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b-greek-digest V1 #146
b-greek-digest Saturday, 16 March 1996 Volume 01 : Number 146
In this issue:
Selling Greek
Re: Selling Greek
YHWH and JW's
Re: John 2.4,Acts 19.2
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From: "Timothy B. Smith" <xapa@usaor.net>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 13:43:34 -0500
Subject: Selling Greek
I find myself needing to promote my classes among students at a Small
Liberal Arts Christian College. One of the ways I plan to do this is by
putting together a list of the ten reasons why a student should learn
Ancient Greek.
The main focus of my courses is on preparing students to work with the Greek
New Testament. Do any of you have any suggestions for my list? I am familiar
with David Blacks short book, "Using New Testament Greek In Ministry" and I
plan on
borrowing some of his reasons. Can anyone suggest any others?
Timothy B. Smith
The United Presbyterian Church In Ingram
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Geneva College Faculty
Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania
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From: "Barbara OCleirigh u 2>/dev/null" <oxcl1058@mach1.wlu.ca>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 16:43:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: Selling Greek
A knowledge of ancient Greek (I mean classical, since that includes much
more than Koine alone) is essential to the full understanding of western
theological and philosophical thought. As the literary language of the
Roman Empire it represents an essential part of the linguistic/cultural
milieu in which the Christian faith developed,and it needs to
be understood as much as the contemporary political and social
history if one is to enter as fully as one can at this distance
of time into the minds of those who first formulated this faith.
New Testament students especially should not have to depend upon
translations, no matter how many there are, but should rather be able to
approach these translations with a critical understanding based upon
their own knowledge of Greek.
I find it disturbing to consider students of religion (especially future
ministers) studying the NT without learning Greek; one finds it in
philosophy departments too, where people teach Plato without having read
him in Greek. It's like a non-English speaker studying Shakespeare
in some other language, and then coming here to teach it. However good a
translation may be, it just isn't the same.
Now I am conscious that most people's faith rests upon a foundation of
translated scripture, and of course it is not strictly "necessary for
salvation" for anyone to read it in a language other than their own;
but if someone goes to college for the express purpose of studying that
scripture, their study will always be incomplete until they have read
the text in the original.
Dogmatically,
Barbara O'Cleirigh
M.A. student, Religion & Culture
Wilfrid Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario
P.S. Can you tell there's a Classics Prof. in my family? :)
P.P.S. And Greek is a lot easier than Hebrew...
------------------------------
From: DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 15:57:26 -0800 (PST)
Subject: YHWH and JW's
I have argued the Rom 10 passage and related issues to YHWH before with
Jehovah's Witnesses, and I can at least say how they originally handled the
problem in the NW translation. They postulated so-called "J witnesses" as
though these were textual variants. Their explanation of these "variants"
was that one should simply use "Jehovah" in the NT anywhere that an OT verse
with "Jehovah" was being quoted. So Joel 2:32 could contain "Jehovah" when
cited by Paul, while Jesus is just "lord" (from kurios).
Don Wilkins
------------------------------
From: DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 16:21:32 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: John 2.4,Acts 19.2
David Moore expressed interest in a copy of my research notes on the aorist
participle. My notes are actually part of an unfinished article I have been
working on, and I would be happy to send the material by e-mail to anyone
interested. I would greatly appreciate any feedback. Perhaps anyone on the
list interested in the material could let me know, and I'll send it to his/her
e-mail address. Thanks.
Don Wilkins, UC Riverside
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End of b-greek-digest V1 #146
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