[B-Greek] Etymological fallacy?
Oun Kwon
kwonbbl at gmail.com
Wed Nov 19 16:16:42 EST 2008
ekklesia - assembly - of those people called out - etc. It was a civil
assembly. When used in the context of N.T. it is assembly of those
people called out by God, etc. I think it is rather an example of a
word play or folk etymology, rather than etymological fallacy.
Oun.
On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 2:59 PM, Joseph Weaks <j.weaks at tcu.edu> wrote:
> I think a big part of the problem is that as a teacher of Greek to
> beginning students, it is too tempting to over-simplify for the sake
> of pedagogical advantage. Etymological & transliterative cues play
> such a role in vocabulary learning. I think this applies equally to
> both deductive and inductive process. It goes like this:
>
> Teacher: "Yes, well, LUW means 'to release or loose'."
> Student: "I'm never going to remember that."
> Teacher: "You can find it in in English words... 'analysis' is ANA+LUW
> which is to 'break up' something so you can analyze each part."
> Student: "Excellent. I understand."
> Teacher: "Right, you UNDER+STAND it, meaning that you stand under the
> concept in order to gain perspective on it."
> Student: "Huh?"
>
> And, once we've learned vocabulary through such reliance, it's
> difficult to move away from it. When I was a [Greek-learning] child, I
> thought like a child, but now...
>
> Cheers,
> Joe
>
> Rev. Joseph A. Weaks
> Minister, Raytown Christian Church
> Ph.D. Cand., Brite Divinity School, TCU
>
> On Nov 19, 2008, at 1:26 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:
>
>> I like Carl's comment that there seems to be no way to convince
>> people regarding the ety. fallacy. I'm afraid the problem is that
>> etymological "gold nuggets" are one of the leading reasons why people
>> get interested in Greek, and they desperately want to believe in
>> them.
> ---
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