[B-Greek] Reading The Philosophers in Greek and other extra Biblcal reading
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 26 23:51:07 EST 2009
I found Frank Beetham's Reading Greek with Plato to be very helpful.
He presents the entire Greek grammar and then has you read through
some of the Meno with lots of notes, with exersises (and an answer key!)
that prepare you for the Meno. In his notes he often rearranges Plato
to fit normal English word order, which helps.
As far as what else to read outside the NT, I bet there is a consenus that
the single best thing to read to help your NT Greek is the Apostolic Fathers.
Hermas is probably the easiest real Greek I have ever read. It's not great
literature or theology but it's long and will help drill your forms and NT
vocab and will introduce you to other vocab that you will need. Bauer is the
best thing to help you with it, as there are lots of words in the Apostolic
Fathers that are not in even the big LSJ and Bauer helps you with some
idioms.
The other thing I would recommend is Morice's Stories in Attic Greek,
if for no other reason than Anne Mahoney's 2006 reprint has the largest
Greek font I have ever seen and she prints Morice's notes on the
bottom of the page, instead of in the back of the book. These stories
are actually a bit tough in terms of the vocab, which is very extensive
and includes some rare Greek words, but the syntax is simple by design.
Then there is Homer. I have been reading Homer for the last few
months. There is one huge drawback to reading Homer and
two huge advantages. The drawback is his ridiculously extensive
vocablulary. He has two or three or more synonyms for every
word you learned in your NT Greek. The guy must have fifteen different
words for "noise." I wish there were a Reader's Greek Iliad with all the words
that don't appear in the standard textbooks in footnotes, but there is not.
The advantages to reading Homer are (1) his syntax is very simple, with
parataxis and word order closer to English and (2) his Greek is magnificent.
You read a simple sentence and you are struck that every word is perfect.
It's just like Shakespeare, beautiful in words, drama, and ideas. I
don't know how helpful Homer finally is to my NT Greek, but I don't care. Much
of the Greek that we read is uninspired, like Marcus Aurelius, or inelegant
translationese like the LXX, or unsteady, like Ignatius, or overly fancy,
like Plato. Homer is the only Greek I have ever read outside the early Letters
of Paul that leaves me 100% satisfied with the Greek. So I would make it
a long term goal to read Homer, but read the Apostolic Fathers first, and
don't neglect your re-reading of the NT itself.
Mark L
--- On Wed, 2/25/09, Stephen Baldwin <stbaldwi at hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Stephen Baldwin <stbaldwi at hotmail.com>
Subject: [B-Greek] Reading The Philosophers in Greek and other extra Biblcal reading
To: "B- Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 7:05 PM
Brethren:
A marginally off-topic question.
In reading theology books, much discussion mentions and quotes the Greek
philosophers.
I just wondered whether it is idiotic for an amateur Koine minnow to dip into
the philosophers (Plato, Socrates etc.) in their original Greek and hope to
make anything at all from it? I'm not studying for a PhD or presenting a
conference paper. It is more-or-less just for fun.
If the idea is not entirely off the wall, are there particular editions aimed
at the less competent amongst us?
A supplementary question too:
When reading the GNT, it is very difficult, once one has fixed the passage, not
to guess and assume meanings -- because one is subconsciously hearing the
familiar English as one reads the Greek, and anticipating the meaning of the
Greek which of course is a capital offence. Reading brand-new stuff is a way
round that problem. So I was going to ask: Outside of the GNT, where is a good
place to start reading other Koine? I presume the Fathers? Are some easier than
others?
Rgds
Steve Baldwin
stbaldwi at hotmail.com
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