[B-Greek] Greek Word Order And Emphasis
Mark O'Brien
mark.obrien at warnbro.org.au
Mon Aug 23 22:19:35 EDT 2004
firstly, after a long time away for a variety of reasons, it's good to
be back in the b-greek fold... greetings to all those who might
remember me from a while back! it's fantastic to see some of the
familiar names still giving such great guidance.
to the topic at hand... my simple experience has been that a previous
comment about extensive reading is really the key to this. when you
have read a lot of greek over a period of time, you begin to read the
greek (as opposed to translating it mentally), and you also begin to get
a "feel" for the occasions when the writer seems to do something
"unusual", which immediately and intuitively gets you thinking about
why.
so, a little bit each day from the NT is the tonic to a lot of this.
also, i would back up what was said previously about getting a work out
in classical greek making the NT so much easier to work through. i am
by no means a "super-greek" so my classical exposure was limited to 12
months, but i can tell you that even that made a huge difference to my
reading of koine, which just seemed so simple to read after that.
good to be back...! :-)
m.
--
Mark O'Brien, Senior Pastor
Warnbro Community Church, Western Australia
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Ted Shoemaker
Sent: Tuesday, 24 August 2004 1:13 AM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org; agapeland at gorilla.net
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Greek Word Order And Emphasis
"Emery Horvath" <agapeland at gorilla.net> wrote:
> I am a first year Greek student studying Mounce's
> BBG. In my studies, I
> have run across the statement that Greek word order
> is used for emphasis.
> Could anyone explain this a bit and/or give an
> example? How does 'emphasis'
> affect the exegesis of a passage?
In addition to the fine advice you have already
received on this list, I would add:
Don't take a rule made in English in the 19th or 20th
century as a perfect understanding of 2000-year-old
Greek.
Relevant to the word-order question:
Some scholars have found that emphasis goes at the
beginning of a sentence. Other scholars find emphasis
at the end. Who is right? Both, probably.
Language is used by people, not machines, and people
don't usually do things in a precise manner. This
fact was of considerable frustration to me until I
accepted it.
=====
Ted Shoemaker
Every man has a final weapon: his life. And if he's afraid to lose it,
he throws away that weapon. - Charlton Heston in "Khartoum".
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