[B-Greek] F.F. Bruce on "knowing Greek"

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Oct 3 11:35:37 EDT 2006


Suzanne McCarthy calls attention in a blog posting this morning
on "Better Bibles Blog" to an older blog post of her own of last April :
http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/2006/04/william-kelly.html

The item of particular interest here is a passage cited from the memoirs
of F.F. Bruce, from which I cite only one sentence about "knowing
Greek" that comes close to something I've often expressed here
myself:

"I have met students who claimed to ‘know Greek’ on the basis of
their acquaintance with the Greek New Testament; even if that
latter acquaintance were exhaustive, it would no more amount to a
knowledge of Greek than acquaintance with the English New
Testament would amount to a knowledge of English."

The fuller citation is well worth looking at; indeed, I'm now
tempted to look up the memoir with its Proustian title, "In
Retrospect: Remembrance of Things Past"
(Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/jj4od)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





More information about the B-Greek mailing list