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

Bryant J. Williams III bjwvmw at com-pair.net
Wed Jul 16 14:07:30 EDT 2008


Dear John,

May be an example from New Tribes Mission is a good example of what Carl, et al,
have been saying.

A missionary friend of mine is Papua, New Guinea for about 10 years. BEFORE he
could start talking to the people about the gospel he had to do the following:
    1.    Learn the language of the people.
    2.    Talk to them in the language of the people.
    3.    Listen to a story in the language of the people.
    4.    Repeat back the story he was listening to in the language of the
people.
    5.    Write down the story in the language of the people.
    6.    Then translate the story into his language (English).
    7.    Tell them a story (non-biblical) in the language of the people.
    8.    Ask/answer questions in the language of the people about the story in
the language of the people.
    9.    Now, begin to tell the story of salvation in the language of the
people beginning in Genesis.
    10.   Repeat steps 1-9, again, again, again, again, again, ad infinitum.

En Xristwi,

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
To: <knpraise at comcast.net>
Cc: "B-Greek B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:32 AM
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)
>
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