[B-Greek] B-Greek Year End Awards
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Tue Dec 22 13:31:26 EST 2009
B-Greek Year End Awards:
MOST DISCUSSED TOPIC: Pedagogy.
BEST SUBJECT LINE: Mitch Larramore,
“Hebrews 13:2..Now it’s deponent, now it’s not.”
MORE HEAT THAN FWS AWARD: Pronunciation.
BEST NEW BOOK: Christophe Rico, Polis, Parler Le
Grec Ancien Comme un Langue Vivante.
BEST FONT ON A PRINTED GREEK NEW TESTAMENT:
Robinson/Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek.
BEST NEW AUDIO PRODUCT: Randall Buth,
KATA IWANHN C.D.
SINGLE MOST HELPFUL RESOURCE FOR
LEARNING NEW TESTAMENT GREEK:
Goodrich/Lukaszewski, Zondervan’s A
Reader’s Greek New Testament.
THE STARBUCKS GOOD, BUT OVERPRICED
AWARD: BDAG ($120.00)
BEST B-GREEK SPIN-OFF:
The Dialogos E-Mailing-Each-Other-In-Koine Group
BEST POIHTHS On Dialogos: Donald Cobb
LEAST HELPFUL WAY TO DISTINGUISH
EIMI FROM EIMI FOR THOSE OF US WHO
DON’T KNOW ANY LATIN: EIMI (sum) and EIMI (ibo)
BETTER WRITER THAN HOMER AWARD:
OUTIS, as in Οῦ̔τις γράφει κάλιον ̔Ομήρου
OUTIS GRAFEI KALION hOMHROU.
“Nobody writes better than Homer.” Cf. Odyssey 9:408.
BEST CLASSICAL ALLUSION IN A POP SONG:
Kelly Clarkson, “You think I’m stupid but the truth is,
that it’s Cupid. Baby, loving you has made me this way.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1411-Jx9-Xk
BEST TONGUE-IN-CHEEK TERM FOR A CRITIC
OF JOSEPH THAYER’S GREEK-ENGLISH LEXICON
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: Carl Conrad “Nay-Thayer.”
BEST DEFENDER OF JOSEPH THAYER: Andrew Shuttles.
M.V.P. AWARD: (MOST VILLIFIED PRONOUNCER)
Desiderius Erasmus.
THE HAWKEYE PIERCE AWARD FOR THE
ORTHOGRAPHIC REFORM LEAST LIKELY TO
TAKE PLACE BECAUSE IT MAKES TOO MUCH SENSE:
Sarah Madden, for suggesting that we retain rough breathings
but get rid of smooth readings. Of all the e-ink spilled on
B-Greek during 2009, I can’t think of anything that makes
more gosh darned sense. Can anyone think of any other
case of two symbols, where one means X and the other means,
not the opposite of X, but the complete absence of X?
Imagine if you had one symbol like “!” which meant
exclamation, and the same symbol printed upside down
which meant no exclamation? But here’s what really
drives me crazy about the fact that Sarah’s reform is not
immediately implemented. I bet everyone of this list
has experienced this. You are reading an old Greek
text and you find a word that begins with a diphthong
and an accent. You squint to see if it is a rough or
smooth breathing, and you can’t even tell because
the stupid thing is too small and blurry and these marks
look very similar to begin with. But, if all we had was
the rough breathing, you would
easily see that it is either there or not. So, what we have
with the present system is an extra mark, the smooth breathing,
which (a) was added later (b) is unnecessary (b) doesn’t
even really work all that well.
BEST MUSIC VIDEO: “All Things are Better in Koine.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvVylnHnn9s
BEST GREEK BOOK TO PUT ON YOUR COFFEE TABLE:
D.S. Baker, “Greek Proverbs.” Cool illustrations and the
only Greek book I have ever seen which has a truly giant font.
LEAST SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO CONCEAL SARCASM
WHILE MAKING A SERIOUS POINT ABOUT PEDAGOGY:
Carl Conrad “Fifteen whole precious days to learn how to pretend to know Greek.”
MOST PROLIFIC DISCOVERER OF HELPFUL ON-LINE
RESOURCES THAT I SOMEHOW MISSED: Louis Sorenson.
THANKS FOR TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM PRIZE:
Elizabeth Kline, who spent much of calendar 2009 reading through,
sharing insights from, and asking great questions about 2 Corinthians,
the Greek of which is the most difficult in the NT, with apologies
to Hebrews and the second half of Acts.
TOO MUCH INFORMATION AWARD:
Pieter Willem Van Der Horst, “Did Sarah Have A Seminal Emission?”
Bible Review (Feb 1992,) quoted in the Thread on whether
DUNAMIN EIS KATABOLHN SPERMATOS ELABON
in Heb 11:11 refers to Abraham or Sarah.
SEPARATED AT BIRTH? AWARD:
Indo-European and Proto-Semitic.
THE FACTOR THAT MAKES THE TRANSITION
FROM NEW TESTAMENT TO HOMERIC GREEK
THE MOST DIFFICULT, AND IT”S NOT WHAT YOU
THINK, IT’S NOT ALL THE EXTRA FORMS YOU
HAVE TO LEARN, OR THE DUAL, OR THE MASSIVE
VOCABULARLY, OR ELISION: The fact that in the NT
prepositions essentially go with nouns, whereas in Homer,
prepositions essentially go with verbs.
BIBLICAL GREEK PERSON OF THE YEAR,
BEING THE AWARD GIVEN TO THE PERSON
WHOSE POSTS WERE OVERALL THE MOST
HELPFUL DURING CALENDAR 2009, THIS YEAR
GOING TO A GUY WHO HAS A MARVELOUS
COMMAND OF THE GREEK NT AND KNOWS A
LOT ABOUT LINGUISTICS AND TRANSLATION
TECHNIQUES AND THE REASON HE GOT MY
VOTE IS THAT HIS POSTS ON HEB 11:11 WERE
EXTREMELY WELL ARGUED AND HIS TAKE
ON ANEBHN IN JN 21:11 WAS CREATIVE AND,
UNLIKE THE WAY A DRUNK USES A LIGHTPOST,
THIS GUY ALWAYS USES THE GREEK TEXT
FOR ILLUMINATION, NOT SUPPORT: Iver Larsen.
BEST GRAMMATICAL TERM: Daniel Wallace,
“Aporetic Genitive.”
BEST RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION
‘WHAT KIND OF GENITIVE IS THAT?’
William Shakespeare, “’Twere to consider too
curiously, to consider so.” (Hamlet V,i,193)
MIDDLE-PASSIVE WITHOUT AN EXPRESSED
PASSIVE AGENT LEAST LIKELY TO BE MIDDLE:
Luke 18:14, κατεβη ουτος δεδικαιωμενος εις τον
οικον αυτου. KATEBH OUTOS DEKIKAIWMENOS
EIS TON OIKON AUTOU.
NOW THAT ANECDOTE REALLY MAKES ME FEEL
DUMB PRIZE: George Somsel, "I seem to recall that when C. S. Lewis
was taking Greek he was allowed a pony -- in Latin.”
Mark L
Φωσφορος
FWSFOROS MARKOS
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