Dobson - Learn NT Greek

hefin jones hefinjones at hotmail.com
Tue Jun 11 07:16:14 EDT 2002


Since I mentioned Dobson in an anti-Mounce email about a month ago I'll 
throw in my comments. I used Dobson in initial self teaching of greek 
without any tutorial help.

I found that Dobson's illustration of structures by multiple examples which 
he sets as translation exercises an excellent way of habituating to the 
phrasal structure of greek. It was his approach that pushed me to learn 
verbs, nouns and translate all at once. The weakness of the book is that he 
probably could introduce some more paradigms earlier and point out more 
clearly what has to be known by rote with absolute confidence (something 
which Funk's Beginning-Intermediate did well). Dobson's approach appeals to 
the structural linguist in me. Both Dobson (indirectly) and Funk (more 
explicitly) try to get one to think about the "structure signals" of greek. 
This approach tends to give the lie to the oft repeated idea that there is 
no/little word order in Greek.

As I said before it seems best to me to learn as much vocabulary as you 
possibly can as quickly as you can; learn both nominal and verbal 
inflectional morphology ASAP and in parallel (don't hold off learning one 
till completing the other as Mounce does - it looks neat but it's not a 
sensible way to learn); translate as much as possible from the word go. If 
you are studying the NT get into it ASAP. And find a friend - one more 
knowledgable in greek would be great, but even one you have to teach would 
be fine as it is amazing how much you learn by trying to express your ideas 
to others.

I didn't learn all my first year greek alone and via Dobson - at the point I 
was half way through I started studying NT greek at college which used an 
approach more akin to J Wenham's, but which got us into a NT text very early 
in translation groups, translating texts which were nearly always a little 
beyond our capabilities! It worked for me.

Hefin JOnes

BTh III yr student Moore College, Sydney, Australia.

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