[B-Greek] Silva on the purpose of Greek

Barry H. nebarry at verizon.net
Sun Apr 10 09:13:07 EDT 2011


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: "B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 2:00 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Silva on the purpose of Greek


>I've just noticed in Rod Decker's NT Resources Blog a very nice citation 
>from Moisés Silva from his introduction to the revised version of Machen's 
>textbook.

>http://ntresources.com/blog/?p=864

>I am somewhat astounded. The part that Rod cites strikes me as profoundly 
>true. What astounds me is the collocation of this statement with this text. 
>To be honest, I have not seen and do not really know much about the 
>revision; I know, alas, all too much about the original edition of Machen's 
>primer.

I have been meaning to respond to this, and it got lost in the shuffle.  I 
have been fortunate enough in my career in these things to have had some 
outstanding professors. However, two professors who stand out in helping me 
to understanding what it really means to read a text and how the original 
languages *really* play into that were Stephen Tracy, of OSU, and Moises 
Silva, cited here.  This citation from Silva puts quite a bit of that gold 
into a nutshell.  Let me add that the real path to "exegetical gold" is 
mastery of the languages, not learning facts about the languages.  All the 
benefits from understanding something in the original text comes from 
*understanding* it in the original text, not from simply being able to parse 
verbs or identify number, gender and case...

N.E. Barry Hofstetter, semper melius Latine sonat...
Classics and Bible Instructor, TAA
http://www.theamericanacademy.net
(2010 Salvatori Excellence in Education Winner)
V-P of Academic Affairs, TNARS
bhofstetter at tnars.net
http://www.tnars.net

http://my.opera.com/barryhofstetter/blog
http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry






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