Greek to Me

I found a fun text on learning Koine greek at the library today called Greek to Me, by J. Lyle Story and Peter Allen Miller.  I've only just started into this, but what's fun about this guide to learning Greek is that it's built largely around learning by visual representations.
For instance, a term like e-gei-row, that means "I raise up."   By using somewhat silly visual representations you can build these into the memory.  This is ideal for me as a visually-based learner.  The text is pretty easy for a beginner to follow, and the cartoons are cute as well.

John 6:44

Some research I did into the use of the word "draw" found in John 6:44 - "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day."  I used this as part of an online discussion board on the topic of sovereign election.  Notes were taken using the Blueletterbible site:

TR and GNT use the same word, "ἑλκύσῃ".  Strong's lists this word G1670 - helkō, as:

1) to draw, drag off

2) metaph., to draw by inward power, lead, impel

I did a search for helkō elsewhere in Scripture, and there are eight other occurrences of this Greek word in Scripture, including passages such as:

• John 12:32 - And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all [men] unto me (similar to passage above.  Speaks of God drawing/gathering)
• John 18:10 - Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it (Peter completed the action and grabbed a sword)
• John 21:11 - Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land (Peter did the action, and pulled the net to himself)

In each of these passages,  helkō speaks of an action of the individual drawing someone or something to himself by their OWN effort.  Peter's sword didn't do anything, neither did the fish net.  It was the one doing the action that is credited in the word.

Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day

I've been (slowly) working through "Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day" by James Found. I picked this up at Lifeway, and I've been enjoying the fairly user-friendly introdcution to the Greek language presented in this workbook. Basically, the text is printed in a pulpy, worktext-style format where you fill in answers on most every page. The text starts out great, with very simplistic example of reading english words in greek (such as English words like "bat" written in greek characters) and slowly starts through exercises that introduce greek characters and words. The pace is nice and smooth for a linguistic dummy for me.

However, the book tends to take a deeper direction into Greek grammar around page 120+, and once you start getting into the nominative, genative stuff, my eyes start to glaze over. You know, it's not for lack of effort, but this stuff gets pretty hard! (good observation Captain Obvious!) But I'm going to keep on with this. What's remarkable is how, as you learn these words, you start to slowly (if in subtle ways) see the richness in the word usage within certain passages of scripture, as well as gaining an appreciation for semi-regular words you hear from time to time, in terms of tracing back to the Greek (scoliosis, anathema, etc, in addition to so many Biblical words).

Might be slow progress finishing this but I've enjoyed the experience so far.