Keeping up with NT Greek after class
Jonathan Ryder
jpr1001 at cam.ac.uk
Fri May 21 11:27:43 EDT 1999
(Sorry John, meant to send this to list)
John Baima wrote:
> Reading using a tool like my program (Bible Windows) or one of the other
> programs. I've had numerous people testify that this is the only reason
> they were able to keep (or return) to reading the GNT. I'm sure that other
> vendors have had the same letters. Seeing the parsing or looking up a word
> almost instantly will allow you to read more and get more out of the text
> than the "it's got to be painful to help" method. Some can grind it out,
> manually lookup words or skip words and guess, but most will get so little
> out of that that they give up. The problem with just having a translation
> open is that does not tell you what the Greek is. It may help you to guess,
> but it does not tell you what the parsing of a difficult form is nor does
> it give a definition of a word.
>
> I used to be a horrible speller. The "crutch" of a spell checker improved
> my spelling more than all the head banging I did in all the previous years.
> Why? It was quick, easy, and painless. After I misspelled the same word
> enough times, I eventually leaned it. My children still spell better than I
> do because they were taught phonics and I was not. However, just as the
> spell checker made me a better speller, a computerized GNT can make you a
> better Greek reader with a lot less pain.
>
> John Baima
> Silver Mountain Software 1029 Tanglewood Dr, Cedar Hill TX 75104-3019
> jbaima at silvermnt.com http://www.silvermnt.com
> Fax 972 293-6641 Voice 972 293-2920
John's suggestion was the one I forgot in my earlier post. Many will
recall earlier
threads on the errors of using an interlinear in that it provides too
much of a
crutch. Using a Bible program with a parsing window means that you can
read the greek
text w/o any English to distract you/prevent you for working it out for
yourself and
thus learn, and then call up the parsing window/dictionary when you get
stuck and not
spend hours looking things up in a (paper) dictionary. That said,
facility with a
(paper) dictionary is a skill to be acquired in itself esp if as well as
reading NT
one is also studying it.
Jonathan Ryder
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