[B-Greek] Slightly Off-Topic Re: Etymology and "Knowing Greek"

frjsilver at optonline.net frjsilver at optonline.net
Tue Oct 3 20:54:59 EDT 2006


Dear Friends --

In my experience, whenever someone gives a 'word study' example in a sermon, the preaching is in inverse proportion to the preacher's knowledge of the language. The preacher goes on and on, anyway.

It's one thing to expound on The Word, and it's quite another to expound on words -- an enterprise better suited to lecture halls and the Grove of Akademos.

People need to be fed in church, not lectured.

Peace and blessings to all.

Father James Silver

Monk James
Orthodox Church in America

----- Original Message -----
From: kbent at comeoverandhelpus.com
Date: Tuesday, October 3, 2006 2:59 pm
Subject: [B-Greek] Etymology and "Knowing Greek"
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org

> In reading your discussions, I was reminded again of D.A. Carson's
> chapter on Word Study Fallacies in his book "Exegetical Fallacies"
> (Baker Academic), which includes some excellent and glaring 
> examples of
> "The Root Fallacy" and "Semantic Anachronism."
> 
> Kenneth Bent
> Silsbee, TX
> 
> 
> <> Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 11:35:37 -0400
> From: "Carl W. Conrad" 
> Subject: [B-Greek] F.F. Bruce on "knowing Greek"
> To: B-Greek B-Greek 
> Cc: suzanne mccarthy 
> Message-ID: <10DAE249-10FA-47AC-8B48-BA1AB2B30D50 at artsci.wustl.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed
> 
> 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 
> memoirsof 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/>>
> 
> 
> 
> 
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