[B-Greek] NT Greek pedagogy ... again

Elliot Poe Elliot.Poe at gmail.com
Wed Aug 8 14:32:18 EDT 2007


I found these posts quite accurate in their assessment. I received an 
M.Div. before later receiving an M.A. in Classics (with a Greek 
comprehensive exam that had to be passed to get the degree).

I did as much Greek as I could in seminary (one year plus three or four 
NT exegetical courses). Then, the summer before beginning my Classics 
degree, I worked through Hansen and Quinn. I felt like I was learning 
Greek for the first time, but with some familiarity.

Then I dove into the Classics program, and the Greek was way above me. 
Eventually I caught up with my classmates, and by the end I felt like I 
was really starting to know Greek, but I also know I had only made a 
small dent in the ancient Greek corpus.

By no means do I mean to make seminarians feel bad. In all likelihood, 
the fault lies with the administrations and faculties (speaking 
collectively) that set the bar so low for Greek. I felt like seminary 
did little more than show me how to make the BDAG, Wallace's grammar, 
and NA27 into a sort of sophisticated Strong's Concordance.

What if seminaries set the bar higher and required a comprehensive exam 
for biblical languages? I suppose this goes against the market mentality 
of many seminaries, but we'd have clergy persons that could read the 
text at least semi-competently.

Yours,
Elliot Poe

Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> You may radically disagree with the forceful statements about  
> inadequate seminary (and pre-seminary) training in ancient Greek, but  
> here are some blog voices that should be seen (heard?):
>
>  From John Hobbins' "Ancient Hebrew Poetry" blog, a piece entitled,  
> "It's all Greek to me"
>
> at http://tinyurl.com/32rqeu
>
> and a co-referential piece by "Ad Fontes" entitled, "Christian  
> Seminary Language Education: It’s Pretty Sad."
>
> at http://tinyurl.com/2tcedx
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>
>   




More information about the B-Greek mailing list