly designed and time-tested. Thousands of students have learned to read the Bible in the original languages using these materials—and now you can, too.

Get access to tools proven to help you learn.

Take advantage of the most sophisticated adaptive learning technology ever developed for language acquisition. As part of your enrollment, you’ll get access to review tools that have been used around the world by language learners of all ages and abilities.

Get digital access to all course materials—anytime, anywhere.

Get access to dozens of hours of video materials, plus all textbook readings, exercises, quizzes, and more. The lessons and learning materials have been adapted from the Basics of Biblical Greek, used by thousands of students to learn Greek.

Begin working in the languages the very first day.

In just a few hours from now, you’ll have learned the alphabet and basic pronunciation.

Get started today!

MEET YOUR INSTRUCTORS

William D. Mounce

Ph.D., Aberdeen University and President of BiblicalTraining.org

William D Mounce lives as a writer in Washougal, Washington. He is the President of BiblicalTraining.org, a non-profit organization offering world-class educational resources for discipleship in the local church. See www.BillMounce.com for more information. Formerly he was a preaching pastor, and prior to that a professor of New Testament and director of the Greek Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of the bestselling Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, and many other resources. He was the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version translation of the Bible, and is serving on the NIV translation committee.

BASICS OF BIBLICAL GREEK 1 OUTLINE

Unit 1: The Greek Language
Unit 2: The Alphabet, Pronunciation, Punctuation and Syllabification
Unit 3: Beginning Nouns
Unit 4: Genitive and Dative
Unit 5: Propositions, εἰμί, and Adjectives
Unit 6: Third Declension Nouns
Unit 7: First and Second Person Personal Pronouns
Unit 8: αὐτός
Unit 9: Demonstrative Pronouns and Adjectives
Unit 10: Relative Pronouns
Unit 11: Introduction to Verbs and Present Active Indicative
Unit 12: Contract Verbs
Unit 13: Present Middle/Passive Indicative
Unit 14: Future Active and Middle Indicative
Unit 15: Verbal Roots

BASICS OF BIBLICAL GREEK 2 OUTLINE

Unit 1: Imperfect Indicative
Unit 2: Second Aorist Active and Middle Indicative
Unit 3: First Aorist Active and Middle Indicative
Unit 4: Aorist and Future Passive Indicative
Unit 5: Perfect Indicative
Unit 6: Introduction to Participles and Imperfective (Present) Adverbial Participles
Unit 7: Perfective (Aorist) Adverbial Participles
Unit 8: Adjectival Participles
Unit 9: Combinative (Perfect) Participles and Genitive Absolutes
Unit 10: Subjunctive
Unit 11: Infinitive
Unit 12: Imperative
Unit 13: Indicative of δίδωμι
Unit 14: Nonindicative of δίδωμι and Conditional Sentences
Unit 15: ἵστημι, τίθημι, δείκνυμι and Odds ‘n Ends

BibleMesh is now offering an integrated reading experience for our new book-based courses. As before, students will be guided through their reading with book excerpts embedded within the course. This allows for an improved reading experience within the course. Students will also be able to pop out the book reader into a full-screen, fully-featured web-based reading platform where they will be able to see the wider context of each excerpt and access the complete book.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Is it really free? Yes. You only pay for the textbook (Jeremy Duff, Elements of NT Greek), available from the publisher or via the usual distributors.

Why are you offering it for free? The short answer is: to serve our family of churches (and believers worldwide). The longer answer is that we developed these self-paced materials to assist our own students who might have been struggling to complete a standard Greek subject in a one-semester timeframe. Having done that, we thought it would be helpful to make it freely available.

What’s the catch? There are three:

Since the subject is free, you don’t get access to our online tutors or our assessment tasks. The material is provided “as is.” Your answers are marked automatically online by our computer to give you instant feedback, but being a language (not maths) it’s not always going to get it right. At the beginning, it’s usually very accurate. As the translation becomes more complicated, there are more permutations of “right” answers, so you might occasionally find something marked wrong that is indeed correct. But by that time, you’ll have learned how to evaluate your own answers against the model answers, and judge whether your translation is valid or not.
For this reason, we don’t offer the second semester subject in this way – it’s too difficult to automate. But once you’ve done one semester with our online “training wheels” you should be right to teach yourself the second half of it via the textbook. Alternatively, you can enrol for our (for credit, fee-paying) second semester subject.
You might like it so much you end up signing up for a degree or diploma! (That’s not our aim in providing it for free, but for some of you, it may be a way of starting to discern the call of God into theological study.)

How does it work? Once you send us the enrolment form, we’ll send you a login to our online system. (It may take 1-2 weeks to process if you sign up in a busy part of semester, but normally just a few days.) You work through the material online, which introduces you to each new concept in a clear, simple way. After each new concept, you consolidate your learning by working through the practice exercises in the textbook.

Is there a time limit? No. It’s not for credit, so take as much time as you want. If you don’t log in at all for 6 months, your enrolment will lapse, but re-enrolling is just a quick email away.

Can I do it for credit? Not in the self-paced form. You can sign up for the one semester fee-paying subject coded LA004AD online, which credits to Australian College of Theology awards. Alternatively, you can do the self-paced version here, and then sit an exam – if successful you won’t get academic credit, but you can get a recognition of prior learning (RPL) exemption which means you can go straight into the second semester accredited LA004BD subject (standard tuition fees apply for LA004bD).

What will it teach me? It won’t teach you to read Greek unaided (yet). It takes you through half a standard New Testament Greek introductory course, comparable to half of “first year Greek” in seminaries around the world. It will teach you how to learn Greek, and help you work out whether you want to invest time in learning to read it fluently. It also won’t help you order coffee in downtown Athens – it’s a reading course in Ancient Greek, not a speaking course in Modern Greek.