[B-Greek] Learning Greek, Experiences, and Thoughts
Eric Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 1 22:43:10 EST 2005
Greetings, Amos!
Jonathan Pennington also has a 2-CD set (Zondervan) in
which he reads a number of passages from the Greek New
Testament.
As you know, Phemister and Pennington both use the
"Erasmian" pronunciation.
Ignore what I will now write if it freaks you out too
much, but ... something you might want to do is
purchase Spiros Zodhiates' audio CDs (26 CDs) of the
Greek New Testament read with the Modern Greek
pronunciation (about $100 retail, but available for
$60+ through Amazon.com).
Yes, the Modern Greek pronunciation will throw you for
awhile - no rough breathing and many of the vowels and
diphthongs are pronounced like "ee" (e.g., the first
person and second person plurals are aurally
indistinguishable, as both upsilon and eta are
pronounced as "ee").
But ... Modern Greek is quite close to the way Greek
was likely pronounced when Paul wrote his epistles,
and much closer to 1st-century Greek pronunciation
than "Erasmian" is.
As many first-year Biblical Hebrew grammars teach
students to use the Modern Hebrew pronunciation, it
might be about time that some first-year NT Greek
grammars and teachers start teaching students in this
country (USA) to use a Modern Greek pronunciation.
After all, that is how you'll hear the NT read if you
ever visit a Greek Orthodox church, and they've been
reading and saying it that way, or close to that way,
for hundreds of years. Plus, it sounds so much more
authentic than "Erasmian." ;^)
=====
Eric S. Weiss
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list