Reading Plan

[Geoff]

I'm thinking about putting together a reading calendar to read the Entire Greek NT. I would like to do it in either a year or two years. I'm still very much a beginner, but I do have some understanding as I read.

How ambitious is this? I'd like to read it regardless of how much I understand or retain. Even though I'm reading for aquaintence rather than full understanding it seems like a good idea to read easier texts first and save the hard ones for last. I was thinking of beginning with Mark, John and then seeing where to go from there.

I'd like your input. Thanks

[klewlis]

I made myself a chart of all the chapters and I colour them in with a pen as I finish each one. This helps me keep track of which ones I've finished so that I don't have to read the books in order! (I do, however, read a whole book before moving on to the next.) One of my new year's resolutions was to finish the entire GNT, and it worked out to 4-5 chapters a week... might want to double-check that since I had parts read prior to this year.

Mark, John, and the epistles of John are the easiest places to start. After that, the other gospels won't be too hard. Paul's epistles are a little tougher, and then Peter and the rest.

If you don't have it already, I highly recommend Kubo's "Reader's Lexicon". It will give you the less common vocab by chapter and verse, so that you don't have to flip around a regular lexicon. It makes reading so much less frustrating when you don't know the vocab!

[djsugg]

There is a great resource online to help with reading through the Greek New Testament. It is based on a 5 year reading plan, but you could always go faster. The link is: http://www.btinternet.com/~MisPar/GNotes/

Each section contains lexical and grammatical helps, along with quotations from a commentary. I have found them to be very helpful.

You don't have to use them online, you can download them in Word or PDF format.

[Geoff]

I'm going to go through Mark in a month and see how it works.

I've got Kubo's on my wishlist, but till then I just use Logos to ck things like that. I usually concentrate on reading for absorbtion and don't get too worried about vocab and understanding. Its actually a good way to build vocab and a sense of syntax. Its already helping on my exercises.

Those notes look great I'll use them someday when I decide to hit the whole thing for real.

Thanks a bunch

[klewlis]

I just finished Romans two nights ago. It was a treat to read, since it is one of my favourites. We had done indepth study on chapters 9 to 11 in second year greek, so those parts were quite familiar. But there was a lot of unknown vocab in the rest of the book (all that theological stuff!).

[Emma_85]

Well, if you aren't interested in understanding everything (though you could just peep at the English translation if you are totally lost ) then I think 1 year should be no problem at all, depending on how busy you are of course. I used to spend hours commuting by bus and train, so no problem for me, always had time to just read something. But otherwise just any spare hour you have really.

[callee]

I picked up a trick from my hebrew teacher which I found to be surprisingly helpful: get yourself an audio recording of the NT, preferably a nice literal one, like say the NASB (or, alternately, just record yourself reading it...) and then play the tape while following along in your Greek NT. Your eyes see the greek but your ears hear the english, and not only is the juxtapositioning quite cool (a kind of linguistic high) but almost by osmosis you simply become intricately familiar with the rhythm and patterns of the language as a whole, not to mention the added bonus that you are reading it in a manner much closer to that of the original readers, who surely would not have got bogged down in the myopic word games that we obsess with in a single clause of a verse.

[Geoff]

Wow! that is a great Idea. It seems obvious, but I hadn't considered it. I always follow along with scripture readings at church and get that effect.

I have the KJV which should be fair for that use. Thanks a bunch!

[klewlis]

I do that at church too.

But audio recordings are so darned expensive!

I wonder if I could find some mp3s on kazaa.... hm....


(ps: before anyone jumps on me for advocating piracy, I'd like to point out that swapping mp3s of copyrighted tracks is not illegal in Canada ;)

[Geoff]

Here is a site that has some cheap MP3's ; In fact they used to have the complete New Testament in MP3 for download. They encourage distribution. The ASI version is read by some kind of digital reader, Pretty cool.


http://www.audiotreasure.com/

You can Hear Scourby online here

http://www.audio-bible.com/bible/bible.html