Many students wonder how to stay in their Greek New Testament consistently after finishing their Greek courses. Of course some upper level courses will utilize Greek or require translation, especially if you take a Greek elective. You will also need ways to keep up with your vocab and you will need to create a plan to read through books of the Bible. But, there is no better way to consistently enter the Greek New Testament than to integrate it into your daily devotional reading.
This of course presupposes that you are reading Scripture devotionally on a daily basis. It’s difficult to keep up with reading Scripture daily when our schools tend to give the impression that secondary literature is more important. Indeed, the ratio of primary to secondary source required readings in most universities and seminaries is probably somewhere around 1:100. That is, for every hour you are required to read a portion of Scripture, you are required read 100 hours of secondary literature.
The one exception is elective book studies, such as a class on Matthew, in which you may spend a large amount of time reading Matthew, but most of the required readings would still likely be secondary literature on Matthew. So you must fight hard to keep yourself in the primary source of Scripture on a consistent, daily basis, and the more you can do in the original languages the more familiar you will be with the New Testament.
So you should be reading daily from the NT, and you should not let your program derail you. There are of course many reading plans out there, but how much Greek you integrate will depend on your plan. Do you read half a chapter each day from the NT? Read it all in Greek. Do you read a full chapter? Depending on your proficiency, you may want to read the entire chapter in Greek, or you may want to read half the chapter in Greek and the other in English. Are you really rusty? Then read three verses in Greek and then switch to English.
The goal is not to master an entire chapter in ten minutes, and the goal is definitely not to wear yourself out during your devotional reading trying to practice your languages. Do as much as you’re able without getting exhausted, and then switch to English. You can re-read the verses in English to make sure your translation was correct.
Perhaps you’re not convinced that you should do this. Maybe you think devotional practices and academic practices should be kept distinct, so as not to spoil each other (or at least so as not to let the academic spoil the devotional).
But many notable scholars with vibrant lives of faith have striven to integrate their spiritual and academic practices. B. B. Warfield has a little essay entitled The Religious Life of Theological Students on the importance of bringing faithful understanding of Scripture to your devotional practices.
D. A. Carson has advised similarly to integrate Greek into devotional reading in order to bring your education to bear on interpreting Scripture more accurately.
Tom Schreiner has advised to spend five minutes a day five days a week to keep up your languages. He doesn’t say explicitly that he does this during his devotional studies, but as a full time professor and pastor I assume he treats that reading time in a way that fuses his academic, devotional, and pastoral life.
When N. T. Wright described in an interview his approach to studying the Bible, he responded that he spends time early in the morning in Greek and Hebrew reading through various portions of Scripture. About this practice, he added, “I don’t know whether that’s study or prayer; it’s both, and I don’t want it to be the one and not the other.”
Allowing your academic and devotional life to fuse together is admittedly difficult, as one will often taint the other or skew a proper perspective, and it’s a lifelong pursuit, but it’s one worth undertaking. If you are trying to keep up with multiple languages, either do a small amount of time every day in each language, or do what William Carey did in India when he was trying to learn the local languages and dialects: choose a different day of the week to practice different languages. Practice Greek on Monday, Hebrew on Tuesday, Aramaic on Wednesday, back to Greek on Thursday, and so forth (adjust for the amount of languages you know, of course).
Fusing your academic and devotional life is difficult, but it's a worthy pursuit Click To TweetLastly, if you want to spend even more time each day in Greek than just your devotional time, or if you are really motivated to increase your devotional reading and do it all in Greek, you can try Daniel Wallace’s schedule to read through the Greek NT in a year (or even in a month!).
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