[B-Greek] Machen's NT Greek for Beginners
Polycarp66 at aol.com
Polycarp66 at aol.com
Thu Feb 19 21:27:55 EST 2004
In a message dated 2/18/2004 8:11:10 AM Eastern Standard Time,
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu writes:
I really was NOT being facetious in my comments about Machen. I have taught
out of it myself and think I'm familiar enough with its qualities: its
grammatical explanations are too brief and for that reason less than fully
adequate or accurate; its sentences, both Greek-to-English and
English-to-Greek are "made-up" and many of them display bad grammar and
idiom (this is a pet peeve of mine; the best introductory grammars use
exclusively or almost exclusively texts drawn directly from ancient Greek
writers).
__________
Up to this point I've studiously kept my mouth shut on this subject, but I
must second Carl's evaluation of Machen. I started learning Greek with Machen
then switched to another school and took a classical course. For a time I was
completely at a loss (well, almost). I feel that Machen did not adequately
prepare a student for more difficult passages -- and most especially not for
classical Greek. I would be slightly less hard on Machen than Carl, but I do
think you can and should do better.
gfsomsel
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