[B-Greek] NT Greek Paedogogy redux

John M. Linebarger jmlineb at comcast.net
Fri Aug 10 10:31:01 EDT 2007


I'm following the discussion of NT Greek paedogogy with great interest but with an increasing sense of frustration.  In a theoretical sense I can understand that learning Attic Greek provides a good foundation for reading the simpler Koine Greek of the New Testament.  I can also understand the approach that inhales large amounts of text at one sitting, and attempts to induce meaning from context instead of looking up everything in a dictionary.  After all, that's how many of us learned to read our first language.

But surely this can be done within the New Testament itself to some degree, without having to take a 1-2 year detour to learn Attic Greek?  Many of us barely have the time to maintain our Koine Greek, much less the much richer and more difficult world of Attic Greek.  And speaking from experience, it is hard enough to convince a church Sunday School class to devote at least an hour a day to learning Koine Greek; if I were to suggest learning Attic Greek first, I'd have nobody left in my class.  They (and me too) want to get into the New Testament as quickly as possible, and desire to devote their energies to the study of God's word.

So within the corpus of the New Testament itself, how would you sculpt a paedogogy that achieves the goals of Greek fluency?  Focus one's study efforts on Luke-Acts and Hebrews and one's devotional efforts on the Johannine corpus and Revelation, with the middle area being the epistles of Paul?  Inhale large chunks of the other Synoptic gospels (Mark and Matthew) on a daily basis to develop and maintain reading proficiency?

You see where I'm going with this -- how does one achieve (or approach) proficiency within the confines of the NT corpus itself?  Any thoughts from the group?

Thanks!  Enjoy!

John M. Linebarger
Albuquerque, New Mexico


More information about the B-Greek mailing list