Reading Greek
Glendon M. Gross
gross at xinetd.ath.cx
Sat Dec 21 22:32:52 EST 2002
I have a question for you. Is classical greek recommended as an
enhancement to learning biblical greek?
The reason I asked is that I have thought about trying to read Plato's
dialogues in the original Greek if I can get my hands on them. I am
concerned, though, that it might be too great a leap for me after
reading just the New Testament. Still, the fact that translations are
so easy to come by might make it possible to solve some of the
comprehension problems by referring to a translation if I get stuck.
Are Plato's dialogues available online in the original greek?
Regards,
Glendon Gross
Amateur Greek Student
Barry Hofstetter wrote:
> ----- 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
>
>
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