PREFACE
This plan is designed for reading the Greek New Testament once per year. A minimum of first year Greek and vocabulary from a text such as Bill Mounce or Dave Black is needed in order to be able to follow, and it doesn’t hurt either to be an over-achiever in year one. Through this simple reading plan, your ability to read the Greek New Testament will increase dramatically. If your Greek is rusty, this will help you recover and sharpen your skills. You must be consistent and disciplined though in order to make positive strides and see lasting results. With a little each day you can accomplish much.
READING PROGRAM
There are 260 chapters in the Greek New Testament. Of these, 74 chapters have 38 verses or more: Matt 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 21-27; Mark 1, 4-6, 8-10, 12, 14, 15; Luke 1-12, 18-24; John 1, 4-13, 18, 19; Acts 2, 5, 7-10, 13, 15, 16, 19-21, 27; Rom 8; 1 Cor 7, 14, 15; Heb 10, 11. To read the Greek New Testament in a year, read one chapter per day. Chapters that are 38 verses or longer should be divided and read over two days, splitting the chapters up according to a paragraph break around the middle. This plan yields a total of 334 (260 + 74) daily readings. It also allows you to take 31 days off each year; more on that later. Thank you to Lee Irons for making this possible.
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition –This GNT is geared for reading large portions of the NT at one sitting. As such, it provides simple context glosses for all words occurring 30x or less, while also parsing the rare forms. Using this GNT will enable you to expand and stretch your vocabulary, while providing a more enjoyable reading experience as you will not have to “live” in the lexicon.
The New Exegetical & Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament – This book provides concise explanations of grammatical features that may not be immediately obvious to the reader. Occasionally it will refer to other works such as Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, BDAG, and others. This work is very accessible to those who have first year grammar and keep up with it.