[B-Greek] Learning Greek (ad nauseam and for the umpteenth time)

Jeffrey T. Requadt jeffreyrequadt_list at hotmail.com
Wed Jul 16 13:42:02 EDT 2008


This is a great post on what's really going on in Biblical Greek education. And I would add that, as an elementary teacher, I see the same basic debate/war going on in every "skill" subject in school--especially in reading and math. The classic example is "whole language" vs. "phonics/decoding." The whole language people (and I'm painting with a broad brush) say that kids should learn to read by having lots of difficulty-appropriate text available, and that we basically learn to read by reading, making new connections, wrapping our brain around new material, and using that to read whatever comes next. They would say that the ability to understand the parts (phrases, words, and letters) comes from understanding the whole (whole sentences, paragraphs, pages, etc.). Whereas the phonics/decoding people (again, stereotyping) come from the opposite direction: they believe that understanding the whole comes from knowing what the parts are/mean (what sounds the letters make, what the word means, how the words work together to make the sentence, etc.). I see this as the same basic debate (you may have heard of the "reading wars"--that's not too much of an exaggeration) as what Dr. Conrad is talking about. Do we COMPREHEND the text by identifying the parts and how they function together, or do we COMPREHEND the text by making sense of it first (as much as we can)? The first method is more of a "puzzle" method, the second is more of a "use your natural language" method. Personally, after having taught for only a few years, I am much more in favor of the second, leaning towards whole language. The parts are obviously important; they are what actually makes the sentence mean something. We don't just have words; we have grammar and syntax, or the words don't actually make any sense. But the sense is the goal (primary), and not knowing the grammar or syntax (those are secondary). I would personally recommend the book "On Reading" by Ken Goodman (Heinemann, 1996; ISBN 0-435-07200-5). It was recommended to me by our school librarian (who has a doctorate in reading or linguistics or something), and I read it this summer. Now I'm re-reading it for the purpose of outlining it for my personal notes. He makes the point that reading and writing are not just representations  of "real language" (oral/aural). They are legitimate forms of language, just as much as speaking and listening are. They are just the expression (and interpretation) of language in its two-dimensional, representational-shape form. His points are basically that "Texts are more than collections of letters and words. Making sense of texts involves complex control, by both readers and writers, of how language works and how texts are constructed. As I'll say again and again throughout this book: /the sense you make of a text depends on the sense you bring to it./ I also want to help you understand how it's possible that, even with the great amount of research and writing that's been done on these topics, so much misunderstanding still exists about reading and about written language in general. I believe that this confusion exists largely because people have started in the wrong place, with letters, letter-sound relationships and words. We must begin instead by looking at reading in the real world, at how readers and writers try to make sense with each other" (2-3). Although the focus, and all the examples, deal with reading in English, he believes that his understanding of reading applies to all languages: "My own research has been limited to reading in English, but I'm convinced that there's a single reading process--just one way of making sense of print--regardless of differences in language and orthography" (9).
Lest this sound like a book review, I want to say that I think that professors who teach Biblical Greek (or ANY language) need to think of it as language--that what they are reading somehow made sense to the author, and that the reader's job is to make as much sense of it as possible, striving to understand what the author wanted him/her to understand. As an example, I had the very good fortune of growing up in a country that speaks French, so I learned to speak and read (and write, but that's another matter) French fairly fluently. NEVER when I was learning to read French, or even today (when my French is rusty due to no regular use), would I look at all the words of the sentence in turn, analyze them for form, think about their function in the sentence and relate them to the other words or phrases. That's not understanding. When I read French, I just read it--sure, I'm using different processes to comprehend it, such as thinking about what I already know, asking questions, predicting, inferring, etc.; but I'm definitely not analyzing it. And if someone asked me to tell me what the text meant in English, I could give a decent approximation--maybe a translation?--but I can understand it in French better than I can Englishify it.
I could describe how the same basic debate is going on in math (now we have the math wars), but that would take too long.
When it comes to Biblical Greek, I've written before that I'm not so sure that we should be spending money on teaching seminary and undergraduate students to analyze Greek text. That kind of ability will not help them understand the Bible to any great degree more than a good English translation will (and there are plenty of good, even great, English translations out there). That's what I learned to do, and when I come to a Greek text, the only thing I can really do is recognize some of the very common words, some of the noun endings (and most of the verb endings), but not comprehend it. I don't think there's been a single time when I came straight to the Greek text and could understand it "confidently" without resorting to a lexicon over and over and over, for almost all the words. That's not reading, and it's a very low level of understanding. So why should we be spending money and time on training future ministry personnel to do this? There are a plethora of resources, both print and electronic, that can do this for them, and much better then I ever could. I'm beginning to think that if we are going to spend these resources (and put these young people through such a difficult time), we should be teaching them first and foremost to COMPREHEND the text and become proficient Greek readers. Then, when they come to the New Testament, they don't have to rely on an English translation or even a grammatical analysis. They can just read it. They understand what it means. I know I would love to be able to do this, but I don't have the time, energy, or professional reasons to embark on such a journey. I'm definitely in favor of Biblical studies students/scholars learning Greek (and other ancient languages) in order to comprehend what they're dealing with--but only if they're going to really learn it as language, and not, as Dr. Conrad says, "the notion of understanding a Biblical text as decoding and converting its elements piecemeal into the target language." I'm starting to think that anything else is a waste of time and money, and maybe even counterproductive.

Jeffrey T. Requadt
Tucson, AZ 

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Carl W. Conrad
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:33 AM
To: knpraise at comcast.net
Cc: B-Greek B-Greek
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Learning Greek (ad nauseam and for the umpteenth time)


On Jul 16, 2008, at 1:11 AM, (John Smithson) knpraise at comcast.net wrote:

>
> Dr. Conrad, you rcently wrote:
>
>>> At any rate, I want the student being tested for understanding of  
>>> the Greek text to tell me not what the WORDS of the text mean in  
>>> terms of English (or other target-language) words, but what the  
>>> text supposedly understood MEANS -- expressed in "otherwords" or  
>>> "re-stated in one's own words."   <<
>
> And you follow up with
>
>>> All of this has to do with my objection to the growing use of  
>>> "interlinears" or "reverse interlinears as primary tools of what  
>>> continues to be called "learning Biblical Greek <<
>
> With the above,  are you saying that a correct interpretation or  
> understanding of a particular text is the function of a thorough  
> going grammatical/syntacitical review of that text?
>
> If that is true,  what avenues of research or study are open to the  
> laymen as she attempts to glean meaning from the same particular text?
>
> Thank you.
>
> I am new to the forum.  I am also quite the layman when it comes to  
> Greek  (a retired pastor whose two years of formal Greek studies  
> occured in '69-71, shortly after the earth cooled.)    If my  
> questions are not appropriate to this forum, please advise.  I do  
> enjoy the discussions.

John: I don't think we spend more time in this forum talking about  
anything in the world more than pedagogy: we all want to learn Greek  
or learn it better. You may have started in '69-'71, "shortly after  
the earth cooled" -- I started in 1952, "still in the ice age"? (when  
gasoline was 20c a gallon). We all want to learn Greek, but we range  
across a very broad spectrum about how to do it.

The message from which you cited me was part of a longer thread of  
messages in what seems a recurrent and ongoing discussion on this list  
of the hows and the whys of learning Biblical Greek or ancient Greek  
generally. The chief point I was trying to make in the above message  
is that understanding an ancient Greek text is more a matter of  
reading the text in question as nearly as possible in the same manner  
as an ancient reader who spoke and wrote the language read it -- or in  
the way that a knowledgeable speaker and writer of English reads and  
understands an English text. Understanding the text is not -- not  
primarily, at any rate -- a matter of grammatical and syntactical  
analysis (I must say that my experience as a teacher is that no few  
students can do a grammatical and syntactical analysis of a passage of  
connected Greek text without really understanding it). I think that  
understanding the Greek text that one is reading is a matter of  
grasping directly through the written text, as it flows along, what  
its author intended to communicate. So much of the analytic  
"grammatical/syntactical review of a text" -- as you put it -- hinges  
on taking apart the elements and structures of the discourse, focuses  
on the "how" of what the discourse communicates rather than upon the  
"what" that the author intended to communicate. Too much of the  
procedure that is most commonly taught, I believe, is based upon the  
notion that the Biblical Greek text is a cipher that has to be decoded  
and reduced to its concrete number of intelligible elements that can  
be converted to English or some other target language; that has been  
one of the recurrent targets of my criticism -- the notion of  
understanding a Biblical text as decoding and converting its elements  
piecemeal into the target language.

Our archives, the oldest of them going back to 1991, are chock full of  
pedagogical discussions of how to acquire and master Biblical Greek.  
Just about every conceivable approach, textbook, and methodology  
thought to be useful for learning Biblical Greek has been discussed at  
some time, most of them many times. There's both wheat and chaff in  
those archived discussions, but one has to do one's own sifting, I'm  
afraid.

Here's something I wrote a few months ago in this forum that speaks, I  
think, to the questions you are raising:

"(1) I don't really believe that it takes an earthquake or a  
mutation   to give one a real mastery of Greek; what it takes is more  
intense and   sustained effort on the part of one endeavoring to  
achieve it. But   even that effort must be methodical rather than  
haphazard. I've   described my own process of slogging through Homer  
hour after hour,   night after night, and the exhilaration upon  
coming, eventually, to   reading line after line of text -- not so  
much effortlessly, as   confidently and with understanding. I think  
that one must do this   slogging with each new author one tackles, to  
some extent --   particularly an author with a distinctive style and a  
distinctive   lexical range. And, as I've said recently with regard to  
use of the   lexicon while reading, one needs to take pains with  
lexicon entries   and not just scan them quickly for the gloss that  
will permit one to   go on with the passage currently being read: one  
needs to take pains   with the recurrent words that have significant  
nuances in different   contexts. As for the reading itself, I remain  
convinced that the more   one keeps reading Greek that is unfamiliar  
or less familiar, the   better equipped one will be to come back and  
read the GNT again.

"(2) Another key element in this problem and its solution (how to    
achieve mastery of Greek), it seems to me, is the extent to which    
analytical investigation of the text is primary or secondary. At the    
textbook level this is a matter of (a) the traditional method of new    
lessons introducing new vocabulary, new grammar items, and a few    
context-less sentences or phrases illustrating the new  
construction(s)   and employing the new vocabulary -- vs. (b) new  
lessons built around   extensive texts of connected prose (or verse)  
while having at hand the   lexical and syntactical aids that will  
assist mastery of those texts.   The traditional approach focuses on  
analytical skills: memorization of   paradigms for declension of  
nouns, pronouns, and adjectives and   conjugation of verbs -- parsing  
of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and   verbs -- identification of  
categories and subcategories of case or   tense or mood usage. I don't  
say that the analytical process is   worthless but that it does NOT  
naturally lead to comprehension of   connected prose or verse texts.  
What one must aim at is thinking in   Greek as one reads, not sentence- 
by-sentence searching for subjects   and predicates and modifiers but  
reading words in the order that the   Greek-speaking mind finds  
"natural" and grasping the cumulative   meaning in successive phrases.  
The interlinears and parsed texts may   occasionally be useful when  
one does analytical exploration of how a   passage works to  
communicate its meaning, but I honestly do not   believe that they  
will teach one how to think in Greek. I am inclined   to think that  
the predominant approach in current Biblical Greek   pedagogy, as  
indicated by textbooks as well as by analytic tools and   electronic  
resources being made available to students of Biblical   Greek,  
focuses upon the analytical skills rather than upon reading.   And  
that, I think, is why so few students of Biblical Greek arrive at    
the ability to READ Greek.

"An analogy might make this paradox clearer. I remember being    
surprised, when first reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, to  
find   him insisting that lectures on morality are useless to those  
who do   not already practice good behavior, and that children learn  
to behave   rightly by growing up in an environment where right  
behavior is   practiced. It seemed to me that this was tantamount to  
saying, as Jane   Austen might say, that it is "good breeding" that  
makes people good,   that parental and peer behavior is the primary  
factor in acquisition   of good character -- although one knows that  
the "well-bred" can   behave in selfish and dishonorable ways just as  
surely as those raised   on the wrong side of the tracks, and Jane  
Austen's novels themselves   amply illustrate that truth. What  
Aristotle really meant by insisting   that lectures on morality are  
useless to those who do not already   practice good behavior is that  
moral philosophy attempts to examine   the "whys" of right behavior,  
not the "hows." Comparably, it seems to   me, the analytical approach  
to learning Biblical Greek tends to focus   on the "whys" of good  
grammar (Why a dative with this verb? Why a   subjunctive in this  
construction? Why an aorist rather than a present- tense form in this  
narrative sentence?) instead of the "hows" of good   grammar. One  
learns the "hows" of good Greek grammar (i.e. how lucid   and  
intelligent Greek speakers/writers express themselves in order to   be  
understood by intelligent Greek listeners/readers) by reading Greek    
texts and/or listening to Greek speakers, NOT, in the first  
analysis,   by parsing the words of their sentences and explaining  
the   constructions of their cases, moods and tenses."

Now it well may be that what you really meant to ask was how YOU might  
start again to learn the Greek you started to learn 40 years ago. If  
that's the case, ask more directly. For better or worse, you will  
certainly find that respondents in this forum hold strong views on the  
better and worse approaches -- and there is no clear consensus. But  
first, let's get clear on what it is that you do in fact want.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)

---
B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek




More information about the B-Greek mailing list