Preface to the Greek Textbook

Dear Reader,

Welcome to this textbook. Not only are you welcome here but also wanted. You are my priority, and it is my responsibility—as the author of this textbook—to honor you and your commitment to learning Greek. How do I honor you and your commitment? I do so by teaching you how to become the best Greek thinker that you can be. Let me share with you what I mean.

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Thinking in Greek

Thinking in Greek means understanding Greek in its own linguistic context instead of a different one. In this textbook, the “different” linguistic context is English. To illustrate this distinction, I encourage language learners to think of languages as boxes. In this textbook, there are two boxes: English and Greek. Our natural approach is to read other languages—original or in translation—through our own linguistic contexts because they are the most familiar to us (and therefore the most comfortable and easiest for us). Put simply, we negotiate the meaning of another language from within our own linguistic box. This action can be illustrated as follows.

In contrast, thinking in Greek is learning how to exist in the other box without depending upon the English box. This state of being can be illustrated as follows.

Thinking in a different language is a challenging task, and it is my responsibility to teach you how to do this. If you are using this textbook in a classroom, it also is my responsibility to support your instructor in this task. Whether alone or alongside your instructor, I honor you and your commitment to learning Greek by teaching you as best as I can how to think in Greek as best as you can.

We all are so accustomed to thinking in our own language that thinking in a different language can be a vague and puzzling idea. So, I want to share three real-life examples of thinking in Greek. If you need to read the Greek boxes below multiple times, do not worry. This is normal and expected. Why? It is needed because you have not learned how to think in Greek yet. Read them as many times as you need.

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Learning to Think in Greek

It is common in the preface of a Greek textbook to engage others’ textbooks and their methodologies for the purpose of either direct criticism (e.g., “that is not done well”) or indirect criticism (e.g., “mine is better”). You will find no criticism here. Rather, I am going to clearly set out for you how I teach you to think in Greek. I understand my responsibility to honor you and your commitment to learning Greek as a responsibility of stewardship, so below are six ways I have crafted my textbook to steward you into someone who thinks in Greek.

1. This textbook is a steward of ancient texts. This textbook is a steward of ancient texts by treating all ancient texts the same regardless of how we think or feel about them, including our own theological convictions. Although the primary corpus of this textbook is the variety of texts that later became the New Testament, I made this selection only because I write for many learners who are interested in them. The reality is that every ancient author has ideologies and agendas—called “bias”—whether that author be Homer, Herodotus, Paul, or Origen. Although I embrace the ideologies and agendas of New Testament authors, this textbook neither evaluates nor defends any authors’ biases. Rather, it teaches you how to think in Greek so that you can understand those biases in their own contexts. What you choose to think or believe about authors’ biases, while an extremely important and deeply personal undertaking, is not discussed in this textbook.

2. This textbook is a steward of your time. This textbook is a steward of your time in meaningful ways. Explanations are short and clear without fluff. Each lesson’s exercises are fair in length and difficulty, and all exercises target specific material learned in their lesson and in prior lessons. This state of affairs is achieved because every page of this textbook has been meticulously planned, tested in real-world classroom experience over multiple years, and reviewed by Greek readers of all levels. There are even parts of this textbook that I have refined over fifteen years of instruction. Every moment of time you invest in this textbook has a reward. No time is wasted.

3. This textbook is a steward of your prior knowledge. We all process and learn new information through the lenses of information that we already know. Early on, I recognized that the only way this textbook can teach you to think in Greek is through your prior knowledge of English. Put simply, thinking in Greek is not “avoiding” English but “moving beyond” it. This textbook moves you beyond English by first engaging your knowledge of it. Accordingly, the opening section in each chapter explains the relationship of the Greek material to-be-learned to the English you already know. Then, each chapter provides exercises to cement your understanding of that relationship. Once you understand those relationships, then you are ready to move beyond the English into the Greek material found in each chapter.

4. This textbook is a steward of Greek material to-be-learned. After each chapter’s section on the relationship between the Greek material to-be-learned and the English you already know, you begin the Greek lesson. This textbook is a steward of the Greek lesson in three ways. First, every Greek word, phrase, and sentence—no matter where it is found in this textbook—is real Greek. Nothing is manufactured or adapted. Second, each chapter contains a vocabulary list of twenty-five words (crafted from frequency lists for both New Testament and Classical Greek authors) with an exercise to contextualize their meanings within the Greek language. Last, after the vocabulary list and exercise, each chapter’s lesson is divided into an alpha and beta section for ease of learning. Both sections include explanations of Greek material with examples, and each section ends with a variety of exercises for practicing its material. All exercises not only match the material learned in a section but also reinforce material you learned in prior sections. After each alpha and beta section, you not only will have a clear understanding of new material but also will gain greater facility in the material you already have learned.

5. This textbook is a steward of scope. The texts found in the New Testament are written by a variety of authors, yet these are not the only ancient authors who wrote Greek. If someone learns to read Greek only for the sake of the New Testament, this will make “thinking” in Greek very challenging because New Testament texts represent only a small fraction of the language and an even smaller percentage of its literary and intellectual ideas. For this reason, this textbook exposes you to a variety of authors from the Classical period to the Patristic period. You will translate Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Josephus, Philo, the Septuagint translators, and various church fathers, as well as lesser-known authors such as Menander, Diogenes, Epictetus, and Heraclitus. Although this textbook does not prepare you to read other authors as fluidly as the authors of the texts found in the New Testament, you will be able to approach those texts both with confidence and with an awareness of your abilities, including what help you may need to be successful.

6. This textbook is a steward of sufficiency. This textbook is self-sufficient. Although Greek is learned best with an instructor, this textbook does not require one. This textbook’s self-sufficient character is holistic, from its various lessons and exercises to the answers and explanations provided in the answer key. I wrote it in this way because even if you have a Greek instructor, you do not always have access to them. I desired so greatly for this textbook to be self-sufficient that I asked some of my students with no Greek knowledge to work through it completely (and they did because they believe in this project). Rest assured, when you find yourself alone with this textbook, it is here for you.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this preface. If you decide to use this textbook, please know I worked to honor you and your commitment to learning Greek as much as my heart and mind would allow. Everything I have done here is for you.

Welcome again, and I look forward to teaching you how to think in Greek.

Most sincerely,
Dr. Andrew C. Burrow