[B-Greek] Death by categories

Alexander Ring akring at mac.com
Thu Mar 5 13:55:33 EST 2009


Sorry Dr. Conrad, I meant to send this to the entire group, not just  
you.

It is a delicate balance, isn't it? Without some understanding of the  
grammar your understanding of the language is always going to be  
limited, but at what point does attention to grammar become so  
intense that it becomes a hinderance?

I had two professors for Hebrew, one who had us identifying every  
form of every verb and took great delight in discovering and pointing  
out weak forms. It was like examining every tree in the forest, but  
his love for the language and the OT showed through and we learned  
our grammar and how to translate. The other one had us doing a lot of  
reading and translating, and was constantly having us step back and  
look at the forest. His love for the language and the OT also showed  
through, and we learned to read and how to translate.


On Mar 5, 2009, at 9:44 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

>
> On Mar 5, 2009, at 11:29 AM, James Spinti wrote:
>
>> A very nice post by Rick Brannon about translation and categories
>> for cases. A short snippet to whet your appetite:
>>
>> But all of that stymies me. I'm really supposed to know (and
>> recall?) all that hooey before I can translate ὁρκίζω σε
>> τὸν θεόν as "I implore you by God"? The label doesn't help me
>> understand the Greek any better, it gives one shorthand to English
>> it (lemma + parsing/declension + force labels == English
>> translation). Actually, I may even be understanding the Greek less
>> because I'm relying on the label to tell me how to English something
>> instead of actually understanding the Greek itself. Doesn't the
>> occurrence of ορκιζω along with the double accusative (σε +
>> τον θεον) clue me in to something different going on without
>> having to label the blasted thing "accusative of oath"?
>> --
>> The whole post is here:
>> http://www.supakoo.com/rick/ricoblog/2009/03/03/ 
>> IReallyDontLikeCategories.aspx
>> Or, TinyURL:
>> http://tinyurl.com/caune9
>
> Yes, yes, yes, yes. Before long now the software will take care of it
> all for us, including translation, once we get the algorithms all
> figured out -- sometime about the middle of next year -- and then the
> only persons needing actually to KNOW Biblical Greek will be the
> people who program the software for us, assuming that we trust them to
> do all of our thinking for us.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
> ---
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Rev. Alexander Ring
11221 Farwest Dr
Lakewood, WA  98498

akring at mac.com

Natural numbers are better for your health.





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