New Testament Greek Vocabulary

This is a useful tool for learning vocabulary. The pronunciation is clear, though the recording volume could be a bit higher/louder, I think. It's the best, if not the only, of its kind of thing out there.

I would have liked to have had him give aorist and/or future forms of verbs where the stem differs from the indicative - e.g.: "ERCOMAI - I come, I go; future: ELEUSOMAI; aorist: HLQON". This is the reason I do not give it four or five stars.

My suggestion for a follow-up CD set would include alphabetically reciting verbs with all their principal parts as found in the New Testament, and if he's really adventuresome, reciting the complete verb conjugation paradigms (regular, liquid, contract, MI verbs, etc.) and noun declension paradigms, and maybe even lists of words related by roots.

Still, despite my personal quibbles with this set, I would recommend that any first-year or second-year NT Greek student get it. Having finished my second year a few years ago, I already had most of these words memorized.


Incompetent pronunciation renders it useless   July 22, 2005
 20 out of 32 found this review helpful

With eagerness I was purchasing this 2-CD set. Sets like this one can be very useful for anyone wishing to learn at least some New Testament Greek. Provided that they are not marred by gross incompetence.

The format of the CDs is quite plain: the author reads a vocabulary list aloud where the items are organized according to their frequency in New Testament; a Greek word first, then its meaning. Such lists were compiled long ago and are easily available.

When purchasing this set I was prepared to tolerate a less than perfect pronunciation. I was not prepared, however, for what I had to hear. My disbelief combined with frustration were increasing the more I was listening to the first of the two CDs. Unwillingly, I was discovering that author's pronunciation is INCOMPETENT to the degree rendering it not only totally unacceptable but plain harmful. Here are some points:

1) 'o' is persistently pronounced as 'a' [on the other hand, 'omega' is pronounced 'o'; either you try to emulate Classical pronunciation, when both were pronounced 'o', short and long, respectively, or you opt for the later Hellenistic pronunciation when the difference between long and short vowels gradually disappears, and 'o', and 'omega', are pronounced alike]
2) the author seems to be completely unaware of the existence of 'rough breathing'
3) accenting words is very crude; no attention paid, in particular, to the 'circumflex' accent
4) the author pronounces 'upsilon' as 'oo' which is wrong
5) he often pronounces 'iota' as 'i' in the English word 'bit' which is unacceptable

The above list addresses some problems that can be termed 'consistently wrong' pronunciation. With possible exception of accentuation each one alone is hard to bear. There are other, mildly speaking, infelicities. There are also several instances on the CD of words that are read incorrectly due to what I suspect are just 'accidents'. I am surprised that the author left them as they were instead of stopping the tape and re-recording garbled words.

Ancient Greek had initially several dialects and its pronunciation evolved in time (Koine was a descendant of a single dialect though). Already in the Hellenistic times 'ei', and subsequently also 'eta' were often pronounced as long 'i', the distinction between short and long vowels was disappearing, and so on. Certain aspects of its phonology, like for example the exact nature of accentuation, are not entirely certain.

Today, one can try in pronouncing Ancient Greek words to follow the Classical Attic idiom, or the Hellenistic one (the changes in pronunciation were often reflected in changed spelling).
All of this may be accompanied by better or worse language skills
(in the latter case, of course, one should be discouraged from offering for sale recordings in foreign languages).

Yet there are certain limits on what can be decribed as acceptable pronunciatian. Greek after all is a langauge that is extremely well attested from a very wide geographical area and from nearly all periods of Antiquity. Author's pronunciation does fall outside of the limits of acceptability by a wide margin.

At the beginning of the first CD the author issues the warning to the effect that we "cannot be certain about the actual pronunciation, and that he would be using the North American pronunciation." Yet we can be as certain that his is a WRONG pronunciation as that "North American" was not among the dialects of Ancient Greek. Unles he uses the adjective "North American" as a synonym for "incompetent".

My suspicion is that the author belongs to the breed of people eager to teach others before learning well themselves. [My suspicion seems to be corroborated by the sheer amount of "teaching tools" of his authorship which are offered to the public.] In certain circumstances such an attitude may even be laudable. I encourage it in students taking my classes. It helps them to learn the material. And the eventual "damage" resulting from confusing their fellow students is strictly limited. The current set is bound to cause more harm, however, than good: it will be used primarily by those who are unaware, whose access to authoritative sources of information is limited, who have limited means of discerning real learning tools from the ones that are not but pretend to be.

If you have even an approximate idea about Greek pronunciation
during the Classical, or Hellenistic periods, and if you are at least moderately literate (in Greek), you would do better by reading aloud Metzger's vocabulary list (the same as the one used by the author) and recording it for yourself. An added benefit will be your reading skills improving dramatically as you do it.

If on the other hand, you have no idea, then you should stay away
from this CD set even more. In this case, better not to learn than learn wrong.

In conclusion: very disappointing; instead of helping, doing a gross disservice to mostly unaware potential users. In my opinion, the above mentioned flaws make ths set unusable.

If that was not the case, I would be strongly recommending that the Greek words, and their English equivalents (plus occasional comments) alternate between two different voices, which is a common practice on more professionally produced language tapes. This makes learning-through-listening a great deal more effective, and enjoyable.

The recording is clear and of high sound quality.

My review is a warning against grossly incompetent offerings like this one. Its somber tone does not necessarily contradict endorsements from other customers. They are endorsing "the eminent usefulness of language tools of this type" rather than this particular product, because as they admit they are learners, often at early stages of learning the language, and do not possess necessary qualifications to discern competence of the execution. They have been seriously let down by the publisher of Pennington, Zondervan.


Greek for the Ears   February 19, 2003
 18 out of 20 found this review helpful

As an intermediate Greek student who struggles with remembering vocabulary, I am very grateful to Jonathan Pennington and Zondervan for producing this tool. There are two CD's in this set, which cover all the words in the New Testament that occur 10 times or more. The accompanying booklet lists those words and their definitions in the order in which they are spoken. The purpose of this tool is to help the Greek student learn the vocabulary of the New Testament.

The benefits of having Greek vocabulary in audio format are generally obvious. First, it is portable and the student is able to take it wherever he goes. In fact the Greek student should never be without his vocabulary and this tool helps greatly to that end. Secondly, it involves more of the senses, which helps in the learning process. For those who learn well through audible learning methods this will be invaluable. Thirdly, the booklet makes this all the more useful for the beginner to read along with the pronunciation. As well it further engages another sense as the vocabulary is listened to.

There are a few disadvantages to this tool, which hopefully would be remedied, in a latter edition. First, the glosses, or definitions, are the bare bones. You only receive about one or two options for a definition. One understands the need to do so with this medium, but it leads to the impression that there is not too much flexibility with the definitions when in actuality there are. It may be helpful to beef up the definitions at least a little bit. Secondly, it would have been more helpful if the definitions followed exactly those given in either Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek or Trenchard's Complete Vocabulary Guide. There is some inconsistency here which if fixed would make this set all the more useful. Lastly, the individual tracks should have been further broken down into approximately 15-20 words instead of 30-40 words. Shorter tracks would allow for quicker repetition and therefore easier memorization.

Overall this is an extremely helpful tool that every beginning and intermediate Greek student should utilize. I only wish I discovered it earlier.


I agree with incompetent pronunciation   March 13, 2006
 12 out of 20 found this review helpful

I was excited to find this cd online and I ordered it in haste. I found this passage in Moulton's Prologomena. "To this we may add that by the time [codex Aleph] and [codex Beta] were written [omicron] and [omega] were no longer distinct in pronunciation[.]...It is indeed quite possible that the Apostle's own pronunciation did not distinguish [omicron] and [omega][.]" Pennington begins the first cd with the caveat "North-American pronunciation" but that is no excuse to make the omicron indistinguishable from the alpha. pennington, instead of pronouncing the Greek for word, logos, he says lagas. This error is repeated not just a few times but everytime omicron occurs. also instead of pronouncing the vowel sound iota, "ee", he says "i" as in bit. And he doesn't turn iota into a consonant when it is the first letter in a word, instead he treats it like a diphthong. This means that he pronounces Ioannas, i-oannas. I guess this kind of vowel pronunciation is acceptable in "North-America" but I would have to disagree with the whole north-american pronunciation thing altogether and say that rather it is baptist preacher pronunciation (my grandfather was a baptist preacher). The Greek New Testament is a collection of writings and epistles that were meant to be read aloud in the tradition of the Apostles going from town to town telling orally the sayings and deeds of Christ. Even though this is only my first year of Greek, I think that Pennington should be more concerned with proper pronunciation.


Growing Consensus For Change   December 23, 2006
 10 out of 10 found this review helpful

There is a growing consensus for change in the field of biblical Greek vocabulary pronunciation. No one mentions that this product uses the Erasmian pronunciation. That method is not what biblical Greek era speakers spoke (no one knows what that sounds like)...and it sounds really funny to modern Greek speakers (I have seen eminent American scholars speak with this method in the hearing of modern Greeks who cringe when they hear it).

Of course this is not a problem if you only talk to English speaking bible students who talk about Greek with this pronunciation method. BUT-if you want to travel to Greece, or if you know any Greeks who speak modern Greek, you may find it interesting to know that the vocabulary of the Biblical Greek NT has about a 70% overlap with the vocabulary of Modern Greek version of the NT. (Based on my quick highlighting of the differences between the two version in my BW 7.0 recently).

Because there is a difference of opinion out there on which method is best to use, software products like BibleWorks 7.0 offer both the Erasmian AND the Modern Greek pronunciation.

In addition, a Greek scholar, named Spiros Zhodiates, has produced a NT recording using modern Greek pronunciation (done slowly) so that you can listen to a chapter of that with your Greek NT open and learn how modern Greeks read the Biblical Greek. With his product I like to hold my Greek NT in front of me and follow along as he reads it out loud.

I think some Greek teachers are completely unaware of these things and only consider the Erasmian method. But if you are an evangelical who is studying the bible in Greek because you want to spread the gospel to the world...then I appeal to you to consider building some pronunciation skill in Modern Greek while you are studying the Biblical Greek text.
So for the money, I would recommend you buy Spiros Zhodiates Greek NT recording on CD using the Modern Greek rather than this product.

If you never plan to interact with Greek speaking people...THEN Pennington's work is a five star work worthy of spending your time and money on. So because of that I give this a five star.

I hope this has added something to the well written reviews on this product that was not in the mix for you and that this has helped you see more options before you spend your money!