[B-Greek] fifteen days of greek

Susan Jeffers susan at read-the-bible.org
Thu Jul 16 09:48:31 EDT 2009


Carl Conrad wrote:
"It seems to me that it would make as much sense -- or more-- to spend 
the fifteen days doing a serious comparative study of the major English 
versions of the NT."

Over my past 10 years or so of online teaching, I've tried quite a 
number of methods to introduce students to at least a little bit of 
Hebrew and Greek in all my Bible courses. 

One method that seems to have done some good is using what I've come to 
call the "textual and translational" notes that accompany the NRSV, 
along with teaching the Greek and Hebrew alphabets and how to "sound 
out" words so that students don't just skip over notes and discussions 
in commentaries and whatnot. 

The NRSV's "To the Reader" section - which, along with the "T&T" notes, 
accompanies all editions of the NRSV - provides a good overview of the 
types of issues the notes cover.  Learning to distinguish textual from 
translational issues, some of the major examples of each, and how to 
identify the two in any given Bible passage seems to give students a 
greatly enhanced sense of why the various translations read as they do.  
And at least a few such students eventually go on to seriously study 
Hebrew and/or Greek!

Here are 2 web pages I use to help my students get started with "T&T" 
notes.  My students range from high school dropouts through PhDs, so I 
do my best to keep it simple and straightforward.

http://www.read-the-bible.org/NRSVTextNotes.htm
http://www.read-the-bible.org/NRSVTextNotesMt23.htm

When some particular "T&T" issue comes up in class discussion, I post 
little jpg files of the word or phrase in question in the original 
language, so the students learn to connect the English transliteration 
with the actual Hebrew or Greek.  Sometimes I also post a scan of the 
page in the GNT or HB, with the particular verse highlighted, or an 
excerpt from Metzger's /Textual Commentary/ that explains more of how 
the GNT editors decided which textual variant to use.  For Hebrew, 
sometimes I'll scan a page of a commentary giving some discussion of a 
particular "meaning of Heb uncertain" places.

I also encourage students to consult other translations, and help them 
learn to dig out how the various translational choices likely arose.

Grace and peace of the Lord to you all,

Susan Jeffers
Adjunct to many, professor to none

Carl Conrad wrote:
> Fifteen whole precious days to learn how to pretend to know Greek.  
> Juvenal's question is à propos: Who will shepherd the shepherds  
> themselves? It seems to me that it would make as much sense -- or  
> more-- to spend the fifteen days doing a serious comparative study of  
> the major English versions of the NT.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>   
>   



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