[B-Greek] Learning b-Greek

Jan Hoogland hoogland at hawaii.rr.com
Fri Jun 4 20:37:11 EDT 2004


Hello Chet,

The objective of b-Greek is two-fold: what does the text mean and how should we translate it?  Your obective to 'acquire' b-Greek is interesting but goes far beyond the scope of b-Greek study. I am afraid that you will not find anyone to converse with.

Your difficulty with b-Greek does not stem from b-Greek being difficult but it stems from the method of teaching. English people have the tendency to consider English as natural and as a consequence b-Greek is taught in terms of English grammar. This happens to be a fatal mistake as b-Greek has many more grammatical devices than English. Those additional devices can be readily understood but they often cannot be accounted for in a translation. To try to account for them in a translation is the cause of b-Greek being considered difficult. I may receive some flak by claiming that about one quarter of the information contained in b-Greek is untranslatable.

A case in point is the aorist, which simply is a tense that abstains from indicating a time frame, as the name suggests. Inspection will show that the N.T. writers used it for this purpose. It is an extremely useful tense, used by far the most and it is sorely lacking in English. In addition this tense causes a change of meaning of the other tenses. Other often untranslatable devices are the cases, the placement of adjectives, some moods, etc.

Your goal however is a sound one. The only way to understand b-Greek is to study the Greek, using a grammar of the b-Greek laguage rather than a grammar that tries to put Greek into the straightjacket of English grammar. If you have difficulty finding the right grammar you may consult "The Language Instinct" by Pinker which might surprise you pleasantly.

Greetings,

Jan.


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