When I studied at Bible College in the second half of the 1980s, we had to learn Biblical Greek, and I
loved it! It took a lot of work and dedication, but at the end of the 3 semesters of Greek that year I had an average of 96%. I found it fascinating!
But, like they say, "If you don't use, you lose it!" I got married in 1990, and started working at a massive state company through which I studied software development, and I've been in software development ever since. Through the years, because of disuse, I had forgotten much of what I learnt about New Testament Greek. I don't know how many times I tried to pick it up again. Don't get me wrong! I could no longer handle it smoothly, differentiating between different verb forms, nouns, etc. Yet, I was quite capable of helping myself when I came across something in the New Testament that I wanted to check against the Greek. I had the resources, and I knew how to use them, but I couldn't pick up a Greek New Testament and just translate as I read.
This year I somehow stumbled upon New Zealander Darryl Burling and his online community of NT Greek students. Darryl has a passion to get others to love reading the NT in Greek as much as he does. Because of that he started developing an online program where people could learn NT Greek. This program is called Master NT Greek (MNTG). You can join as one of two kinds of members: Community or Mastery.
Community membership is basically self-study with guidance available via MNTG's community portal on Mighty Networks. With Mastery membership, more expensive than community membership, you get to attend online classes via Zoom.
Anyhow, the intention is to get as many Christians to love and glorify God through studying the NT in its original language. This is not something just for pastors, or for theology professors, and the like! Too many pastors today think looking something up in the Strong's concordance qualifies them to make pronouncements on what Greek words in the NT mean without knowing anything about Greek, and how the language fits together.
You can do it! It is NOT an impossible task! Sure, it may take hard work and long hours, but the feeling of accomplishment in getting to study God's Word in the language it was written, in and of itself, is worth it. To one day be able to read the New Testament in its original language is well worth the effort, and what is really great about Darryl Burling's program, is that you can sit and do this at home. You can also use the Mighty networks MNTG community to interact with other students.
It is truly worth joining MNTG to learn to read the NT in Greek!
