I’ve studied Greek in the past (obviously) using Bill Mounce’s curriculum with video lectures, but the class I am taking now is vastly different (and superior in my opinion.)

Now, you might ask, “What is this class you are taking, and why is it superior to Mr. Mounce’s monologues?” (I might hasten to add at this juncture that I have nothing against Mr. Mounce. I watched him explain Greek charts for many hours, and I appreciate all the effort he put into it. The year of Greek study that I had with him was definitely not wasted!)

The Biblical Greek Program (BGP)

But, to answer your question… You can find all the information you need to know about the class I’m currently taking here: https://biblicalgreekprogram.org/ As the website name implies, it is all about biblical Greek. This was proven the very first day of class when we saw, heard (and eventually read) the text of John 5:8 straight from the Greek New Testament!

λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ἔγειρε ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ περιπάτει.

-ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ 5:8 (SBLGNT)

You might be tempted to laugh at the featured photo above of the venerable Greek professor sitting and begging for coins, but it is all a part of the creative communicative learning process. (Go ahead and laugh — we did!) I have not laughed so much in one day for a very long time!! Think about it… Which are you more likely to remember? A foreign-looking Greek word printed in a textbook, or the same word literally acted out in front of your eyes? (Not to mention that the word gets repeated dozens of times in its various inflected forms throughout the class period). In this case, we were learning the difference between the Greek words for rich and poor, so we could properly understand the story of Zacchaeus in Greek.

Learn Biblical Greek Communicatively. Seriously.

That’s the gist of what we’re doing here. No fancy gimmicks, no endless lists of verb paradigms, no mindless mumblings of vocabulary words… Just total immersion into the world of Greek. Literally! You know it’s total immersion when it sounds funny to hear someone speak in English for the first time in half an hour!

From the time we start a lesson until it ends 50 minutes later, the conversation is probably about 99% Koine Greek. No English explanations, no translations needed. The teacher uses hand motions and humor and TOYS (of all things!!) to get his point across. Sometimes we laugh till our sides hurt, and our cheek muscles are stiff from smiling so much; other times we sympathize with the lamb that is about to be eaten by a lion, or the fish that finally gets to swim in water, instead of dangling from the professor’s fingers!

Sad to say, I don’t think I’ve ever truly thought in Greek till I started this class. Sure, I had paradigms and prepositions running through my head as I flipped flashcards and took tests in Mounce’s program. But it was all just an academic exercise that bounced around in my brain for a while before settling into a dim, dusty corner to quietly rust as soon as I put my textbook away for the summer. Obviously, I have not yet had a chance to see whether this class will end up the same way… But I rather doubt it will.

Read the New Testament Without Translation??

BGP’s claim that it will enable you to “read the New Testament without translation” is no exaggeration. We’re only two days into the class, and I’m already beginning to “see” and understand the text in a way that I haven’t done before.

There is a difference between “reading” and “translating” the Greek New Testament, especially if Greek is not your first language. Of course, at first, your mind is always at least subconsciously translating when you read another language, but the goal is to learn that language so well that your brain processes it natively, without having to stop and translate each individual word. I’m not naïve enough to believe that 1 or 2 years of Greek class will do that sufficiently to be called “fluent”, but it will definitely push me in that direction! (See how I slipped in that diaeresis there?

Fellow Greek Geeks

One of the best parts of this whole experience is the folks that you find yourself fraternizing with! All of them come to class because they want to. (Quite in contrast to some of my fellow-students from my first Greek class.) You know you’re in the presence of “kindred spirits” when the lunchtime conversation-piece is a book from the 1800s written in Latin and Greek, and the after-class discussion centers around textual criticism, manuscript variants, hermeneutics, history, and the inevitable KJV-only discussions. Words like palimpsest, Majority, diaeresis, BDAG, and Byzantine, are bandied about with as much coolness as if we were discussing the brand of chips we happened to be munching on. Needless to say, (but I’ll say it anyway) this Greek geek is in his element!

Conclusion

I’m sorry you missed class this year. Hopefully you can sign up for it next time around! Here, I’ll make it easy for you:

–mgg, a supremely satisfied student.

(Smart, in this case having a very broad semantic range, of course.) So, without further preamble, let’s get to some of my recommendations for “smart” apps that can come in handy to a student of Greek.

• SBLGNT Greek New Testament Reader
• Bible Lexicon: Bible Study
• MicroParse Greek
• Anki Droid
• Tecarta Bible

SBLGNT Greek New Testament Reader

Of all the apps on my phone that fall into the Greek category, this is the one I currently use the most. Note that I do not recommend reading your Bible, (whether Greek or English) on your phone, (or any other electronic device, for that matter.)** I use this app mainly as a quick reference when I need to quickly look up a passage in Greek or a particular word’s definition or parsing.

What I like about it:

• The font! I’m rather picky about Greek fonts, (some are just plain awful!) but this one is pretty nice.
• One-tap glosses and parsing! This is really nice for those obscure words or parsings that stump you.
• 
  • I’m not sure where the parsing info comes from, but the definitions are from Mounce’s Concise Greek-English Dictionary. Take note of the “concise” in the title of that dictionary. This is not BDAG, so you’ll only get one or two of the “main” meanings, but it’s still very helpful for a quick reference.

What could be improved:

• The app needs a little “polishing.” Often when I want to scroll quickly to the end of a chapter, the page will “stick” to my finger, instead of using the “inertial scroll” that most smartphone users are accustomed to.
• I’d love to see an improved navigation system similar to the way the Tecarta Bible app does it; just type in the reference and chapter number, and hit enter. Presto, there’s the passage you’re looking for!
• The audio player doesn’t seem to work, (at least not on my older device).

The Greek New Testament Reader also has some other neat features that I don’t even use! You can choose from several different Bible reading plans, including some by Daniel Wallace that will hopefully motivate you to read your Greek New Testament more!

It also has a handy little vocabulary tool that evidently allows you to study the vocabulary of a particular chapter of the Bible in order to brush up on your skills before you plow through the chapter.

Bible Lexicon: Bible Study

This app is by far the most versatile of the bunch! Want to look up Mounce’s, Strong’s, or Thayer’s definitions of a Greek word? No problem, the Bible Lexicon can do it for you! (After you download the appropriate modules, of course). Want to look up a specific edition of the Greek text? (e.g. the SBL, BYZ, LXX, WH or the TR?) They’re all available to download for free! What if you want to compare a particular verse in all those different editions? It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

This app leaves a few things to be desired in terms of its user interface as well, but its versatility definitely makes up for the little quirks in the UI.

MicroParse Greek

This little app costs $0.99, but it’s worth every penny, especially if you are studying Greek using Bill Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek (BBG), since it was intended to be used together with that course.

You can parse nouns, verbs, and participles using words that you are already familiar with, and even select which chapter of BBG you’re on, so you aren’t seeing words or parsings that you haven’t learned yet! It also has a vocabulary section for reviewing your vocab, but I found that it did not follow Mounce’s definitions exactly, so after a little research, I found a better solution for reviewing vocab….

Anki Droid

Anki is a flashcard memory system that is specially engineered to help you memorize, and then review what you memorized to keep it in your memory. They call it “spaced repetition.” Obviously this app has much wider applications than just Greek, but I was happy to find a shared deck on the Anki website that contained all of Mounce’s 1000 flashcards! With a little customization, it fit my purposes admirably, and I owe my Greek quiz grades partly to this app.

Here’s my customized version of the 1000 flashcard deck. My customizations include: adding Chapter tags to the first 320 cards that are used in BBG, so that the chapters can be studied individually, adding roots in bold to all the verbs, and tweaking some of the definitions to match what Mounce gives in his 3^rd edition of BBG.

Tecarta Bible

This is my favorite Bible app, and the reason I include it in this lineup is because it offers a Bible version called “Strong’s Concordance w/KJV,” which is just a KJV Bible with the English words keyed to Strong’s numbers/definitions. Just tap and hold the English word you want to look up, and you’ll get a menu with an option to view the Strong’s entry for the underlying Greek word, as well as a link to search all the occurrences of that word in the rest of the Bible. Very handy for a quick word study when you’re in the middle of a debate with a friend!

You can use most of the different Bible versions, including the one mentioned above for free with an internet connection, or you can pay $4.99 to download it for offline use as well.

As I already mentioned above, I like the navigation options for quickly finding references in Tecarta.

Conclusion

Hopefully this post inspires you to use your smartphone for something smart! I use these apps frequently, and recommend them for all Android users who want to sharpen their Greek skills.

**Please note that linking to an external website does not at all constitute an endorsement of that site or its content. It is unfortunate that so many sites with otherwise useful content are plagued with awful content in the sidebars and “recommended content” sections. Please use good judgement. I highly recommend using an ad-blocker (I use this ad-blocker) and/or a browser that automatically blocks ads that allows you to also hide sidebars (and elements other than ads) that are not suitable for a Christian’s eyes.

However, it can be rather complicated and frustrating to type on a regular QWERTY keyboard and have Greek letters come out. Even if you manage to figure out how to set your PC’s keyboard language to Greek, (Mac users see here for instructions) chances are that the letters are not arranged in a logical order that would make sense, (i.e. you would expect that the “u” key would produce the ύψιλον (υ) character, but that is not always the case.)

Another important consideration is how to add all those “little squiggles,” (breathing marks, accents, circumflexes and subscripts). Unless you happen to have Google DuckDuckGo handy to help you figure out how to input Greek breathing marks and accents on a PC, you’ll probably be lost.

On top of that, it can get rather confusing and a little annoying to constantly have to switch keyboard languages.

Ideally, someone would invent a keyboard that is intelligent enough to type Greek characters “normally” for people who are accustomed to typing with a plain old QWERTY keyboard.

With this keyboard, I would type “d” to get a δ, and “u” to get an υ! In addition, if I need to add a rough breathing mark or an accent, I can use a key that makes logical sense and is easy to remember. (For example, the “(” key could be used for the rough breathing mark.)

TypeGreek.com

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you: typegreek.com! All you have to do is to start typing, and it will take care of transliterating your English characters into the proper Greek ones automagically! And if you do struggle for some reason, and can’t figure out how to input a particular letter or accent, just check out the handy alphabet key that tells you everything you need to know!

Keyman Greek keyboards

If you prefer an offline method for typing in polytonic Greek that works with any software on your computer, then you’ll definitely want to check out the excellent Keyman keyboards as an alternative to the built-in keyboards that you can get with Windows or Mac machines. I currently use Keyman’s Galaxie Greek/Hebrew (Mnemonic) keyboards, and I love them! They are intuitive, and fulfill my wish for a keyboard that maps “δ” to “d” and “υ” to “u”, and so on… It’s almost as easy as typing in English (but not quite, because English doesn’t normally use accents.) Check out their handy documentation to learn which keys to use for inputting accents and subscripts. Once you learn them it feels very natural and easy!

Now you can type things like this!

ἡ χάρις μεθ᾿ ὑμῶν (Colossians 4:18)

ἀμἠν