Is it really possible that you could have fun giving hours and hours of your time to learning a language that is out of use in the modern world?
I believe so, but the answer you will give really depends on how you have fun. To get to fun takes work, but the beauty of it is that there’s fun to be had on the way to fun. And knowing and being able to use Greek is fun, but a lot of the fun comes in the middle of the process of actually working towards knowing the language.
How is it fun to learn biblical Greek?
Do you remember what it was like to learn how to ride a bike? I know you scraped your knees and maybe even bloodied your elbows. It wasn’t your fault, though, it seemed ridiculous to ride a bike. I mean it only had two wheels…and they were in line with each other! How in the world were you supposed to keep it upright? And forget about turning. Once you turned the front wheel, the whole thing would move and you’d go down.
And then…
Almost as if something suddenly shifted in your brain, you started to move forward on your bike and the thing stayed upright. Your knees and elbows were safe…for the time being. You weren’t exactly sure how this was working, but you were having fun. You didn’t feel confident that you could stop when you wanted, but you were having fun learning. The thing that seemed impossible before was now adding to your joy. You didn’t really know how to ride a bike yet; you just knew how not to fall right away. Nevertheless, that was fun.
In my experience, it’s almost an identical process for learning biblical Greek.
When you first begin, it feels strange, awkward, and, honestly…impossible. The letters look weird, you don’t have an idea how you’re going to remember all of this, even the punctuation is different. You’re used to a question mark looking like “?” and now it looks like “;”. And forget about memorizing all these new words. How many are there to memorize? Something like 5,000? They don’t mean anything to you. How could you possibly remember them?
And then…
Almost as if something suddenly shifted in your brain, the letters don’t look quite so weird anymore. You find that you’re able to tell the difference between a “ζ” and a “ξ”, and you know when to use a “ς” instead of a “σ”. You’re even able to recite the Greek alphabet as fast as you can the English alphabet. And you’re having fun doing it. What! The words that were so difficult to remember start to look familiar. λόγος doesn’t just look Greek anymore; it starts to look correct. You don’t really know how the language works yet, but you’re having fun on your way to finding out.
I’ve had more fun in this process than I ever thought I would. The question for you is: Is this the type of fun you might be interested in?
If you’re interested in learning biblical Greek and you’d like some help along the way, please email me at kevindavis1986@gmail.com. I’d be happy to discuss with you some different teaching options that will help you get into the Greek of the New Testament!