Koine Greek Language Study

This page presents tips and techniques for using Koine Greek of the Bible. Information here distills knowledge and wisdom gleaned from years of usage and studying books, user forums, help files, videos, etc. All text here is in one large file for quick search through all topics, offered without charge and without generalizations and sales hype.

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What's The Big Deal?

I've heard that Alexander The Great invented the koine Greek language so that all the lands he conquered would speak a common language.

Greek incorporates a complete grammar to enable precise expression.

Ionic Greek Symbols

Unlike the Hindu place-notation number system commonly used today (with 1,2,3 etc. and especially zero which allow numbers to easily grow without limit), each Classical Greek alphabet (invented around 850BC) has a corresponding value in Greek mathematics. An example is the "Mark of the beast" passage in Revelation 13:16-18.
cxϛ (chi xi stigma)
600 + 60 + 6 = 666

Alternately:

ciϛ (chi iota stigma)
600 + 10 + 6 = 616

Convert UTF-8 characters into Greek and back again

The Greek Alphabet

Numeric value	Name	English sound	Unicode			Symbol Uncial (Upper)	Symbol Miniscule (Lower)	Symbol Keystroke
1	alpha	a	Α	α	Ά ά	A	a	A, a
2	beta	b	Β	β		B	b	B, b
3	gamma	g	Γ	γ		G	g	G, g
4	delta	d	Δ	δ		D	d	D, d
5	epsilon	e	Ε	ε	Έ έ	E	e	E, e
6	stigma		Ϛ	ϛ				-
	digamma		Ϝ	ϝ				-
7	zeta	z	Ζ	ζ		Z	z	Z, z
8	eta	h	Η	η	Ή ή	H	h	H, h
9	theta	th	Θ	θ		Q	q	Q, q
10	iota	i	Ι	ι	Ί Ϊ ί ϊ	I	i	I, i
20	kappa	k	Κ	κ		K	k	K, k
30	lamda	l	Λ	λ		L	l	L, l
40	mu	m	Μ	μ		M	m	M, m
50	nu	n	Ν	ν		N	n	N, n
60	xi	x	Ξ	ξ		X	x	X, x
70	omicron	o	Ο	ο	Ό ό	O	o	O, o
80	pi	p	Π	π		P	p	P, p
90	koppa		Ϙ	ϙ				-
100	rho/pho	r	Ρ	ρ		R	r	R, r
200	sigma	s	Σ	ς σ		S	V s	S, s, V
300	tao	t	Τ	τ		T	t	T, t
400	upsilon	u	Υ	υ	Ύ ύ ϋ	U	u	U, u
500	phi	ph	Φ	φ		F	f	F, f
600	chi	ch	Χ	χ		C	c	C, c
700	psi	ps	Ψ	ψ		Y	y	Y, y
800	omega	o	Ω	ω	Ώ ώ	W	w	W, w
900	sampi		Ϡ	ϡ				-

Vowels are shaded grey.

Modern Greek characters under the symbol column are rendered by default on Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers. But Mozilla/Firefox browsers do not enable the Symbol font by default, so only English characters appear. But this can be fixed this by downloading and installing Wfontfix.exe. This changes the fontEncoding.properties file in default directory \Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\res\fonts\ from

encoding.symbol.ttf = Adobe-Symbol-Encoding
to
encoding.symbol.ttf = windows-1252

Archaic letters stigma, koppa, etc. appear as a box or ? unless you have copied into your machine's Windows\Fonts folder a Unicode font such as the Aristarcoj2.ttf True Type Font file which displays the Greek and Coptic font set (using keystrokes suggested by Chuo-Han Lee) such as the Greek anagram Ichthys (ICQUS):

Greek (<em lang="gr")		English
IhsouV		Jesus
CristoV	Christos	Christ
Qeou	Theos	God's
UioV		Son
Soter	Soter	Savior


Ichthus.svg‎ (SVG file, nominally 200 × 100 pixels, file size: 516 B)

This Symbol Keystroke matches the keyboard used by the
Teknia Greek font which came out of the Standard Mapping Initiative for Greek.

Greek Language Resources

• Learn Modern and Ancient Greek Online from 105 real audio files (around 15 minutes each), online student notes, collaborative learning tools, plus an online greek dictionary and a greek spell checker.
• Elementary Greek
• Translations by Drupal.org
• Jonathan Robie's Little Greek lists study tools. His Little Greek 101 is a tutorial in Koine Greek used by the New Testament.
• Bill Mounce helps people learn his book, Basics of Biblical Greek, with audio tapes and fonts for PC's & Macs
• The New Testament Greek Lexicon
• Greek font SIL Galatia
• Greek pronounciation
• Ancient Greek tutorials
• Greek Word Search
• Greek Word Frequency Counter
• Liddell-Scott-Jones Classical Greek Lexicon
• Greek Word Morphological Analysis
• The GRAMCORD Institute
• B-GREEK Archive: Scholarly discussions of Biblical/Koine Greek