[B-Greek] Machen's NT Greek for Beginners

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Feb 22 08:51:46 EST 2004


At 7:41 AM -0500 2/22/04, Barry wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Steve Westfall" <steve.westfall at comcast.net>
>To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 1:17 AM
>Subject: RE: [B-Greek] Machen's NT Greek for Beginners
>
>> Also, bear in mind what Barry Hofstetter said about Machen's target
>> audience.  Machen's book was not written for the typical person who begins
>> the study of NT Greek today.  Many of these have never studied any foreign
>> language and may not even have all that solid a grasp of English grammar.
>> It was written for people who had previously mastered Latin and perhaps
>> modern foreign languages.
>
>My beginning Greek text, way back in the 20th century, was Crosby and
>Schaeffer
>(1928).  I still remember being amused by the explanation for the dative of
>possession:
>
>The dative of possession in Greek is identical to the dative of possession in
>Latin:
>
>Puero gladius est.
>
>No further explanation given!  Out of about 10 or so students in the class, I
>was the only one who had taken Latin previously...

Crosby & Schaeffer was once the standard textbook in Classical Attic in use
in prep schools and in those public high schools that taught Greek. Of the
classical primers of the old fashioned "learn the paradigms" books, it's
one of the best, and I see that, although it's out of print, one can still
get hold of a copy without too much effort. Back when I first started
teaching in the early 60's I kept two or three copies of Crosby and
Schaeffer and two or three copies of Machen for use by self-learners I came
in contact with (I have always felt obliged to assist anyone willing to
expend the serious effort to learn Greek); there were few reasonable
alternatives to those two primers of classical and NT Greek respectively
back then. Today there are numerous alternatives for both. I am not
surprized that there are still so many who prefer or are satisfied with
Machen (I think it makes people think that NT Greek is easier to learn than
it really is), but I still feel that they could do much better with one of
the alternatives available.
-- 

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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