[B-Greek] What biblical GReek is for, or, a pretty book with Greek columns on the side
Leonard Isaksson
leonardo1orchardcity at mac.com
Mon Feb 15 08:48:13 EST 2010
If this is tiring, just pitch it in to the can, so to speak.
For a year or two I have been on this mail list, I forget just how
long. This last round is the most attention that I have paid to a
discussion of interlinears. The contributions by the linguists was
interesting to read, and for any folks who are new to the list, or who
are learning Greek, the particular criticisms of interlinears, and the
experiences of those who wrote in, probably would be helpful. If I
don't find a conversation to be useful or interesting to me, I just can
it, which I actually had done to the interlinear talk before.
I got an interlinear many years ago, with a subscription to Chrstianity
Today. It had a nice blue cover, with Corinthian(I think) columns
pictured on the side. I could see that the sentence structure of Greek
was different from English, and I did not look at it more than a few
times.
Then some years later the seed for Greek blossomed inside me. And so I
took a classical Greek primer from a library, which was really meant
for a classroom, and after that Machen and then Kinchin Smith and
Melluish(I enjoyed that book), I started to learn Greek. I got a start
on it, but busyness in life got me stale, if I did not keep up regular
study. So having gone through quite a few lessons and gotten some
vocabulary helped when I took elementary NT Greek at seminary.
In that time of the class, I saw that old interlinear, but I didn't
like having the interlinear English, it seemed to interfere with the
experience of the text. Besides, the teacher for the NT Greek
recommended the purchase of Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor's
Grammatical Analysis, which I had seen very favourably reviewed by Ward
Gasque in Christianity Today some years before. I like that book, it
is helpful for one on their own, who goes about reading.
So I only ever wound up using an interlinear a few times, as it seemed
to interfere with the experience of the text, better to struggle, even
though I did turn to Zerwick and Grosvenor, or at times to an analytic
lexicon when there was a word I could not ken.
It is a good thing to find what you don't know about Greek, so if an
interlinear stunts one, or contributes to a false sense of knowledge,
then it is good to serve a warning.
I would have to say that I did not mind reading this last round of talk
about the interlinears, or much of it, anyway, although it sounds like
it was tiring to a number of folks.
A conversation now and then may be of help to new students of Greek,
if the cons and the pros are well explained. Its the kind of thing
that a teacher winds up doing(may their hands and souls be
strengthened), and it does seem like there are a fair number of folks
who read this site who are learning Greek, even if they do not write
into it too much.
Leonard Isaksson
On Monday, February 15, 2010, at 04:34 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
>
> Considering the proportionate distribution of discussion topics on
> B-Greek, one might suppose that B-Greek is "about" the goal of
> actually learning the language, but in fact, that has historically been
> only a secondary concern. The opening paragraph of our FAQ cuts
> a pretty wide swath which takes in pedagogical resources, but the
> intended central focus of B-Greek has always been more upon
> the text and the language of the Greek Bible:
>
> "B-GREEK is a mailing list for scholars and students of Biblical
> Greek. Our main focus is upon understanding the Greek text of the
> Bible. Discussion topics include scholarly study of the Greek Bible
> and related Jewish and Christian Greek texts, tools for beginning and
> advanced students of Biblical Greek such as textbooks, reference
> works, bibliography and research tools, and linguistic topics such as
> morphology, lexicography, syntax, and discourse analysis."
>
> I confess that I have contributed my own 2 bits -- or 2 cents -- to
> on-list discussions of interlinears, nor have I ever thought that
> discussion of interlinears on B-Greek was inappropriate -- but I
> do think that this recurrent discussion of interlinears is tedious
> and unproductive every time we do a re-run of it.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
> ---
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