[B-Greek] On the relationship between original language study anddead chickens
Steve Runge
srunge at logos.com
Mon Dec 7 10:06:40 EST 2009
My site crashed sometime yesterday, supposedly I did not pay the light
bill. I did. Anyhow, hopefully Bluehost reactivate after their
specialist takes a look.
-----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: Monday, December 07, 2009 3:02 AM
To: B-Greek
Cc: Steve Runge
Subject: [B-Greek] On the relationship between original language study
anddead chickens
Steve Runge yesterday in his NT Discourse blog posted the above-titled
meditation or rumination (If I may use such terms for this sort of
narrative and reflection upon recent pedagogical experience). He writes
(note the HP, Steve!):
"There has been an elephant in the room for some time at many
seminaries: the waning ability to justify the usefulness of traditional
Greek and Hebrew study in preparation for pastoral ministry."
The key term here is "traditional" as descriptive of a kind of pedagogy
based upon what he calls (and I have often referred to as) "decoding"
the original-language text.
http://www.ntdiscourse.org/2009/12/on-the-relationship-between-original-
language-study-and-dead-chickens
The bit about "dead chickens" has to do with parsing of
original-language texts. What he writes reminds me of a favorite offhand
remark by Aristotle in (I think) De partibus animalium; it goes
something like this: "Do not be disdainful of dissecting the entrails of
a fish: God is also to be found in the entrails of a fish." Steve seems
to believe that too, although he, like myself, seems to have some doubts
about how much the process of parsing original-language texts really
facilitates the discernment of God in those texts.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
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