Back in January, Penny Pullan, one of our Licensed Lay Ministers, offered to share some of things she has been learning as part of her studies. Penny has really enjoyed learning New Testament Greek as part of her MA and invited others to join her in that discovery, opening up the bible in one of the languages it was first written in.

Penny writes: "Twelve of us set out on the Baby Steps to New Testament Greek course in January. Together, since then, we have learned a different alphabet, the letter names and how they sounded, allowing us to be able to read the New Testament as originally written! At first we didn't understand anything, but we soon got used to common words ('and' was the first one), adding in nouns, verbs, pronouns and more. Did you know that there are 24 forms of 'the' in Greek? 

The climax of the four weeks was when we each chose a favourite verse and translated it using online resources. We found it incredible how much extra nuance is there in the original that is lost on translation to English. In this, All Saint's year of focusing on the Bible, we've enjoyed diving into the New Testament a bit deeper and in a new way, and encourage others to do so too. There have never been so many tools available to help you to do so, at little or no cost. Here are some of the ones we used:

• An interlinear bible, which shows both Greek and English, along with pronunciation and grammar, here showing John’s Gospel
• ‘Daily dose of Greek’ videos explaining each verse in John (and many other books)
• A full introductory New Testament Greek book, shared for free online
  

And just to show it can be fun see below for an easy song to help you remember the Greek Alphabet!"

If you would be interested in further short courses exploring basic New Testament Greek or being introduced to some of the resources that are freely available, please get in touch with Penny.