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London Jesuit Centre
Online Course Details
To join the meeting please click on the arrow below or copy and paste this link into the browser: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88274015463?pwd=Z3FucFF1aW13cnN1dEZQdmZSYnhZQT09 Meeting ID: 882 7401 5463 Passcode: 633697
Texts can come alive for us in new ways when we are able to look at them in the language in which they were written. The New Testament, written in varieties of post-classical Greek, is no exception. The aim of this year-long course is to give a basic grounding in the language of the New Testament, sufficient to begin reading the text independently.
We hope this will be a support to those studying New Testament at LJC and elsewhere, opening up new insights into the layers of meaning to be found in these remarkable writings.
We shall be using John H. Dobson’s Learn New Testament Greek (3rd Revised Edition, 2012) as a course-book and you will need to purchase your own copy, so that you can do the exercises.
If you have long-term intentions of working on the language you may want to invest in a simple New Testament dictionary. Language learning is immensely rewarding. However, for all but a lucky few it is also demanding. We shall meet twice a week, because frequency and regularity are very helpful for developing long-term memory.
The pace of the lessons will be adapted to the needs of the group. However, we shall aim to cover roughly 10 lessons over each five-week period.
If it is not possible to make every session, you are asked to make sure that you work through the course material for that session and do the prescribed exercises for yourself.
Thank you for signing up for New Testament Greek. I hope we will be able to have an enjoyable and productive time working together. The course we shall be following is John H. Dobson’s Learn New Testament Greek (available in paperback). Learn New Testament Greek By John H. Dobson | Used | 9781903689288 | World of Books (wob.com). You will need to have your own copy to follow the lessons and the exercises.
I will be giving you exercises to work on session by session. But before we meet for the first time on the 27 September, may I ask you to try to work through lessons 1-2 on your own? The most useful thing we can do before we begin is to familiarise ourselves with the (ancient) Greek alphabet and its sounds. Please take time to practise the sounds, using the guidance in the book. What is also very helpful is to practise writing the alphabet – practise just writing each letter individually 10-20 times and saying the corresponding sound to yourself each time you write it. Don’t worry about perfection – it’s enough to have made a start!
John Moffatt SJ works at the London Jesuit Centre. His first degree was in Classics. He taught in London secondary schools intermittently between 1985 and 2016 and has worked briefly in University Chaplaincy. He has been involved with teenage and adult faith education in Britain and South Africa and has recently completed a doctorate in medieval Islamic philosophy.
