[B-Greek] William D. Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek
Kenneth C. Vendler
kenneth.vendler at higherwinds.net
Thu Dec 4 21:10:14 EST 2003
I wanted tot hank everyone for their comments on Mounce's grammar, regarding
its merits, draw-backs, and approach towards teaching the basics of Greek
grammar. This list seems to be an excellent source of information as well as
a diverse variety of views.
Once again, thanks a lot :-)
Kenneth C. Vendler
Williamstown, KY
http://www.higherwinds.net
"Some people think they are thinking, when they are merely rearranging their
prejudices"
Attributed to William James
" All things come in pairs, one opposite the other, and he has made nothing
incomplete. Each supplements the virtues of the other. Who could ever tire
of seeing his [God's] glory? "
Sirach 42:24,25 New Revised Standard Version
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
To: <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca>
Cc: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>;
<b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [B-Greek] William D. Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek
> At 7:47 PM -0500 12/4/03, <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca> wrote:
> > "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> wrote on
> > : Wed, 3 Dec 2003 15:03:07 -0500
> >
> > Several like Mounce's work
> >> very much; I've taught out of it myself and don't really much like it,
but
> >> it's certainly more useful if one has the workbook and if one starts
> >> learning nouns and verbs at the same time. The grammatical explanations
are
> >> adequate; what turned me off personally was the "exegetical insights"
> >> feature, which seems to me to confound a particular theological
perspective
> >> with points of grammatical analysis that are arguable and probably
> >> premature for beginning students of Biblical Greek.
> >
> >Is the reason that you don't like this grammar much, due to the
exegetical
> >insights or are there other reasons as well?
> >I have become convinced (because of discussions on b-greek) that al least
> >two excegetical insights have fallacies, but as for the grammar proper, I
> >have really enjoyed it.
> >
> >Once I started getting onto verbs I saw separating the verbs from nouns
as
> >an advantage. It allowed me to really get familiar with case endings
> >before having to memorize personal endings of verbs. (Even then, I recall
> >parsing a word like ELUON as acc. sing masc.)
> >Why is it so critical to learn verbs at the same time as nouns? After
all,
> >in order to learn verbs earlier something else has to give way; maybe 3rd
> >decl. nouns or pronouns would have to wait till chapter 17.
>
> I do think that the grammatical explanations in Mounce are reasonably
> clear, more so than in two other Koine primers that I've taught out of, at
> any rate (one of them being Machen). I think that if one's using Mounce's
> workbook along with the textbook the problem of doing the whole verb
before
> doing the noun (or vice versa) is less, but it seemed to me that even so
> the workbook had to explain a lot of material not yet introduced in the
> grammar pretty far along in the readings. What's most important of all, I
> think, is that one gets into reading authentic Greek texts--not made-up
> Greek such as is found in Machen and in some primers--as soon as possible,
> preferably from graded levels of difficulty, but nevertheless real Greek.
> What one needs to do is to become acquainted as early and as deeply as
> possible in patterns of Greek expression so that one need not even analyze
> the forms of nouns and verbs any more, although that is necessary at the
> earlier stages and one should always be able to do the analysis when
called
> upon to do so--but once one is really reading, one doesn't think about
> analyzing verbs and nouns and adjectives any more.
>
> >Unlike you, I can't compare very many grammars because I have only three.
> >The other two being "Homeric Greek, a book for beginners" by Pharr, and
> >"Beginning Greek" by Paine.
> >I enjoy using them but I am not sure if I would have been able to learn
> >Greek using either one of them as my first grammar.
>
> I'm familiar with Pharr, and I think it's fine provided that one goes
right
> ahead and reads plenty of Homeric Greek immediately after finishing it
> rather than jumping from it into Greek of the classical or Koine eras.
> --
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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