[B-Greek] ? - please respond
David McKay
david.mckay at ozemail.com.au
Sat Dec 6 01:19:03 EST 2003
I remember a thread a couple of years back titled something like Why Study
Greek? which would be useful to read through if you can find it, Matthew.
See http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/1999-December/008818.html
for example
Of course you have been given some terrific answers to your question,
already.
It seems to me that studying another language helps you to understand and
communicate in your own language. Studying French in high school taught me
English!
But I would like to offer a warning: it seems to me that most of us do not
advance very far in our study of Greek, but this does not stop ministers
from making all sorts of proclamations about the language! Often, it is
those who know least about it who do so.
One of our ministers went to college with a bloke we'll call Zorba, who
never got the hang of Greek and failed every exam. My minister friend was
amazed to hear one of Zorba's congregation praising his deep knowledge of
Greek, which he mentioned in every sermon!
A few weeks ago someone posted the url to a very helpful article by Moises
Silva on bible translation, from the book The Challenge of Bible
Translation. It is a very important article for every would-be translator of
God's word to take heed of.
See http://www.zondervan.com/Books/Detail.asp?ISBN=0310246857
There used to be a downloadable article at this url, but I can't see it
there now.
But the whole book is well worth reading.
In Silva's article he points out that it may seem easy to translate the
bible, because you already know it in English, but that responsibly
rendering the Greek is harder than it looks. The less you know about Greek,
the easier it seems! He makes the point that because Spanish is his first
language, to render Spanish into English seems difficult, because he sees
all the nuances in the Spanish. Not seeing the Greek nuances because it is
not our first language makes it all seem so easy!
David McKay
davidDOTmckayATozemailDOTcomDOTau
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~musicke
http://www.bathurstevangelical.org.au
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