[B-Greek] Blass-Debrunner-Funk

N.E. Barry Hofstetter nebarry at verizon.net
Wed Aug 17 09:00:28 EDT 2005


>From: George F Somsel <gfsomsel at juno.com>
>Date: Wed Aug 17 07:38:56 CDT 2005
>To: cwconrad at ioa.com
>Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Blass-Debrunner-Funk

>I'll second the recommendation of Crosby & Schaeffer.  Years ago, when I
>was taking classical Greek and finding it difficult after having used
>Machen (I feel I was badly served by Machen), I had a love-hate
>relationship with C & S.  It was challenging, but that was not the
>problem.  The print was smudgey making it difficult to concentrate while
>trying to learn the language.  I noted a paperback edition in Border's
>Books 1-2 years ago and the print seems to be much better than I
>remembered it to have been in my copy.  

Me three!

C&S was my beginning text in College, and I have fond memories of it.  One thing that most of the Greek primers from this period suffer from is the assumption that the majority of the students using the texts would be familiar with Latin (and probably some German and French as well).  While that may have been true in the first third or so of the 20th century, it isn't true now, unfortunately.  I still remember C&S's explanation of the Dative of Posession (from memory, so I am probably paraphrasing slightly):

"The Greek Dative of Possession is identical to the Latin Dative of Posession.  [Example] Puero gladius est. "

No translation was given of the Latin, and of the 8 survivors of my 1st semester Greek class, I was the only one who had studied Latin in High School!

N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Adjunct Faculty & IT Support
The Center for Urban Theological Studies
Visiting Faculty: RTS-Washington, D.C.



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