[B-Greek] Objections to Machen (was "In Defense of Machen, ... ")
davidabooth at comcast.net
davidabooth at comcast.net
Tue Feb 1 08:44:21 EST 2011
The simplicity of Machen for the student is also found in David Alan Black's Learn to Read New Testament Greek. Yet, Black is for more linguistically informed. I can't understand why anyone would use Machen's grammar today given how many better choices are available.
David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: "Mark Lightman" <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
Cc: "B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 8:10:55 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] Objections to Machen (was "In Defense of Machen, ... ")
We've had lots of discussion (some of it tedious, I think) of pedagogical
methodologies for teaching and learning Koine Greek, but more of it
has been focused on methodologies -- especially on pronunciation and
"internalization" rather than on textbooks. I have mentioned my
preference for JACT Reading Greek and for Colwell and Tune and
for Athenaze (which I know although I haven't taught from it) but
for once I'd like to explain why I myself came to think Machen's
primer was "not a very good textbook."
I acknowledge that Mark's (Lightman's) defense of Machen is not as a basic
textbook but rather as a supplement to other tools of learning.
I'm sorry to have to go on bad-mouthing Machen's textbookt; In
the past I've simply labeled it a "wretched" textbook. I do know the
older version of it; I did try to teach with it more than once (I taught
classical Attic in regular classes at Washington University, but did teach
Koine in small tutorial groups for those who wanted only to read
Biblical Greek). It was in the course of correcting sentence exercises
that I grew ever more upset with those sentence exercises and so with
the textbook itself.
It's clear that lots of people like Machen very much; I think
the reason is that (a) Machen presents NT Greek as simpler than it really is,
and (b) Machen accommodates a beginner's wish to believe that Greek
word-order and idiom are really not that different from English; (c) Machen
capitalizes on a student's familiarity with the KJV -- that might not be
immediately evident, but the Greek-to-English sentences are formulated,
when they aren't direct citations from the GNT, in phrasing that is more
consistent with KJV English than with Koine Greek, and the English-to-
Greek sentences are formulated to expect the Greek version produced by
the student to conform more to English usage than to Koine Greek usage.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've certainly gotten the impression that you
honestly believe it doesn't matter whether the Greek one writes or speaks
conforms very accurately to ancient Greek written and spoken usage, so
long as what one speaks or writes is intelligible to the reader/listener.
If that's you view, I'll agree insofar as it's intelligible to the other person,
but as I think it's better to speak standard English than pidgin-English,
so I also think it's really better to speak and write standard ancient Greek
than pidgin-ancient-Greek. I happen to think that those exercises are a
very important part of the textbook, the only way the student gets to
practice what s/he's learned. And I think it's a shame that Machen doesn't
offer a higher standard of written Greek. But Machen makes the
beginner in Koine Greek comfortable to the extent that it smoothes
over the significant differences between the way English works and
the way Greek works.
Mark, you wrote that Machen is "the only deductive" Koine Greek primer
that you could think of. Actually, I've not heard the adjective "deductive"
applied to primers, although I've certainly heard "inductive" used of
primers that call upon students to think through the usages that they
are becoming familiar with. So I guess that a "deductive" primer
is one that lays out the grammar of the language in a more or less
traditional fashion and builds a student's grammatical understanding
more or less on the basis of rote learning of morphological paradigms,
vocabulary, and grammatical rules. I'd call that the old-fashioned
grammar & translation pedagogical method; it's one that has been
used somewhat less commonly in more recent primers, but it's still
more common than the sort of primer that uses longer sequences of
Greek text to familiarize students with Koine patterns of usage and
depends less upon memorization and the stultifying practices of
word-for-word translation, parsing, and "decoding" of Greek texts
as if they were cryptograms by picking out subjects, verbs and
modifiers and piecing the elements of the sentence together. That's
still, unfortunately -- so I think -- too widespread a practice.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
On Jan 31, 2011, at 9:18 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> Mark wrote:
>
> < Is it safe to assume that I'm not missing out on much from the newer
> editions?>
>
> Hi, Mark
>
> The revision of Machen isn't really that different from the original.
If that's true, it's sad.
>
> Carl wrote
>
> <...but there are far, far better primers than Machen...>
>
> I agree with you, Carl. But more to the point, MARK agrees with you. He already
> said he is using a text other than Machen, namely Rainey. He already said that
> he prefers an inductive approach, and that he does not like reading made up,
> boring sentences. But what happened was, Barry made the very sensible point
> that one might want to supplement an inductive primer with a deductive one, and
> Mark was convinced and asked for recommendations. I don't know of any NT Greek
> text that is deductive in the way Machen is. Do you? You are certainly correct
> that Machen's sentences don't look like real Greek, but that's because his
> approach is to introduce a few words and grammatical principles at a time and
> have the student use them over and over again before going on. I would not
> want anyone to use only Machen to learn Greek, but I think his approach is
> useful as part of a total learning package. As you point on, several people on
> this list have found going through his English to Greek exercises a very
> effective way to master the forms. Funk is great for more detailed grammatical
> verbiage, but Machen makes the express point that he is trying to avoid this
> very thing.
>
> Mark L
> FWSFOROS MARKOS
> ________________________________
> From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
> To: Robert Stump <robertstump at gmail.com>
> Cc: B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Mon, January 31, 2011 2:59:49 PM
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] William Harper Rainey's Textbook
>
>
> On Jan 31, 2011, at 4:03 PM, Robert Stump wrote:
>
>> Mark-
>>
>> I did a little searching around after what you wrote about Machen's
>> work, and then after getting a little background on the man himself.
>> It took a bit of searching but I found a website with a PDF scan of
>> the original 1923 edition:
>>
>> (http://www.churchlivinglord.com/Machen_NTGreek.html)
>>
>> Is it safe to assume that I'm not missing out on much from the newer editions?
>
> There are different opinions about Machen's textbook. I taught from it once
> and rued doing so on grounds of inadequate grammatical explanation and
> Greek to English and English to Greek sentences clearly more represeentative
> of English idiom than of any ancient Greek. My impression is that the later
> revisions were considerable improvements over earlier editions; but there
> are far, far better primers than Machen, several of which have been mentioned
> in earlier replies to your question. If it's primarily Biblical Greek that you
> want to learn, you ought to make some use of the long-out-of-print work
> that was scanned and reformulated by B-Greekers, Robert Funk's
> _Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek_. It is accessible
> at: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/funk-grammar/pre-alpha/
> If I were still teaching and teaching a course in Biblical Greek, this is
> what I would use.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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