Readings in the Greek New Testament

By: Jonathan T. Pennington

Narrated by: Jonathan T. Pennington, Jonathan Pennington

Master biblical Greek in its spoken context. Jonathan T. Pennington’s New Testament Greek Vocabulary has helped thousands of Greek students build a strong working vocabulary. Now Readings in the Greek New Testament helps you develop fluency in biblical Greek as a spoken language. The vocabulary and grammar will become second nature as you listen to Greek in its working context, articulated with clarity and inflection. Insert one of these CDs into your home system, car player, or portable unit, and “down” time becomes learning time—with an audio edge. Jonathan Pennington reads select passages from the Greek New Testament, including the Sermon on the Mount, the entire book of 1 John, and all the passages included in William Mounce’s A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek. Your command of the language will improve significantly as you supplement your studies with these audio readings.

A great resource!

This audiobook is a great way to master (or, in my case, to brush up on) Koine Greek. The ability to listen to the Ancient Greek is such s benefit!This reading follows the Erasmian/ reconstructed pronunciation of Ancient Greek, non- native speakers who prefer the another pronunciation scheme will still be able to understand either the modern pronunciation or the living koine pronunciation even if they start with this, which is the standard pronunciation of Ancient Greek which is taught at universities. I have been listening to this constantly as I drive, and with each new hearing I understand more. I am also going through the Trenchards Complete Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament , which is very helpful in understanding this recording. I am only up to the point of understanding words that occur about 20 times or more, and I can understand a fair amount (basically all of 1st John much of the other texts). The texts were well chosen in that they are important and interesting texts, but they can also be understood reasonably well even with only my minimal grasp of Ancient Greek. My only criticism is that he often pronounced omicrons is a way that is indistinguishable from an alpha. Others have complained about this sort pronunciation ambiguity and blamed it on an American accent. Perhaps this is the reason, but as an American, I usually force myself to enunciate distinctly between the two. Regardless, this small problem is easily resolved by reading along with the text a couple of times while listening. All in all a very helpful resource!😀

Wonderful help for students

This reading is clear and easy to follow, provided you can read elementary Greek. For the student it is very helpful to read along in a printed Greek New Testament as they listen. This helps bridge from learning a language to actually reading a language. I regret that this version does not allow one to skip to the next track (chapter) of the reading. However, it remains an invaluable tool.

needs table of contents

This recording would be much more useful if there were a downloadable listing of the texts and their locations in the recording. The only way currently available is to listen through texts you don't want to hear until you find the one you want and bookmark it. Very frustrating!

This recording uses the Erasmian pronunciation used by scholars and seminaries. It certainly doesn't sound like someone reading their native language. On the other hand, its clarity is very helpful to the new student who is struggling with the alphabet and pronunciation of the New Testament. Another review criticized the pronunciation because it differs from modern Greek; certainly that's true, but it's not necessarily a drawback, depending on what you want it for.