[B-Greek] grammar-translation

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Tue Aug 4 13:06:23 EDT 2009


On Aug 4, 2009, at 8:30 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

> It is ,alas -- my reaction, shared, I suspect by very few --,  the  
> wave of the future in Biblical Greek pedagogy -- less so in  
> Classical Greek pedagogy. There is no pretense of such fool notions  
> as "thinking in Greek." Rather, it is: Parse, decode, and use the  
> glosses to convert to woodenly-literal English, somewhat like an  
> attempt to describe the taste of a cucumber or broccoli that one has  
> only sniffed. Granted, this is a gross exaggeration, but there is, I  
> think, more than a little truth in it.


Carl,

I agree, it is "the wave of the future in Biblical Greek pedagogy"


On Aug 4, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Will Dilbeck wrote:

>  "Pragmatically, how can I go from translation to reading/thinking  
> in Greek?"

Will,

The only evidence I can see that I have "internalized" greek is errors  
in my english syntax. I tend to drop the verb "to be" and my use of  
the articles has suffered. I also use some really strange word order  
and drop out constituents which are not "optional" in english.  But I  
make lots of other errors which don't lend themselves to this  
explanation. I don't even dream of thinking in Greek, it isn't going  
to happen. My aptitude for SLA is marginal to poor. I didn't do well  
in modern languages when i was in school.

Aptitude is one issue that Buth seems to have completely ignored. This  
is a common fault found in "gifted people". They just cannot  
understand what the majority of the populace is up against. Must of us  
are not gifted people and learning Greek, Latin or Hebrew requires a  
ridiculous level of time investment. Those who choose to avoid the  
whole problelm and just use english tools for exegesis have a strong  
pragmatic argument in thier favor. Why bother investing thousands of  
hours to become a mediocre reader of Koine?

.

Here is a text David Black uses to illustrate the imperative
.
John 14:1 Μὴ ταρασσέσθω ὑμῶν ἡ καρδία·  
πιστεύετε εἰς τὸν θεὸν καὶ εἰς ἐμὲ  
πιστεύετε.
.
JOHN 14:1 MH TARASSESQW hUMWN hH KARDIA· PISTEUETE EIS TON QEON KAI  
EIS EME PISTEUETE.
.

Black used intonation and/or paraphrase in english to illustrate how  
an exegetical decision about the ambiguous form PISTEUETE would play  
out in four possible combinations of indicative vs. imperative  
readings of PISTEUETE. It would be an interesting exercise to come up  
with an alternative teaching method that could illustrate this point  
without using translation alternatives.
.


Elizabeth Kline







More information about the B-Greek mailing list