[B-Greek] grammar-translation

Martin F. Daly pastor at ruggleschurch.worthyofpraise.org
Tue Aug 4 14:25:48 EDT 2009


I find myself sadly discouraged and must make definite effort to press 
on with my desire to be able to read my Greek New Testament.
I set that as a 10 year goal for myself 6 years ago and realize that I 
gave myself too much credit. I am miserably plodding along, yet am not 
wanting to give up.
I have no grand illusions that I will ever achieve the level of some on 
this list, but am committed to a life of continued meditation in the 
text, relishing in the joy of
discovery as new understanding dawns.

EN CHARIS,
--- marty ---

Elizabeth Kline wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
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>   




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