[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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