Smyth's grammar
Mark Wilson
emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Wed Aug 21 16:04:21 EDT 2002
Trevor
You wrote:
--------
I'm not going to try to argue that it's better to go from Attic to Koine.
>(What do I know--I don't know much about Attic myself.) My point is simply
>to
>say that I think it's a different issue when the goal is to learn a dead
>language.
------
I think your reply was well said, demonstrating it is important to
define certain terms.
In my attempt to learn the GNT, I have started with NT Greek. I note
that when I want to understand a word or phrase "better," I look at
BDAG, which seems invaluable to understanding the GNT, but that is
somewhat cheating, since BDAG is providing examples from well beyond
the GNT. So in a sense, I realized that if I really wanted to learn
the GNT, I would of necessity have to go outside the GNT. How far
one might ask? How about first century Hellenistic Greek. That would
certainly be more beneficial than the Greek of the NT only. THen
I ask myself do I need to go further back? After seeing those on this
list that have a classical AND GNT background, the importance of
understanding classical Greek seemed all too obvious. I found that my
conviction of what I believed the Greek to be saying was based more
on my theological convictions than on a thorough investigation into
the Greek language. My feeling is that one who has "mastered" the GNT
may not be a master of the Greek language, and I feel pretty sure that
many students who limit themselves to the GNT, are more so relying on
their theological convictions than grammatical, syntactical scholarship.
My thoughts,
Mark Wilson
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