[B-Greek] B-Greek] NT Greek Paedogogy redux
Caleb Hembd
caleb06 at gmail.com
Sat Aug 11 21:27:25 EDT 2007
John,
My two farthings, from a Greek beginner:
I took one year (two semesters) of classical Greek during college, using
Athenaze. I am now studying the Koine using Machen's text for beginners. I
must say that while the year of classical Greek has been very helpful when
studying Machen's text, I can *not* say that the year of classical Greek has
provided me with any additional insight into the Greek language. In fact, I
first learned accents from Machen (including accenting enclitics), because
accents were skipped over in the classical Greek course. (Sidenote: Learning
how to accent the Greek somehow seems to really increase my "feel" for the
Greek language. Maybe because accenting forces me to study the Greek so much
more closely.)
With all that being said, however, I still agree with the general consensus
that learning Classical Greek will significantly increase our insight into
the Greek New Testament. I just think it will take more than a couple
of semesters using Athenaze (or any other classical Greek grammar) before
there is any appreciable increase in understanding the Koine. One would need
to read and translate passages from Homer, Plato, Josephus, etc. for that to
happen.
Also, translating from English into Greek (very rarely done in my Classical
Greek courses) has taken my understanding of the Greek language to another
level (though I'm still light-years from being an expert!). For example,
when translating a genitive absolute, I would originally look for a pair of
words ending in OU or WN. Now I consciously look for a noun or a pronoun
plus a participle in the genitive case, and which have no connection with
the rest of the sentence. Indeed, translating into Greek goes a long way in
achieving the ideal of "thinking in Greek." When this occurs, I believe one
can finally "get inside the minds" of the New Testament writers, as they
were influenced by the Spirit.
Again, just a beginner speaking here! I'm only relating one person's
experience.
Caleb Hembd
Alvin, Texas
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