Dobson - Learn NT Greek
Chuck Tripp
ctripp at ptialaska.net
Tue Jun 11 01:43:24 EDT 2002
I used Dobson's book at the beginning. Originally, I had borrowed a copy of
another book (Machen I think), returned it and bought Dobson. The price was
good for getting my feet wet. It was an okay a beginner's book but I don't
feel that it took me very far.
Eventually, I came across "Greek, An Intensive Course" by Hardy Hansen and
Gerald M. Quinn, which is, I guess, a more traditional book dealing with
Attic Greek.
I wound up giving Dobson away. I think what frustrated me is that it was so
inductive that at times it seemed you'd learn what the 2nd person singular
of active aorist indicative (it would not say that of course) and have to
wait two whole chapters til you found out what the 3rd person was. Hansen
and Quinn on the other hand was great, well organized with tables, and great
exercises that really reinforced what you were learning. To Hansen and
Quinn's discredit however, you had to wait till chapter 15 (of 20) before
you learned EIMI or even the personal pronouns (EGW, SU, etc). Having
first read Dobson, I was able to handle concepts in my personal reading long
before I got to them in Hansen and Quinn.
Dobson on the one hand and and Hansen and Quinn on the other have very
different ways of teaching verbs. Dobson tries to teach patterns for
example for the verbs. Reduplication of initial consonant for perfect, S
followed by A for the end of verb stems for aorist, S before the ending for
future, sometimes a different stem with imperfect endings for 2nd aorist,
things like that. Hansen and Quinn makes absolutely no attempt to teach the
study to recognize such patterns, rather the student must learn the six
principal parts of each and every verb he learns and must know how they
convert to the various usages. As much as I like Hansen and Quinn, I
instinctively fall back what Dobson taught. It seems silly to learn the
principal parts by rote when I can learn general patterns and be right maybe
80% of the time.
Chuck Tripp
Kodiak Alaska
----- Original Message -----
From: Eric S. Weiss <eweiss at gte.net>
To: Biblical Greek <b-greek at franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
Sent: Sunday, June 09, 2002 8:17 PM
Subject: [b-greek] Dobson - Learn NT Greek
> In my search for the best book to use for teaching a 1st-year Greek course
> at church, out of curiosity I purchased John H. Dobson's LEARN NEW
> TESTAMENT GREEK. It's a do-it-yourself 1st-year Greek grammar, but should
> work all right in a teacher-students setting.
>
> I noticed that Dobson omits accents, and early on explains how they were
> TONE indicators and weren't used in manuscripts before the 9th century. He
> doesn't mention their usage as syllable stress indicators. So, I kind of
> mentally docked him a few points for that.
>
> Also, he uses a very inductive approach, and just gives the
> students/readers the words and usages with no technical grammatical or
> linguistic names or explanations, at least not early on (I'm at about
> chapter 14 of 52 chapters). So I docked him another few points for this.
> It is here, in my opinion, that a teacher would likely be most helpful,
> informing/acquainting the students with the terminology they will be
> encountering in other books they will be reading in their studies. E.g.:
> In the first 13 chapters, the student has been given or exposed to the
> definite article, the present tense, demonstrative pronouns, the
> subjunctive mood, relative pronouns, participles -- yet NONE of these
> terms/words has been used in the text. Dobson does introduce these, or
> some of these, terms later on ... sometimes MUCH later on, it seems. But I
> think it would be useful to acquaint the students with this knowledge
> early on.
>
> Is this approach good? Bad? It's hard for me to judge, as I can't judge
> this book as one who has never studied NT Greek before.
>
> Dobson very quickly gets the student into the NT text, and he has many,
> many comments about the translation task. This makes his book unique, I
> think, among first-year grammars. (I think it must be because he is
> associated with SIL.) E.g., what other first-year grammar says things
> like:
>
> "Note that when we wish to translate LEGW into English we have to choose
> from several English words. Consider LEGW AUTWi. AUTWi means "to him". So
> we may translate LEGW AUTWi as "I say to him", "I speak to him", "I tell
> him", or "I am telling him". In 4.2 no. 7 [yes, this is in just the 4th
> lesson, and these "lessons" are maybe 1/2 the length of your usual Greek
> grammar book -- so it's like Dobson is laying this out in Lesson 2!], LEGW
> TON LOGON TOU QEOU, "I am speaking God's word" might be a better
> translation than "I am saying the word of God." When you check your own
> translations by uncovering the right-hand columns in this book, do not ask
> yourself "Have I used exactly the same words in my translation?" but "Have
> I expressed the same meaning?" (p. 10)
>
> SO ... has anyone out there used Dobson's book for teaching beginning
> Greek students? Feel free to e-mail me OFF-LIST with your comments, but
> post here any remarks that you feel might be useful to others, as I am
> sure I am not the only one seeking effective user-friendly ways to
> introduce NT Greek into our churches and fellowships.
>
> I got on SIL's Web site and ordered Dobson's LEARN BIBLICAL HEBREW just to
> see for myself how well his approach works, since I can use myself as a
> test case, having forgotten most of my Hebrew.
>
> Maybe my enthusiasm (actually, I'm more curious than enthused at this
> point) will wane after I do more of the book ... or maybe I'll like it
> even more.
>
> ---
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