[B-Greek] Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 100, Issue 7 - Mounce vs Croy
Shirley Rollinson
rollinsondr at yahoo.com
Fri Apr 15 20:05:52 EDT 2011
Sorry - I got swamped with student grading and missed this digest.
I've used Mounce, Croy, Wenham (now out of print) and several others, but the main problem is not so much the textbook, as the "aim" of the course.
What is the *purpose* of learning/teaching "Biblical Greek"? (as opposed to Classical, Modern, or any other language)
When we're teaching in the classroom we often lose sight of what our students intend to do with the Greek they learn.
Most seminary students of koine probably don't want to converse with other koine-speakers - they intend to use it for preparing sermons, bible studies, etc. And too often that is just the way it's been taught, and that is all the vision they come away with.
The fact that it can be a great pleasure and profit to read and feed on the Greek text escapes them unless it is carefully inculcated and modelled from the beginning. Otherwise it becomes a dry "this word is an aorist participle, therefore . . . "
As an illustration - my husband and I both went through seminary - he became a pastor, I continued in academia. We attend an interdenominational pastors' Bible study - to work on the texts assigned by the common lectionary for the comming Sunday - to help those preaching prepare their sermon material. Most of them went to seminary, studied several years of Greek, maybe a year or so of Hebrew. Do any of them, apart from me, still read the Greek NT? - Not a one. Do any of them show any signs of wishing to continue with the language? - Not a one.
Something has gone horribly wrong with our teaching if koine is seen as something which one must "pass" in order to get out of seminary and into the pulpit, but which one then drops with a sigh of relief, or uses to trot out a grammatical term as a sermon illustration.
"I've passed Greek - now I can get a pulpit."
"The baby has been baptized, now it can grow up a heathen."
"I've been confirmed, now I don't need to go to Church any more."
Somehow we've got to bring joy into the adventure of learning the language.
Shirley Rollinson
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 10. Mounce versus Croy (Eric S. Weiss)
> 11. Re: Mounce versus Croy (Carl Conrad)
> _______________________________________________
From: "Robert Lewis" <Roblumc at comcast.net>
Date: April 8, 2011 7:03:32 AM EDT
To: <b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: RE: [B-Greek] Mounce versus Croy
I am using Croy for a First year Greek course. The edition that comes with
the CD-Rom is very helpful in that it provides an answer key (but not to the
LXX, NT exercises- these can be looked up), a bunch of vocabulary quizzes,
helps for teachers, etc. The CD-ROM makes Croy viable for a self-learner.
I agree with the comment made about participles. A little bit more in this
department would have been helpful! Overall, my students find Croy to be a
good text.
Rob Lewis
Adj instructor in Greek, General Theological Seminary, NY, NY
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Carlson
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 10:26 PM
To: Michael Aubrey
Cc: Biblical Greek Mailing List
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Mounce versus Croy
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 10:20 PM, Michael Aubrey <mga318 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes. That's about right. I used Croy at some point in my past. It is
poorly
> made and its not useful for self-learners--though that relates more to the
> lack of an answer key than the content. Its use of the Septuagint in
> exercises is excellent though. Mounce cannot match that--or at least
> doesn't.
Yes, the comments about self-learning did refer to the answer key, but
also that Croy is quite a bit more concise than Mounce.
By the way, in the latest edition of the Mounce Workbook, there were
many sentences taken from the LXX among the "Additional" exercises,
which I required my students to do.
Stephen
--
Stephen C. Carlson
Graduate Program in Religion
Duke University
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