If you are serious about learning something of the Greek Language for the purpose of attaining a better understanding of the New Testament, then I believe that the resources offered here will be of value to you. Still, there are some basic things that you should know before downloading.
There are two books on the New Testament Greek Language that I have scanned at high quality (600dpi, that is 600 dots-per-inch of the original text) and converted into .pdf format. They were both written by Samuel Gosnell Green and published before 1923. That is important, because it means that their copyright has expired, and they are in the public domain in the United States. Hence, I can offer them to you for free.
[If you are outside of the United States, PLEASE check your own national copyright law. Copyright law varies from nation to nation, so do not make assumptions – when in doubt, check it out.]
Because the images are of high quality, the file size of these books is rather large – but I feel it is a worthy cause to preserve quality as much as is reasonably possible in order to make the books most useful.
The shorter of the books is about 30 MB, and the larger volume is split into three pieces, weighing in at 10MB for the Introduction, 94MB for the Main Text, and 64 MB for the Greek Vocabulary and Indexes.
In terms of pages, the smaller book is 176 pages, and the larger is over 600 pages total. I'll leave the choice of printing it all out up to you. :-)
Having spent some serious time studying in his book on Hebrew, I will say that Samuel G. Green has left us some good language study tools – they are worth the time investment that they require. That said, they do require quite an investment of time as they carry with them a sharp learning curve. Each lesson builds upon the knowledge acquired in the previous and frequent review is not only helpful but necessary.
The smaller of the books on Greek contains an answer key – a luxury that Green's larger works do not afford their users, as they were originally intended to be used in a setting with a knowledgeable language teacher on hand. I had considered attempting to develop answer keys for the larger works, but alas that would be a case of “the blind leading the blind”. My advice to you is that if you know anyone who has a knowledge of the language that you are trying to learn, take advantage of their knowledge. If you (like most people) can not think of anyone off hand, I would advise you to at least download a portion of an audio bible in the language which you are trying to learn, so you can get a sense of how it sounds.
It is my hope that these books will be useful to you in discovering the Greek language of the New Testament. Even as early Christians saw in Christ the wisdom of God, and so applied the attributes of Personified Wisdom from Hebrew sapiential literature to the person of Jesus in their hymns, it is my hope that as you grow in wisdom and knowledge, you will find therein a closer relationship to the one who originally embodied the goal of education and started it all – Jesus Christ.
The promise of wisdom is the promise of Christ: “For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord.” (Proverbs 8:35)
