four new gospel Gentle Greek Readers now on Amazon.com

Greek Learning Greek
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I hope some of you will be pleased to know about four new gospel Gentle Greek Readers now on Amazon.com. Search Amazon for “Gentle Greek Reader”.

These easy chair readers put in one hand everything intermediate students need to put your feet up and enjoy reading Greek without reaching for and flipping through reference books. You get the verse-by-verse Greek text of the entire gospel, a facing-page English translation, and a separate and complete interlinear to act as dictionary and syntax clarifier. At the back there’s a short reference grammar. Amazon’s Look Inside feature is now working for the G of Matthew reader; it shows the first few Greek-English pages, not the interlinear or grammar.

If anyone cares, these are prettied up versions of the books I assembled for myself during my several year project of learning ancient Greek by reading ancient Greek. The Anabasis and Daphnis and Chloe were beyond me. I ended up with the NT Gospels. I studied Mounce and JACT but found myself still unable to read on my own. I just couldn’t. So I began each morning to ‘spend an hour with Jesus,’ in an easy chair with a cup of coffee and a Greek gospel. The first time through the first book was a struggle. I’ve now done the four books each twice, and I’m more or less fluent in gospel Greek. I still get hung up on uncommon vocabulary but I can read a gospel in one pass, and understand it in Greek. It’s fun.

I began with an interlinear, tried Perseus online, and ended up with a printed diglot. The print was too small for my middle-aged eyes, so I scanned and reprinted it large. I added a short reference grammar to remind myself of the forms. I used the grammar a lot at first, hardly ever now. The interlinear sounds dumb, but turned out to be helpful later on, when I got to caring about fine points of syntax. It also helps with rare vocab words, which it translates more literally than the facing-page translation. When I want to understand a sentence, I use the facing page; when I want to clarify a word, I use the interlinear. For in-depth study you still gotta LSJ.

Gentle Greek Readers have three parts:

  1. In the scholarly tradition of classical literature, the full text of the Greek gospel with an English translation on the facing page.

  2. A separate and complete Greek-English interlinear of the same text. When you want the in-context definition of a particular word, or help puzzling out an unfamiliar Greek construction, this section serves as a handy dictionary and syntax unraveler. These pages were developed from a scan of a scholarly work in the public domain.

  3. When the Greek text prompts you to refresh your memory of, say, athematic middle perfect verb forms, the short reference grammar at the back of the book is there to help.

Enjoy
Greg K
Colorado

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I’m conflicted about this post because of this Textkit rule:

7. We reserve the right to edit or delete Textkit user accounts and or posts at any time where we feel the Textkit user’s intent is self promotion. Again, if you are engaged and helpful on our forums in both your posts and the posts of others, the right to promote your sites and projects is earned. In fact, we are grateful. If you have not earned this right, we will take action by deleting accounts and/or posts with no warning.

However, since it has been approved, I’ve only removed the paragraph about the low, low price. Instead, I’ll just say that I took a look at these readers, and from the Amazon preview they appear to be a public domain Greek text + a public domain English translation + a scanned transliteration all bound together. I can see how this could be useful, but someone looking for reading help may wish to download these separately for free.

Or even better to try the UBS Reader’s Greek New Testament, or one of the various Wescott & Horts out there bound with a dictionary.

Unlike some others here, I think that reading along with a transliteration is good for the first few weeks of Greek, but you’ll want to get away from that aid very early on.

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Greg here, the guy who posted the notice. I agree it’s close to the edge of what TK allows, so thanks for allowing it. I posted it it because these are books I wish I’d had when I started, and I think they’ll help folks here whose learning style matches mine.

Joel, you are right about the public domain. I presumed everyone knows the gospels are public domain, and my post is careful to say the interlinear is. The Gentle Greek Readers themselves are copyright free for non-commercial use. If you want to scan a copy for yourself, or to hand out to a class you are teaching, go nuts. I’ll be proud if you find them useful. Like everyone here, I ain’t doing this to get rich.

Keep in mind that to get the Loeb facing-page layout you’ll need a double sided printer and some sort of binding machine. The purpose of mentioning the en-tay ollar-day price (which is as low as Az will let me go; it basically just covers printing costs) was to let folks know that, while you CAN print this book yourself, you’ll save just pennies over the cost of buying the thing from Amazon, and the results you get won’t be nearly as neat or handy or portable. Part of the purpose of putting these together myself, and putting them on Amazon, is that Amazon sells them so cheaply it’s better deal than printing them yourself.

I scanned and cleaned up an original 1897 printing of the interlinear, but an online copy is available free online, https://archive.org/details/interlinearliter00newy . Good luck. The marginal translation, tiny print, crowding footnotes, and a lack of quickly visible verse references make it unusable for Gentle Greek reading. I fixed those things. If you find an interlinear helpful for Gentle Reading, my version is actually usable.

Joel is absolutely right: If you don’t like Loeb-style facing page translations, these books are not for you.
If you are already a smooth Greek reader, these books are not for you.
The Nestle-Aland Greek-English New Testament is a great choice. I own it, and used it. It is cheaper than buying four GGRs. Again, my middle-age eyes found the print too small. And the interlinear and grammar, etc. Use both. Life is good.

These books are for advance-beginner and intermediate students whose learning style is to read lots of and lots of fairly simple Greek. They’re also good for more advanced students who just enjoy extended reading and who don’t see occasional help with vocab, syntax, and forms as morally enervating.

Greg