[B-Greek] William Harper Rainey's Textbook

Barry H. nebarry at verizon.net
Sat Jan 29 07:21:10 EST 2011


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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Stump" <robertstump at gmail.com>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2011 12:39 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] William Harper Rainey's Textbook


> I've been a silent member of this list for while, but this is my first
> run at a question.

Greetings, commentaria infra:

> I am a seminary student, well technically I'm finishing my Bachelor's
> degree in Theology through a correspondence course as a prerequisite
> to seminary, but the course is offered through a seminary.  Given that
> I am working toward a scholarship I thought it wise to get a jump on
> NT Greek and accordingly started working through the lessons I found
> online in Rainey's 1888 "Introductory New Testament Method."  (Found
> here: 
> http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=snFiAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader)
>
> A number of years ago I decided to learn Latin, went online, found a
> number of books and internet courses, and eventually settled in with a
> couple of different first year books that I worked through. Most of
> them were rather tedious and I found that without a cohesive narrative
> to drive the works that vocabulary retention become a matter of nose
> to the grindstone by intensive copying and rote memory.
>
> With Rainey's work it is another matter entirely.  The very first
> lesson begins with reading the Greek of John 1:1-2 and continues
> through the first twenty lessons to read all through the first
> chapter.  The linguist concepts and grammar are given as they show up
> in the text instead of, for instance, lesson one covering A-declension
> nouns, lesson two covering Indicative Active Regular Verbs et cetera
> ad naseum.
>
> Outside of Latin, I have studied French and Spanish both in a
> classroom and sans, but I had never before encountered this method of
> what Rainey calls "Inductive" lessons.  Is he just a forgotten
> innovator; am I missing something integral to the study of Greek by
> this approach; or are there other texts that follow this sort of
> pattern that I am simply unaware of?

The inductive method is well known.  The text I know the best for this is 
Athenaze, which has long connected prose readings, as well as supplementary 
exercises, and though primarily Attic, does include a number of readings 
from the NT.  In Latin the Oxford series and Ecce Romani, among others, uses 
an inductive approach.

I am a traditionalist myself.  I've found this -- when I have students who 
have used an inductive book, I often find that that they can read the 
language well -- from the inductive materials that they have already 
prepared, but that often they have trouble transferring this reading ability 
to other texts, to the point where you'd swear that they had never had any 
intruction at all.  I like good long readings, but I like them combined with 
a more deductive grammatical approach.  I therefore use Jenney for my 
beginning Latin text and the venerable Crosby & Schaeffer for Greek.

Due to the influence of Randall Buth, among others, on this list I am also 
incorporating more spoken Latin and Greek in the classroom, and modifying 
some modern language teaching methods.  I have so far been more successful 
at this in Latin than in Greek, but teaching an old cat a new trick is not 
always easy -- ask any lion tamer.

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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