[B-Greek] William D. Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Dec 5 08:28:40 EST 2003
At 7:50 AM -0500 12/5/03, bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:
> All in
>all, I think more depends on the teacher than on the textbook. A good
>teacher can teach Greek with a less than ideal book if it fits his general
>teaching style, but a poor/ineffective teacher will only be helped
>marginally by a better textbook.
This is so very true that it needs to be highlighted repeatedly. And there
really is no wholly "ideal" book; I've never seen a textbook that can
escape the need to illustrate one point without ever employing some aspect
of grammar that hasn't yet been introduced. And I must confess that I
learned Greek IN SPITE OF A WRETCHED NT Greek textbook by an author named
"Rife" about whom I know nothing else. But Joe Billy McMinn was a superb
teacher, and I and the three colleagues with me during that freshman year
at Tulane all of us learned Greek.
>As to the "exegetical insights," yes, they are consciously evangelical in
>their theological perspective--with which some may not agree. At times they
>may read their theology into the text and they are uneven in character. But
>remember their purpose: to entice the student to see that learning Greek has
>a purpose. Also note that they are not written by Mounce but by other
>evangelical NT scholars. Even though I am of the same general theological
>persuasion, I never use the exegetical discussions in class. They're there
>for the curious student. One can ignore them with impunity (though if one
>preferred that the student *not* read them, one had better not say so to the
>student! Human nature appears to be such that an announcement of that sort
>stimulates considerable curiosity and desire to do exactly the opposite! :)
It is true that there's something valuable to provocative material: one is
forced to think about it. But I still think that this material in Mounce's
textbook confronts the student before the student is prepared grammatically
to respond to it intelligently. And it's certainly true that advising
people not to do something is the surest way to get them to do it!
--
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/
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