Learning Greek Vocabulary

Now that we've got a better handle on how to read words the next step is to immerse yourself in Greek vocabulary. I suggest two main tools for this:

Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek Vocabulary Cards

• This collection is keyed to Bill's book, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar. There are 1,000 vocabulary cards and the first 320 are the words used 50 or more times in the New Testament. The front includes the Greek word and—if a noun—its corresponding article (which indicates the gender of the word; to be further explained later) and genetive form (to be explained later). The back includes the English translation(s), the corresponding lesson from Bill's book, the number of times the word is used in the New Testament, and—if a verb—its principle parts (to be explained later). You can even go through Bill's book and write out your own vocabulary flash cards (which will take quite a while, but may help in your learning).

Jonathan Pennington's New Testament Greek Vocabulary

• This is an audio collection of two CDs with Jonathan Pennington speaking the words of the Greek New Testament by descending order of their frequency. It also comes with a corresponding 48-page booklet listing the words and their definitions. The words are spoken very clearly and slowly, with a pause between the word and its English translation so that you can take a stab at translating it. The words are grouped into different tracks so you can work on them track by track. It is a great tool to use while driving. Nouns are given in their nominative form (but also followed by their genetive form and their corresponding article), adjectives are given with their masculine, feminine, and neuter forms, and verbs/all other words are in their lexical (dictionary) form.

Both of these collections include all words that are used 10 or more times in the New Testament.