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Reading the Greek with GRAMCORD Lite

Reading and studying the Greek New Testament can be both enlightening and encouraging to our faith. In this article, let's look at how GRAMCORD Lite, an all-in-one tool that includes the latest UBS Greek text with dictionary and parsing information, can be used to uncover riches in the original text of the New Testament.

New Testament Greek

When Alexander the Great conquered in a mere ten years most of the known world of his day, he surely understood very little, if anything, of the divine plan behind his accomplishments. The result of Alexander's conquests was a new kind of world culture, Hellenism, in which Koiné, or common Greek, became the universal language of commerce. It was a simplified form of its predecessor, the classical language of Sophocles and Plato, but it retained the capacity for fine distinctions of thought so characteristic of the classical thinkers.

It was in this language that God chose to render the story of a far greater Conqueror, the meek Nazarene carpenter Jesus. His story, written in Koine and circulated to the nations by an unlikely band of followers, which included poor fishermen, a tax collector, a physician, and one converted rabbi, would transform the earth in ways Alexander never dreamed of, and it would become the most widely read book of all time. The New Testament writers tell the story of the Son of God: His birth, His youth, His ministry of healing and compassion, the wisdom with which He silenced God's adversaries, His moment by moment obedience to His heavenly Father, and His willing submission to the cross as the Lamb of God to die for our redemption. Wonderfully, the story continues beyond the grave to the glory of His resurrection from the dead and His pouring out of Himself as the Spirit of Life, thereby producing a new man on the earth, His Body the Church, filled with Christ her beloved Lord. There is no other story like this one. Under the sovereign hand of God, a language was prepared through which this good news could be told and spread to other lands, and we have the privilege of being able to learn the language of the original: New Testament (or Koiné) Greek.

The Value of Reading Greek

It is not hard to see the value of being able to read the New Testament in its original language. Since every word of Scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim.3:16), it makes perfect sense for anyone who wants to know what God has said to labor on the language in which His chosen apostles wrote. We all know that different languages represent different ways of perceiving and expressing reality. Greek is no exception. It has ways of articulating thought and meaning that are unique to itself, and, therefore, difficult to translate or even to describe in another language. Of course, the point of reading and studying Scripture is not merely to acquire mere knowledge. The Jews of old searched the Scriptures, but they failed to recognize their Messiah when He stood before them (John 5:39-40). When Jesus said, "Come to Me that you may have life," He meant that He Himself is that life, eternal life (John 14:6; 1 John 5:12-13). It is said that evangelist George Whitefield spent time on his knees daily reading and praying over his Greek New Testament. He was coming to the One who said, "Come unto Me? and I will give you rest" (Matt.11:28). This has to be the wisest, most profitable way to handle one's Greek New Testament, as Whitefield's fruitful life demonstrates.

Some Advantages of Using GRAMCORD Lite

For users of handheld computers who read and study the New Testament in Greek, to have a tool like GRAMCORD Lite is a great benefit. Produced by the Gramcord Institute, GRAMCORD Lite uses the Nestle-Aland (NA27) Greek text, the product of decades of scholarship, regarded by most scholars as the best, most accurate rendering of the New Testament text.

GRAMCORD also includes parsing information prepared by the GRAMCORD institute. As you may know, this refers to grammatical descriptors given for each word, so that readers can understand its function in context. A noun, for example, may be identified as feminine, singular, and nominative because nouns have the three features of gender, number, and case. A verb might be identified as third person, singular, aorist, active, indicative because verbs have five features: person, number, tense, voice, and mood.

Although we don't have space here to define them, terms like these are the nuts and bolts of Greek grammar that students learn when they take a class in New Testament Greek. The ability to identify the grammatical features of a word helps readers put together the puzzle pieces of Greek sentences and understand the meaning. To the casual reader, this may sound difficult, but as Greek students know, you get used to it.

In addition to the text and parsing information, GRAMCORD includes the United Bible Society's Greek/English Dictionary. The UBS Dictionary opens to the entry for any Greek word you tap with your stylus, telling you its definition, followed by the parsing information.

Color-Coding as an Aide to Translation

The developers of GRAMCORD have used a color scheme to identify parts of speech. They chose to keep it simple: nouns are red, verbs are black, and all other words are green. This simple scheme makes it easy to recognize noun-verb combinations, which is often the key to quickly identifying the structure of sentences. Since other parts of speech (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) generally modify, connect, or substitute for nouns or verbs, the division of the words by color into three groups is logical and useful. Verbs tend to drive the message of the sentence. Look for the words in black because all the rest hang on them. Nouns identify the substance of what is being said. Look for the words in red because they tell who or what the sentence is about. In this ingeniously simple way, GRAMCORD facilitates translation as you read Greek.

An Example of Using GRAMCORD to Interpret the Greek Text

GRAMCORD's color scheme has the potential to call readers' attention to something they might otherwise miss. Looking at the Greek for John 1:1-4, for example, one sees that the first four verbs (shown in black) are ην , the next three are forms of γινομαι, and the next two (in verse 4) are ην again.

Ην, the imperfect tense of ειμι, means was, but the durative nature of the imperfect is better expressed by the words was existing because the action is viewed as going on continuously, or over a period of time. Thus, we might paraphrase John 1:1-2 this way: "In the beginning, before anything existed but God, the Word was already there, and the Word was in a continuous state of being face to face with God, and the Word was and always had been God. That aforementioned Word was existing in the beginning with God, face to face." By using the verb ην (was existing) four times in two short verses, John strongly underscores the eternal pre-existence, divine nature, and co-equality of God and the Word, who was with God and who was God from all eternity.

Then comes verse three, where the verb changes to γινομαι, which means to be in the sense of to become or come to be. Again, let's attempt to translate: "All things came into being through Him (the Word), and apart from Him, not even one thing came into being which has come into being." How impressive is the verb structure in these verses! First the eternal pre-existence of the Word (Greek, λογος) is unveiled, then the coming into being of all things by means of His agency as Creator, expressed in the aorist and perfect tenses. The aorist indicates past action viewed as happening at a point in time. The perfect tense indicates completed or perfected action that has happened already, the effect of which continues to the present. With the Word in the beginning, time (past, present, or future) did not yet exist. With the coming into being of all things, however, time is now expressible in its nuances of meaning.

In verse four the verb changes to ην again, which appears two times. "In Him life was existing, and that very life was, continuously, repeatedly, the light of men." The word life here refers to God's life, even to God Himself as uncreated, eternal life. Such a life is and always was in the One who is referred to here as the Logos.

In this passage, then, is a contrast between what is eternal, uncreated, ever-existing, outside of time, and what came into being through Him in time. Christ, the Logos or Word, was in the beginning with God, outside time. The verb tense is imperfect because His existence is without beginning and continuous. Creation, however, had a beginning, and the coming into being of all things through Christ is expressed with tenses that show this. Reading this portion, we are left with an impression of the importance of Christ in the Father's heart and in the universe, a universe that came into being through Christ. Not one thing that has come into being has its existence apart from Him.

Simple but Profound

Because it simply presents the New Testament in its original language, with words parsed, defined, and color-coded for ease of reading and interpretation, GRAMCORD Lite is a useful, helpful tool. Wisely, the developers of this software product chose to limit its scope, providing sufficient information to facilitate the reading of the Greek New Testament, but not so much as to distract readers from the text itself. This allows the word of God in the original Koiné to speak for itself.

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