Re: Learning/Teaching Greek at Different Levels

John Lochridge (John@xc.org)
Mon, 26 Aug 1996 23:32:08 -0500

At 12:01 PM 8/20/96 -0700, Don Wilkins wrote:
>I once attempted to teach a class in Greek basics for using interlinears,
>lexicons etc. and had a bad experience with it. To put it briefly, the out-
>come appeared to be that knowing a little Greek is more dangerous than knowing
>none at all.

I am sure you have some stories of misused Greek that you could share.
What areas did the problems fall into primarily? Verb tenses, for example?

> On the other hand, one cannot adequately know what is going on
>in the text just by reading translations.

I would agree with that. It does seem, however, that a "little" knowledge of
the meaning of words could be helpful - granted that students do not
take etymology too far in establishing a definition of a word.

> For that reason I'm forced to believe
>that those who regularly preach from the pulpit need to know the original lan-
>guages, whatever the sacrifice in time and money necessary.

You speak (type) with conviction.

> I also believe it
>is the responsibility of teachers like myself to make the languages as accessi-
>ble as possible, without sacrificing quality (now, if I could only convince
>college/university/seminary administrators of that!).

Do you have any great ideas along these lines?

John Lochridge
Dallas, Texas