[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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