New "Baby Greek" book by Bill Mounce
Eric S. Weiss
eweiss at gte.net
Tue Nov 13 15:23:48 EST 2001
This sounds like something Edward W. Goodrick tackled a couple decades ago
in his book DO IT YOURSELF HEBREW AND GREEK, a book that's a lot cheaper
($15 at Amazon) and that also covers Hebrew. It weans students from
Strong's Concordance, etc., and gets them into the Englishman's Hebrew and
Greek Concordances, as well as into BDB (Hebrew) and BAGD (Greek), which
is a pretty good accomplishment, I think. It also teaches grammar -- e.g.,
the meaning of the various aspects/"tenses."
Goodrick can be sarcastic at times, but he really makes the effort to
drive home the point that his book will NOT make one a scholar of Greek or
Hebrew; that at best it prepares one for one's first year of
seminary-level Greek or Hebrew. His chapter on idioms (chapter 21 or 22, I
think) is a gem -- every time he uses an idiom in this chapter, he notes
it. The discerning student will have an "aha!" moment when he realizes HOW
MUCH of English is idiomatic -- and hence, by extension, that Greek and
Hebrew are idiomatic, too. He will hopefully logically conclude that
immersion and long years in the language are really the only ways to
learn/know the language, and that until he becomes somewhat skilled via
formal training and instruction, he will be wise to defer to the experts.
Goodrick will NOT prepare the student to use technical commentaries -- I
think only 3 semesters or more of Greek instruction will really do that.
But the student will be able somewhat to use and understand these tools
that Greek scholars use and will hopefully decide to pursue further
studies.
Anyone else out there have any experience with Goodrick's book and how
Mounce compares with it?
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