[B-Greek] relative value of re-reading the Greek NT versus following the advise of Conrad and Buth

James Ernest j.d.ernest at bc.edu
Sat Feb 23 23:36:57 EST 2008


Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com> asked:

> Is there anybody out there who ignores Conrad and Buth and
> just reads the Greek NT and feels this is working?

I'm sure that there is, and that the feeling is delusional.

Well, I could and maybe should qualify that pronouncement, but instead I'll
move on to what I wanted to throw in, which is this: whether it's reading NT
or reading other Greek or getting oral/aural, I suspect that Greek learning
is like geology, or Stephen Jay Gould's notion of evolutionary progress: for
moving from one level to the next, steady progress is not what will get you
there. It will take the equivalent of an earthquake or a mutation--whether
that's a 4-week total-immersion ulpan, or a year or two of slogging
through Euripedes and Plato and Herodotus in MA courses, or something else I
haven't thought of.

If that's a depressing thought--well, maybe I'm wrong. (Am I?)

James Ernest



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