New to Greek... help

What kind of help do you need?   That would be a good starting point for people to offer help and advice. 

Mathew - Artscreativity - Percy said:

im totally new to Greek... please help in any way you can... 

You can honestly say "It's all Greek to me" and this may be the last time. Once you start learning it, that joke doesn't work anymore. [:)]

The first thing to do is learn the alphabet, so you can read and pronounce the words and look things up in lexicons. The first chapter in any Beginning Greek Grammar book will probably help you with that. I don't know which one to recommend for a complete newbie. Just steer away from the "Intermediate" ones. If it's got Basic(s) or Introduction or Begin(nig/ner) in the title it's probably good. Also, you probably want something published in this century, so that rules out a few. I know the one by Mounce is the one they used at my seminary (though I only took Hebrew, never Greek). Here are some that have the alphabet introduced:

• Fundamentals of New Testament Greek (Porter, Reed & O'Donnell) - goes into a lot of detail on spelling/morphology, perhaps more than you need as a total newbie
• Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar (Mounce) - the standard textbook in many seminaries; looks pretty good, gets mostly 4- and 5-star ratings; you can save money by getting the 3rd edition, though the 4th is current (here's a list of the differences between the 3rd and 4th editions); there's an accompanying video class
• An Introduction to Biblical Greek: A Grammar with Exercises (Schwandt) - looks good for a rank beginner who doesn't need to become thoroughly proficient in the language, although one reviewer gave it only 3 stars, noting that it lacks an answer key
• A Primer of Biblical Greek (Croy) - also looks good for beginners, gets three 5-star ratings; one reviewer notes that it doesn't have an answer key, but someone commenting on the lack of such on "An Introduction to Biblical Greek: A Grammar with Exercises" said that the answer key to this one is readily available online. One reviewer noted, "This is the best 1st Year Greek Grammar I have ever seen. Mounce is good but a new student can get way bogged down in his discussions on morphology, and the history behind how certain forms took shape." This would be the one I'd go for based on all of the above info.
• Learning the Basics of New Testament Greek (Hadjiantoniou) - by a native Greek; it is 2 volumes: the grammar book and the workbook
• Learn to Read New Testament Greek (Black) - average 4-star rating

But you might want to bypass all of those and go for:

• Greek for the Rest of Us: The Essentials of Biblical Greek, 2nd ed. (Mounce) - subtitle of the 1st edition was "Using Greek Tools without Mastering Biblical Languages"; it has a companion website

Learning some of the tools in Logos that help you with Greek would be a next step. There used to be a video series "Learn to Use Biblical Greek and Hebrew with Logos" which unfortunately is not sold anymore, because it was made to work with older versions of the software. But it would have been ideal. However, there are still some things you can do:

• Bible Word Study (Greek) - official training video on how to use that feature of Logos.

Other helpful links:

• Learn Biblical Greek - some tips from the users who edited the Logos wiki
• Learn Biblical Greek - resources put together by the folks at Faithlife; includes a free downloadable guide "Complete Beginner's Guide to Biblical Greek"
• Daily Dose of Greek - videos to learn Greek from scratch, keyed to Black's Learn to Read New Testament Greek
• Greek Tools for Bible Study - Mounce's free video class aimed at laypeople
• Bible Study Greek - another free class by Mounce aimed at laypeople (may be just a different version of the above, I don't know)
• Resources for Learning New Testament Greek