Re: Reading Non-Biblical Greek

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 12 1996 - 06:31:30 EST


At 11:59 PM -0600 11/11/96, Mark B. O'Brien wrote:
>I recall somebody asking about where to find non-biblical material to
>read that was somehow a graded reader. I came across a older text the
>other day when I was pottering through some obscure stuff in the
>classical section of our library. It was a text called _Greek Through
>Reading_, and consisted of various passages laid out from a wide variety
>of sources, along with some helps, if I recall correctly. Unfortunately,
>I do not recall the author, although I would certainly be able to dig
>that up if anybody is interested in contacting me about it.

This is a first-year Classical Attic text; I saw it listed recently in a
catalog as still available (although it may have been a used-books list);
editors were Nairn & Nairn (I don't remember the initials; I think it was a
husband-wife team); it's at least 40 years old (which of course is neither
a positive nor a negative index of anything).

Along the same lines, someone who has developed reasonably solid Koine
Greek competence who wants to develop an ability with Classical Attic could
do worse than work through the JACT course book, _Reading Greek_ (published
by Cambridge). I use it as a first-year textbook in Attic, and it will not
do very well as a self-instructing text for one who's not had any previous
Greek, but I think that one who already has Koine could learn classical
Attic relatively painlessly and enjoyably with it: its reading selections
are all interesting and the graduate into more and more completely original
texts from Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Plato, Euripides, and ends
with Homer's Odyssey 6. One who works through it completely should be able
to manage with Platonic dialogues, Aristotle, and what not with reasonable
facility.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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