[B-Greek] ? - please respond

Polycarp66 at aol.com Polycarp66 at aol.com
Fri Dec 5 22:28:57 EST 2003


In a message dated 12/5/2003 7:25:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
charlottematt2 at hotmail.com writes:
For the last three months I have been studying NT Greek at the seminary.  I
have a final on Monday which I do not think I will do well on.  I have
found this endeavor, which I was very excited about at the beginning, to
truly be painful and almost wasteful in terms of time.

All I did for nearly four months was memorize vocabulary words (few if any
I remember) and paradigms.  I have been praying for God to show me (because
the prof certainly has not) how on earth I am supposed to incorporate this
tool into my pastoral life.  What books are essential to have?  How should
the language be used in sermon preparation?  What is the best way to go
about learning the language from a practical standpoint without becoming a
Greek scholar (clearly not my intention)?

I hope you understand my frustration.  I am not certain what the difference
is between linguistics, morphology, syntax, etc. and how much I need to
know of each before I can say I understand this language well.  I simply
want to be more efficient and productive with the time I spend studying the
language for it to be useful to my congregation.  I have always prepared
sermons from my NIV and a concordance.  Now I am being "sneered" at by the
intellectuals for they feel this methodology is for backwood preachers.

Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated.  I would like to
know more about the language, but I simply feel it is out of reach.

I can understand your current state.  Beginning steps seem hardly impressive. 
 I can remember learning to read -- just learning to read English.  At that 
time the usual texts were a very famous set which had lines such as

See Spot!
See Spot run.
Run, Spot, run.

Hardly impressive.  I must have thought so at the time myself since for a 
time I didn't do well in school -- until I moved to a school where the year began 
nearly a full month before the school I had been attending.  The challenge to 
catch up with the rest of the class seems to have been what was necessary to 
get me moving.

The point?  No, it's not about the necessity of a challenge to make us rise 
to the ocassion (though often true).  The point is that we have a tendency to 
seek instant gratification.  If it doesn't seem to accomplish great things 
immediately, then perhaps it isn't worth while.  Learning Greek well will be a 
life-time task.  Few of us will be a Carl Conrad or a Carlton Winberry, but we 
can be reasonably good in the field if we are willing to diligently work toward 
acquiring a knowledge of the language -- including both vocabulary and syntax. 
 Perhaps we will make no great discoveries regarding the message of the 
texts, but we can come to understand the point behind the translations which we 
already have and which are proliferating every day (well, it almost seems so).  
This in itself is important since I have too often seen some who apparently 
have no more than a nodding acquaintance with the original languages following 
some off-the-wall path of interpretation based on little more than some English 
translation which they failed to understand in the first place.

I encourage you.  Stay the course.  Pay your dues.  Some day you will reap 
the rewards if you are diligent.

gfsomsel



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