Although Greek 202 is not a part of the required language courses in the core curriculum at GWU, a number of reasons strongly suggest that you should take the fourth semester course in both Greek and Hebrew:

 1) In Greek 202, the focus is upon learning how to use your Greek New Testament in practical ministry. The technical grammar studied in the first three semesters is designed to prepare you for the emphasis of the fourth semester. To only take the required courses (Greek 101, 102, & 201) will leave you woefully deficient in using this biblical language for preaching and teaching. A childhood comparison would be studying how to ride a bicycle from a book and then refusing to get on the bike in the driveway to learn how to ride. For the most part then, your Greek studies will be a waste of time beyond meeting a degree requirement. Your Greek New Testament will only collect dust in your study.

2) Most seminaries and divinity schools, where the biblical languages are emphasized strongly, expect the student to have at least four semesters of biblical language study, if these studies are to allow the beginning seminary student to CLEP out of the required Greek studies. Three semesters only will likely mean that you will be required to begin with first semester Greek studies at the MDiv level. Your undergraduate three semesters will not be recognized as having value, since it will be viewed as incomplete.

As some students have said, Greek 202 is where Greek starts to be really fun. Of necessity, the first three semesters have a built in tediousness because a certain amount of grammar and vocabulary skills are necessary before meaningful use of the Greek New Testament is possible. But at the end of the third semester an adequate foundational knowledge gets the student ready to begin applying that to the text of the Greek New Testament. Thus the fourth semester is designed specifically to build that bridge of transition into using the Greek text in ministry.

The way this is achieved in Greek 202 is through a dual emphasis in the first eight weeks of the semester. In this period analysis of thought structure in a passage is stressed. This is followed by an introduction to Textual Criticism in order to understand better the establishment of a wording of the Greek text as a basis for translation and exegesis. Finally, an introduction to the theory and practice of professional Bible translation is studied in order to both understand how different English translations are produced, as well as how to use translations for preaching and teaching. This climaxes in the setting forth of an exegetical method that systematically allows the student to interpret the Greek text accurately and insightfully.

The second half of the semester then takes one passage per week and applies that exegetical method to the passage. The process moves from (1) initial analysis of the text with parsing and rough translation to (2) analysis of the thought structure in the passage and climaxes (3) with outlines of the text as a basis for a sermon or teaching outline of the NT text. The student will come away with a minimum of eight core sermon ideas that can be developed into solid biblical based sermons for preaching.  This functional aspect of Greek 202 becomes the part that provides deep satisfaction with using the Greek text of the New Testament.

An additional benefit is that with the four semesters of Greek, the student can add one more semester of Greek for this to count as a Biblical Languages or Classical Languages minor.  The same pattern works for Hebrew as well. Having a Greek or Hebrew minor on one's transcript is a very plus advantage in applying to a seminary or divinity school. This, particularly if your interest is strongly in the study of the biblical text in your master's degree program.  

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Biblical Languages Minor (Dept of Religious Studies and Philosophy):

6 hours of Greek (in addition to the required 9 hours: Greek 202 and Greek 495 or Greek 496)
6 hours of Hebrew
3 hours of advanced Old Testament or New Testament

15 hours in Classical Language courses
• Greek counts as a classical language