[B-Greek] Reading the GNT (Easiest to most difficult books)

Carl W.Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sun Apr 17 17:06:23 EDT 2005


On Apr 17, 2005, at 4:26 PM, Jim West wrote:

> I don't think there's a website and even if there were it would be 
> very subjective, as notions of "ease" and "difficulty" are by their 
> nature individualized.  usually the order is something like (from 
> easiest to most difficult)  Johannine epistles, the Gospel of John, 
> the Synoptics, the Pauline epistles, the remaining catholic epistles, 
> Hebrews, 1 Peter.  I leave Revelation off the list because it is 
> dreadful Greek- filled with all manner of solepsisms.  It's not 
> difficult because of grammar or vocabulary- it's difficult because 
> it's bad greek.
>
> Start with John and end with Revelation- after the other stuff.
>
> Others will of course disagree and have their own views which is only 
> to be expected since, as I have already mentioned, your's is such a 
> subjective question.

Well, I'll certainly agree that there's subjectivity involved with a 
decision like this, but almost everyone will  say that one should start 
with the gospel of John; Hebrews is, I think, very difficult in many 
places.

We've had the question of "bad Greek" and what it means before; 
generally I think we mean by it that the Greek text doesn't follow the 
practice of those formally schooled in Greek--at least, that's how I'd 
use the term. But there's a lot of subjectivity to that also. As for 
the book of Revelation, it is true that it is replete with lots of 
solecisms (but not, I think, solipsisms--nowhere is the author writing 
to and for himself alone) but the curious thing is that most of the 
grammatical irregularities of Revelation do not really deter one with a 
fair knowledge of Greek from understanding what is being said. Or 
perhaps I should say, the problems in understanding the text of 
Revelation spring from the symbolic and allegorical language employed, 
and not from the Greek style as such.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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