Greek Self-Study Materials
LIVING
KOINE GREEK for EVERYONE
Part 1 with 3 audio CDs
(Jerusalem: Biblical Language Center, 2002. ISBN: 965-7352-02-9)
This is a unique introduction to Koine Greek. It is suitable for children, at least from as early an age as they are able to understand why they might want to learn Greek. It is equally suitable for adults of any age. It is doubly efficient in language learning and re-teaches adults what it means to learn a language and to think in a language. The methodology is based on listening comprehension approaches to language learning and has been successfully developed and applied to many modern languages by Harris Winitz.
Why is this described as a Greek experience? Because a student enters a world of Koine Greek and begins to interact with the language directly, without the mediation of a second language. Through this process, the new language actually gets 'wired' into the brain in a different way than through another language. And it is fun.
Living Koine Greek comes with one book and three audio CDs. The book includes 1000 pictures without captions. It also includes a 'discovery' introduction to the alphabet and then written transcripts of all the audio material and some grammar summaries so that writing, spelling and grammar are included. They build on a basis of listening comprehension.
For a mini-demo of the system, see "Greek Demo Lesson"
The price for
Living Koine Greek for Everyone is $79 plus airmail shipping;
Add $15 for airmail and shipping.
To Purchase: You may use our on-line ordering through PayPal at this link. Alternatively, checks (personal checks are acceptable) in US$ from a US bank, or Euro equivalent from a European bank, should be made payable to Biblical Language Center and sent to:
Dr. Randall Buth
Biblical Ulpan
POB 82340
90805 Mevasseret Zion
ISRAEL
(Please send a confirming email to: info@biblicalulpan.org Air Mail typically arrives in a week, but may take up to four weeks.)
A revised and re-recorded edition of the Living Koine Greek, Part 2 is underway. It will include at least 11 audio CD's focusing on readings from gospel parables, Aesop's fables, and papyri letters, plus 1 John and the Didache. Conversations are provided in each lesson for a student to memorize. These are followed with substitution drills, grammar notes, and annotated readings.
Note to Biblical Language Center customers of Part One: when Part Two becomes available, you will be eligible for any savings in the set of Part One and Two. You will be able to order Part Two as the difference of the set price and your Part One price.
Epictetus, Two Conversations: “Against the Academics” and “On Familial Love”,
Greek-English Diglot, with one audio CD. ISBN 965-7352-07X.
Jerusalem: Biblical Language Center, 2006.
Annotated and recorded by
Randall Buth
The CD includes the two dialogues recorded with two voices, plus a reading of Paul’s speech on Mar’s Hill (Acts 17:16-34), the NT letter of James, and the song of Seikilos.
This is an opportunity to listen to extended readings of ancient Greek with a Koine pronunciation. By listening to these readings, a student may start to appreciate ancient Greek in a live communication setting. What was it like to listen to a speech of Paul, or to a Stoic philosopher in a classroom? Students may also test their internalization of the language by seeing how well they follow the readings on the CD.
Students who have completed a first-year course in Greek will want to work through this booklet and to listen to this CD repeatedly. Two dialogues of Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher from the frist century, are presented with facing pages of Greek and English, along with footnotes for any Greek word that occurs less than ten times in the Greek New Testament. A brief introduction is provided for Epictetos and the Seikilos song. A written pronuncation key is provided, along with notes on the vowels. Parsing and grammar terms are given in Greek with an appendix listing and explaining the terminology in English. The texts of Acts 17:16-34 and the letter of James are read on the CD but are not presented in the booklet in order to reduce size and costs. Greek texts of the NT and translations are readily available to students. Students may profitably listen to these texts 50 to 100 times in order to get the material ‘inside’.
"Just what serious students of NT Greek need: a real confrontation with contemporary Hellenistic discourse that's meaningful and comparable to NT parenetic texts, accompanied by helps that force thinking about Greek in Greek terminology and listening to Greek the way it really sounded."
Carl Conrad, Associate Professor of Classics Emeritus
Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
"As a linguist I appreciate the skillful and reasonable reconstruction of the ancient sounds and the accuracy and clarity of these readings. The smoothness encourages repeated listenings. I cannot recommend this approach highly enough for students of first-century Greek."
Chet Creider, Professor and Co-Director, Linguistics Program,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
Price: $15 + $5 registered airmail shipping. You can order it from our online store.
Please allow one to three weeks delivery from Israel
When a person wants to use "living language" methods to learn a language, one is required to make some choices about what kind of pronunciation system to use. As long as students only need to write Greek or to look at Greek on a printed page, the pronunciation system is not a very important issue. The problem, of course, is that such an approach to language learning almost guarantees that the learner will never develop any kind of fluency or ability to think with the language and in the language. As soon as students set their sights on a higher goal and want to include language learning methodologies that will lead to a fluent control of the language, they must come to grips with the need to include audio and oral material in a program. And audio material for an ancient language means that decisions must be made about the kind of pronunciation system to be used ....
Click
here to read the entire paper: 
(To all students: while these notes may be of general background interest, they are of a technical nature that may be of more use to graduate students and teachers. A PDF download is available below. For a sample reading of 1John1 with this pronunciation: new Greek MP3 download )