Reading Greek

Barry Hofstetter nebarry at earthlink.net
Sat Dec 21 22:00:31 EST 2002



----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
To: "Biblical Greek" <b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 5:26 PM
Subject: [b-greek] Re: Reading Greek


> No, you're doing it the right way, in my opinion; you certain MUST look up
> the words you don't know and you need to have a pretty clear understanding
> of the grammatical relationships as you read--and 1 John is easy enough
> that one can read a good deal at one sitting. The key is to read more than
> a sentence or a paragraph at a time--the more the better. The more you do
> this, you build up a sense of recurrent constructions of the same sort and
> also of the sorts of contexts in which the words that are frequently used
> most commonly appear, and you should also develop, through the reading of
> large chunks at a time, a sense of word-order, of recurrent patterns of
> sentence-structure. All this increases your sense of ease and
> comfort-level, and you should even find yourself thinking in terms of
> Greek thought-patterns--or the sort of thought patterns that come
> naturally to the Greek-speaker/writer's mind.

I know "amen" posts are probably frowned on, but I can't resist -- amen.

The more you read, the more you know...  :)

Seriously, this is precisely the discipline that anyone attempting to learn
Greek should develop.  The only problem, if problem it is, that after a while,
one develops an almost intuitive sense for the language, so that one can spot
problems in grammatical exegesis without really being readily able to explain
why they are problems...  I remember more than one advanced grad student, and
even a professor or two, who could flawlessly translate various passages, but
couldn't always adequately explain the translation.  I found teaching beginning
through intermediate Greek for several years helped immensely, in my case, so if
you have a chance to teach or tutor someone else (assuming that your own ability
is up to it) then carpe that diem for sure.

I also recommend to anyone who can to read more than just the NT.  Adding the
LXX helps, but the more extra-biblical Greek one gets, the more it helps with
reading Biblical Greek.

My two denarii worth...

N.E. Barry Hofstetter

Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te...
    -- Augustine, Confessions 1:1

http://home.earthlink.net/~nebarry




More information about the B-Greek mailing list