Acts of the Apostles

This book puts you straight into the actual literature of Greek and Latin, and provides an English translation. Follow my advice to read either or both of these languages in a few months.

If you want to learn Latin, you should first get hold of the shortest Latin grammar you can find. You must read through this, to get an overview. Do not try memorise the declensions and conjugations. The most you need is a vague awareness of how things like accusative cases and present participles look, and enough of an overview to know where to look if the English is not clear enough as a key to the grammar of the Latin. It is only when you start looking up particular issues that you should pay attention to things like ablative absolutes and subjunctives. Do not try in advance to learn the grammar. It is to be consulted not committed to memory.

You now begin with 1:1-"primum quidem sermonem feci de omnibus o Theophile quae coepit Iesus facere et docere."

Read it aloud so that you can familiarise yourself with the sound of the language. You then turn to the English-"The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach."

You puzzle out the Latin. "Primum" and "sermonem" you can guess from their English derivatives mean "former treatise." You may recall from your skimming of the grammar that nouns ending in m are likely to be direct objects. "Feci" seems to correspond with "have I made." "Omnibus" is used in English to mean the whole of something, and so probably means "all." "O Theophile" explains itself, though you may look in your grammar to confirm that it is a vocative case-that is, a form showing that someone is being spoken to. And so you continue, corresponding Latin to English by guesswork or by looking for English derivatives.

Once you have finished with the first three verses, you commit them in both Latin and English to memory. This is not as hard as it sounds. What you have here is a text with an overall meaning. It is easier to memorise than the meanings of individual words. You could look up "doceo" (I teach), and try to remember its various forms. You will do better to recognise "docere" (present infinitive) as a word in its context that means "to teach." Equally, you should avoid digging round to find that "feci" is the perfect form of "facio," and keep reciting "facio, feci, factum." Trying to remember the meanings of words is harder than remembering the sentences in which they occur.

Reading the first chapter in this way will be hard work. If you get that far, though, the second will be easier. By the time you get to the fourth, you will be able to read simple Latin. At this point, you will have outgrown the simple grammar you started with, and can get a copy of The Revised Latin Primer, which will now become your main work of reference. As you continue, you will find that you are turning to the English version only for new words that you cannot guess from their look or context, or to resolve ambiguities in the unpunctuated Latin. As you continually turn back to revise, you will see that previous difficulties no longer exist. Long before you get to Chapter 28, you will have become moderately competent in Latin.

If you want to learn Greek, and already know some Latin, you will use the Latin text as your key to the Greek. Also, you will benefit from a more comprehensive grammar. Again, you should skim this, not trying to memorise what you read. The purpose is to know where to look for the answers to specific questions that may arise. You will see at once, that while it is a more complex language, with more exceptions to its general rules, Greek is structurally similar to Latin. There is no dead easy way to learn any language. But this is easier than most, and is the method used before the 17th century. Try it for yourself