[B-Greek] You Are Smarter Than a Lexicon (?) The beat goes on ...
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Jun 4 11:03:53 EDT 2010
On Jun 4, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Fortigurn wrote:
>
> Carl,
>
> It's worth pointing out that Logos do offer more traditional methods of
> learning Greek. They offer electronic editions of standard Greek
> textbooks and courses:
>
> * Introduction to Biblical Greek Collection (3 Vols.)
> <http://www.logos.com/products/details/2803>
> * Advanced Greek Supplement (6 Vols.)
> <http://www.logos.com/products/details/4650>
> * Introduction to NT Greek (CDROM)
> <http://www.logos.com/products/details/1065>
> * Hellenika: A Beginning Greek Textbook
> <http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/HELLENIKA>
>
> They have also co-sponsored the three day intensive Greek learning camps
> <http://biblicalgreek.org/classes/giaw/> of another company. They even
> sell Hebrew and Greek paradigm sheets
> <http://www.logos.com/products/details/6338>, for those who still love
> the good old fashioned 'stare-and-chant-for-hours-until-magic-happens'
> method of learning which I had to sit through for two years while
> supposedly learning Greek in university. To be fair, my professor was a
> wonderful guy and did his utmost to help us, but also said bluntly that
> the only real way to pick up the language was hours and hours of
> grinding away at rote learning.
Sure, but the blog-entry to which I called attention disparages that old-fashioned learning method -- rightly so, in my opinion. But what it offers in its place is a system whereby it isn't necessary at all to learn Greek; you learn how to access what other scholars have predigested and spewed out for you as the meaning of the Greek text.
> Personally, learning Greek through the paradigms was an experience which
> reinforced to me beyond doubt just what an idiotically constructed
> language Greek was, and how much useless grammatical junk it carried.
> This helped me understand why English is such a ridiculous mess.Teaching
> English to non-English speakers for 6 years while learning Chinese, has
> helped me understand what languages should look like. Chinese has highly
> intelligent grammar, but utterly stupid orthography and unnecessarily
> difficult phonetics. English has nonsensical and clumsy grammar, but
> extremely efficient orthography and phonetics. I would love to see an
> amalgamation of the best features of these languages. English could be
> improved significantly by throwing out all the useless declensions and
> conjugations, and by quartering the number of prepositions and conjunctions.
I don't happen to think English has a very effiicent orthography or phonetics. Italian and German are more the preferred model of that for me. But English-speakers have acquired the ability to speak and read English without expending superhuman effort, regardless of its structures, however absurd they may be, and a great literature has been composed in it. The same is true of ancient Greek: a great literature is there and the language can be learned -- it really CAN.
> Carl Conrad wrote:
>> This morning's followup on yesterday's blog entry at the site in
>> question is:
>> http://blog.logos.com/archives/2010/06/learn_to_use_biblical_greek_and_hebrew_with_logos.html
>>
>> Yes, that's "Learn to Use Biblical Greek and Hebrew with Logos." From my
>> own perspective, I think I'd rename it, "Learn to USE Biblical Greek and
>> Hebrew without really knowing either language." I don't mean to be unfair
>> to the software company (I am using the Mac version of some of its items
>> although my primary Biblical software is Accordance -- which by its nature
>> is engaged in some of the same (to me) questionable didactic ventures).
>> In fact, I find that the argument against traditional classroom methodology
>> -- teaching Greek through memorization of paradigms and grammatical rules
>> and demonstrating what's been learned by production of wooden literal
>> translations -- quite compelling and not far removed from the argument that
>> I and some others have made against traditional Biblical Greek pedagogy.
>>
>> My concern is rather that this pedagogy being peddled in the above-referenced
>> video effectively makes its user dependent upon predigested interpretation of
>> the original-language texts. One learns not the languages, but the use of the
>> software, and the software functions in su;ch as way as to begin and end with
>> English language versions of the Biblical text and English-language explanations
>> of how and why the English-language version means what the original-language
>> text says.
>>
>> I'm not happy about this, but I do think it is the wave of the future in the
>> pedagogy of Biblical languages; in its own way, it's like the plume of slick
>> oil spreading across the Gulf, but I think there's a better prospect of the oil
>> slick being eventually checked. The trend was already there before computer
>> technology accelerated it: colleges and seminaries can't expend the effort on
>> bringing students to real competence in the Biblical languages and students
>> have other things that they need to learn more urgently. Commentaries on
>> the Biblical text have for some time now included translations of the
>> Biblical Greek or Hebrew original text because it cannot be assumed that
>> users of the commentaries will be able to understand the original-language
>> text unassisted. The upshot is that competence in Greek and Hebrew is
>> becoming restricted to an increasingly small number of scholars whose
>> task is to filter the original-language texts through the software to the
>> end-user reader/student endeavoring to understand the Biblical text. What
>> concerns me is the accelerating diminution of those who are sufficiently
>> competent in Biblical Greek or Hebrew to challenge the validity of what
>> the predigested scholarship provides the end-user. My question is a
>> version of Juvenal's "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (Who will take
>> care of the caretakers?) -- It seems to me that the opening up of the
>> Biblical text to the educated laity in the Renaissance and Reformation
>> is, in a sense, being reversed. The custody of the text of scripture is
>> being entrusted to a new kind of technological clerical hierarchy.
>>
>> Carl W. Conrad
>> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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