Teaching Top Down Analysis

Paul and Dee Zellmer pdzellmer at ix.netcom.com
Sun Apr 30 23:49:10 EDT 2000


Clayton,

I have yet to see a teaching grammar for Greek that is based on discourse
analysis per se.  There is a teaching grammar for Hebrew that was written by
Bryan Rocine (who is on the B-Hebrew list).  Since it is a beginning
grammar, I was able to use it in classes in the Philippines, and had a good
amount of success with it.  The students found the method to be more
intuitive than the old rote memory method, and almost two-thirds have
continued to work with the Hebrew text in their studies.

Based on this success in the Hebrew, I wish that someone would come up with
an equivalent beginning grammar for NT Greek.

BTW, I understand that Bryan has finally found a publisher for his book, but
I haven't seen it advertised yet.

Paul R. Zellmer
Interim Foreign Missions Director (elect)
Southern Methodist Missions

clayton stirling bartholomew wrote (in part):

Discourse analysis of biblical languages is over a quarter of a century old
and I cannot detect that the teaching of biblical languages has changed
much. Why not?

...

Has anyone integrated "top down" analysis into the core curriculum so that
students start right of from the beginning thinking of biblical texts as a
student of music theory would think of Igor Starvinsky's "Right of Spring?"
One would not attempt to understand "Right of Spring" by analyzing a few
bars of it somewhere in the middle. But we do this kind of thing in NT Greek
all the time. Why?




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