[B-Greek] Iterative, Customary, Gnomic, Conative, etc.
Jerry Reimer
Jerry at lsm.org
Sat Mar 31 16:25:17 EDT 2007
Mr. Buth,
Would it be correct to say that the principle of studying Modern Greek for Koine improvement is applicable (also in principle), to studying Modern Hebrew (in Israel, of course) for improving existing (though not extensive) knowledge of Biblical Hebrew? Is this an apples and oranges comparison or is such thinking possibly in the ballpark? I am not so much asking about conversational fluency but vocabulary expansion and especially modern applications of the consonantal roots to modern needs. I have some limited realization that the language had to be somewhat reinvented and may not have had the benefit of as much cultural development that other languages have had which have not be interrupted. Your opinion, please.
Jerry Reimer
-----Original Message-----
From: R Yochanan Bitan Buth [mailto:ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il]
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 10:37 AM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [B-Greek] Iterative, Customary, Gnomic, Conative, etc.
Reimer ERWTHSE
>Has anyone gone to Greece and studied Modern Greek for the purpose of
improving his knowledge of Koine? By improvement I am talking about better
understanding various items inside of the GK NT which appear to reflect
change in the language occuring during the Koine period and that can now be
seen clearly in Modern Greek. For example, as Zerwick has pointed out, eis
was already pushing en out of the language during the Koine period and this
can occasionally be seen in the NT. I am looking for other specific things
like this (infinitives being replaced by ina and a subjunctive mood verb,
etc.). Is there enough of this kind of thing to justify trying to learn
Modern Greek or is sufficient to just identify these specific things (if
possible) and let it go at that? I am trying to read Caragounis' book for
this very reason. It is expensive to go to Greece and stay for six months or
a year and study the language. However if it is worth it to do so then that
is another matter. "Worth it" would mean that the impact (on comprehension
of NT GK) of doing this would be sufficent to justify the effort and the
expense. No doubt it would be a help to do this but is the degree of help
substantial? I am somewhat aware of the danger of anachronistically reading
Modern Greek idiom back into the NT but if the total continuity of the
language is a really significant factor in exegesis (as Caragounis contends)
then Modern Greek should be a great help. Your comments please.
>
There have always been a few who have done the above and they are usually
quite appreciative. There are some caveats, though.
1. The overlap of dialects might be put at 60%. That is, a modern Greek
speaker will come to the Greek NT with about 60% inside already.
2. the morphology has some minor but widespread changes so that one needs to
control many of the paradigms separately.
3. Learning a language to a functionally fluent level probably takes more
than 6 months. A multilingual learner in a monolingual Greek setting might
reach a fairly high level in six months, but most will find that they need a
minimum of one year or even two in order to reach a reasonable communicative
level.
4. Fluent in modern Greek does not mean fluent in the ancient.
Having said that, if you had the chance I would take it, and it would be
worth working towards. You will probably develop some new tastes in food,
music, and culture along the way.
However, if you had, say, only 1000-3000 hours to invest in language
acquisition, in would be best to invest it directly in a communicative
approach to the ancient.
ERRWSO
Randall
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.BiblicalUlpan.org
buth at jerusalemschool.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
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