[B-Greek] Using Greek
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Mar 11 07:46:07 EDT 2009
On Mar 10, 2009, at 10:20 PM, Stephen Lord wrote:
> We've all encountered someone who was dismissive of the utility of
> knowing or exploring Greek in an effort to better understand and
> interpret the NT. I'm curious how list members would or have
> responded to such an attitude.
I suspect you will receive quite a range of responses to your question
or that whatever responses there are will show many different views.
For my part, I think (a) that one needs to know Koine Greek pretty
well if one is really going to better understand and interpret the NT:
it is much more than a matter of parsing the words and picking out the
glosses in one's own language that match the context; one needs to
know the basic syntactic patterns of Koine Greek and the ranges of
meaning of basic lexicographical items in context. An interlinear may
let you look at the text and see "men like trees walking" but not a
clear and distinct perception of what the text is communicating. I
think also (b) that the attitude and approach that one brings to bear
on reading the Greek; an open mind to alternative possibilities
allowed by the grammatical rules/patterns of Koine Greek, that certain
thoughtfulness (some will want to identify this with guidance of the
Spirit) which opens eyes and mind to what is being communicated in a
long-dead dialect of an alien language in a text composed in a
radically different world ages ago. To rephrase it, I think that
without some real competence in Koine Greek and an appropriate mind-
set when approaching the GNT, one might really be better off working
with good versions (preferably more than one) in one's own native
language.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)
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