[B-Greek] Beginning Greek texts
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Aug 6 10:21:39 EDT 2004
At 7:34 AM -0400 8/6/04, Barry Hofstetter wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Steven Lo Vullo" <slovullo at mac.com>
>To: "George F. Somsel" <gfsomsel at juno.com>
>Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 7:47 PM
>Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Beginning Greek texts
>
>
>> I think this is a good idea. I took several semesters of classical
>> Greek from the University of Wisconsin extension program in the 90s. I
>> also used Crosby and Schaeffer for those courses. My instructor called
>> it "a bear." It gives you a pretty good mix of Greek, including
>> selections from the NT. I don't mean this irreverently, but after
>> studying classical for a year or so the NT seemed almost like reading a
>> comic book. (I mean that in the sense of ease of reading, of course.)
>> There may be a college or university in your area, Bill, that also
>> offers extension courses in classical. I think you would find it
>> extremely enjoyable and rewarding.
>
>Agreed! Anyone who has started Classical and moved to the NT has had a similar
>experience (especially since many of the "rare" usages in the NT are fairly
>common usages in Classical). After three semesters of classical Greek (with
>reading Plato in the third semester), I took the gospel of Mark, and thought I
>was in heaven (or at least that I knew some Greek). The next semester, I took
>Thucydides and Aristophanes, and thought I was in... and definitely realized
>that I had a lot more Greek to learn!
I've noted my own roughly similar experience to the above: I intended at
the outset to learn both Classical and Koine Greek and so was not upset
when my freshman Greek class at Tulane in 1952 took up Koine with a
wretched textbook (Rife) and an inductive reading of Mark's gospel led by
one of those truly inspired teachers (Billy Joe McMinn, himself a product
of Louisville Baptist Seminary and the ATRobertson tradition) and got a
pretty good foundation even in that one year; the next year I read Homer's
Iliad with the same teacher: what a transformation! --to an artificial
dialect used centuries prior to the NT Koine; the third year it was
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, another
transformation, but an easier one after Homer than it would have been after
the Koine. I survived and even prospered with that college introduction to
Greek (and graduate work in it at both Tulane and Harvard) but I would
never recommend that sequence to others; rather I'd urge students--even
those who intend to concentrate on Biblical (Koine) Greek to take at least
a year of Classical Attic FIRST; and that was our regular practice while I
taught at Washington University over 40 years: we insisted that students
wanting a course in the Koine do an introductory year of Classical Attic
first, after which we had a tutorial course of one semester exploring the
major literary styles of Biblical Greek--including Septuagint. Those who
have followed that regimen and then went on to seminary seem to have done
very well thereafter--surely better than the many students who have had no
more of an introduction to Biblical Greek that a six-week (or less) crash
course in Biblical Greek before starting classes in exegesis.
--
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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