[B-Greek] NT Greek Paedogogy redux
Eric S. Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 10 11:15:28 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
Hi, John. You probably won't like my answer, and I don't like it, either. I took a couple years
of NT Greek and have taught it off and on at church(es) over the past 10 years or so. In fact,
I'm currently teaching a small class, using Croy's A PRIMER OF BIBLICAL GREEK (and
have already experienced the usual 40% or so dropout rate - even if you just teach NT
Greek, a lot of students will quit). But I am seeing that I don't know Greek, even though I
know NT Greek better than all the pastors I've had, and better than most of the Dallas
Theological Seminary students and grads I went to church with for a period of several years.
Every time I start reading an Attic Greek textbook, I realize and learn things about Greek
that I wasn't taught or didn't learn from my NT Greek textbooks. This time I hope I maintain
the effort and will to complete a 1st-year Attic course (I am not good at self-study, but it's
my only option). I have decided that this is the last time I will teach a NT Greek class,
though. I don't think it's right to teach people simply NT Greek without starting with Attic
Greek, both because of everything I've read here at B-Greek, and because of the little bit I've
experienced myself.
Sure, someone who takes a NT Greek class will likely make fewer Greek errors from the
pulpit or in their studies than your typical pastor/teacher armed with e-sword and Vine's and
Strong's Concordance. But I am no longer sure that someone who only knows NT Greek is
adequately prepared to read the Greek NT. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic.
FWIW, I learned a marvelous principle about accents in Mastronarde's INTRODUCTION TO
ATTIC GREEK that I had never heard or read in any of my many NT Greek grammars.
Maybe it only applies to Attic Greek (Mastronarde and/or Carson say that the accent rules
changed a bit for Koine, but I don't know how much).
From Unit Two, Section 4, p. 17 of Introduction to Attic Greek, by Donald J. Mastronarde:
CONTONATION AND MORA. The apparently complex "rules" of Greek accentuation can be
understood in terms of a single general principle involving the concepts of contonation and
mora. CONTONATION is the combination of the rise of pitch generally thought of as the
accent with the necessary return or fall to standard pitch which follows it. In the case of an
acute accent, the contonation includes both the syllable on which the accent is written (and
on which the pitch rises) and the entire following syllable (on which the pitch falls), if any,
whether it counts as long or short. In the case of the circumflex accent, the contonation
occurs on the one syllable on which the accent is written, for there are both a rise in pitch
and a return to standard pitch on that syllable. A MORA is the (theoretically assigned)
"standard" length of a short vowel (A, E, I, O, U, and final AI and OI in most cases). A long
vowel (A, EI, H, I, OU, W, U) or a diphthong* (except for final AI and OI in most cases)
occupies (theoretically) a time span equivalent to two morai.
The general principle of Greek accentuation is that the contonation may be followed by no
more than one mora before the end of a word (or phrase pronounced as one word unit). This
principle is in many respects similar to rules in other languages (e.g., Latin) which constrain
the position of the accent according to the nature of the final syllables of a word. In Greek
this principle limits the position of the acute and circumflex accents and requires the
addition of an extra accent in some phrases consisting of word + enclitic.
My additional comments:
* So-called "improper" or "long" diphthongs (A, H, and W with subscripted I) are also always
long. I am not sure why Mastronarde omits mention of AU, EU, and HU.
By convention there are a couple exceptions to this principle when it comes to the enclitics
ESTI(N) and TIS/TI:
1) ESTI(N) following a word with a circumflex on the ultima is not accented; one would
normally expect an acute on the ultima of ESTI(N); and
2) TINWN (the genitive plural) following a word with an acute on the penult has a circumflex
accent on its ultima; normally a disyllabic enclitic following such a word receives an acute
accent on its second syllable.
Eric S. Weiss
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