[B-Greek] Living Koine Greek
Eric Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 13 10:27:58 EST 2004
Contact Dr. Buth at:
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
When I talked with him at ETS, I thought he said that Vol. 2 is still
in the works - maybe this January or Spring 2005?
John Schwandt (who is a friend/colleague of Dr. Buth) had this
review:
http://www.biblicalgreek.org/books/reviewButh.html
One of my favorite sessions at ETS was Dr. Buth's demonstration of
how his "Living Koine Greek" classes work. One participant, a
40-year teacher of the NT and NT Greek, admitted he was intimidated
by the demonstration, and we all came to clearly understood Dr.
Buth's point that the bar needs to be raised to the place where NT
Greek teachers - and their students - can become conversant/fluent
in the language. E.g., if a student asks the teacher what he did last
summer, the teacher should be able to respond in Koine Greek,
something that few, if any, NT Greek teachers can likely do - unlike,
e.g., French or German or Russian teachers. I also learned from the
session that "acting out" the pictures in a classroom setting is
probably the best way to learn the material (even though you can't,
e.g., construct a winepress or build a tower or ride a horse in class!),
though most, like me, have to just look at the pictures and listen to
the words.
As to whether or not to start with Mounce, since you're already used
to learning with pictures, you might want to use J. Lyle Story's GREEK
TO ME. I have info about it here:
http://www.geocities.com/dbcgreek/ntgreek/resources.htm#grammars
The main problem with Story or Mounce or others is that you will have to
use the Erasmian pronunciation (esp. with Story, since the grammar and
word clues are based on that pronunciation). With Story, if you do one
chapter a week, you can complete the book in less than 6 months and
you will have mastered 2x the vocabulary of Mounce (i.e., ~625 words vs.
~315 or so). The CD has the translation answer key to the textbook, so
you don't have to separately purchase it. Dr. Story also has a book now
of additional exercises; I'd recommend that, too.
Eric S. Weiss
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