Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek

Louis L Sorenson
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Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

The B-Greek site has been give permission to post Robert W. Funk's A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek. It is one of the best Koine Grammars available for the New Testament. The B-Greek html version can be found at http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/f ... pre-alpha/

The B-Greek html version still needs some updating. If you are interested in helping complete the Appendices, you can go to the Projects forum and look under FunkBHG http://www-test.ibiblio.org/bgreek/foru ... f=33&t=204.
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Lane McGaughy has given us permission to post his workbook for Funk's grammar.

It is available here:

http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/f ... rkbook.pdf
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Polebridge Press is looking for volunteers who can help proofread the Greek text in the Funk Grammar between now and Labor Day - their much improved and corrected text, which they will be republishing, not what's on the web site right now.

Please contact me at jonathan dot robie at ibiblio dot org if you are willing and able to help.

Jonathan
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

Members will be happy to hear that Funk's grammar will be available as a print book in about one month. Carl Conrad and I have been proofreading the Greek, and others, the rest of the grammar. . Here is part of an e-mail from Char Matejovski, Robert Funk's wife, who is leading the republication of the grammar:
We anticipate going to press in about two weeks, just after you've finished this pass through the proofs. We should have books within a month of that date.
This is great news, and a great gift to students of NT Greek. Funk's book, "A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek" is the best Hellenistic Greek primer (a beginning/intermediate grammar) ever produced. It is based on an inductive reading of passages. Funk's BIGHG has been out of print for about 40 years. Funk had also translated and brought into English the book "Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch", originally published in 1896, by Blass. The translation/upgrade of Blass' work by Funk is still the most advanced definitive grammar of Biblical Greek: Blass' grammar focused on the difference of Biblical (Hellenistic Greek) from Attic Greek. Funk's English translation of Blass' grammar is titled "A Grammar of the Greek New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature." It is a translation and revision of the ninth-tenth German edition and incorporates the supplementary notes of A. Debrunner.

Funk, in the 1970's was one of the mover-shakers in this arena. Nowadays, we, as a community, really ask to ask ourselves who would be the best scholar(s) today to rewrite BDF. There was a project in the 1990's, which proposed to rewrite BDF, or make a new Hellenistic grammar. You can read a little about that project at http://greek-language.com/grklinguist/?p=685. (I would love to see a Hellenistic Greek grammar having the format and detail of Smyth's 'A Greek Grammar", which is the standard English school/college grammar of ancient Greek.

Modern linguistics has changed the study of ancient Greek. Funk was part of that paradigmatic change; Today, Funk would not be using the same linguistic jargon were he alive. His Hellenistic grammar focuses on the sentence;. Nowadays, (40 years later), we are focused on the paragraph, and 'Discourse Analysis' is the latest rage. So we need to be thankful, and build on his understanding and contributions. And I recommend anyone who is really interested in the best Koine Grammar, to purchase the rewrite of Funk's BIGHG from Polebridge Press. Details will be available soon.
Eric S. Weiss
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Eric S. Weiss »

Here's the book: http://www.amazon.com/A-Beginning-Inter ... 598151150/

Paperback: 608 pages
Publisher: Polebridge Press; 3rd edition edition (May 7, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1598151150
ISBN-13: 978-1598151152

Here as well: http://www.westarinstitute.org/store/a- ... tic-greek/
Eric S. Weiss
Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

I just received my copy in the mail. The book is paperback, 7.5 in. by 9.25 in., and about 1.25 in. thick. We should all be proud of our B-Greek participation in bringing this excellent resource to print. Here is the foreword to the book (from a draft), there are a few changes in the print edition, but the content is basically the same:
Robert W. Funk (1926-2005) was a specialist in the languages and literature of early Christianity. He earned an A.B. in Classics at Butler University, a B.D. in the philosophy of religion at the Christian Theological Seminary, an M.A. in Semitics at Butler, and a Ph.D. in New Testament at Vanderbilt University.
Because he was trained in both ancient Greek and the New Testament, Funk was thoroughly prepared to produce an innovative and comprehensive grammar
of the Greek dialect that flourished during the Greco-Roman period. As a graduate student in the early 1950s, Funk was encouraged by his
Vanderbilt mentor, Kendrick Grobel—himself a linguist and translator—to translate Friedrich Blass and Albert Debrunner’s Grammatik des neutestamentlichen
Griechisch, the premier advanced New Testament reference grammar of the time. Funk started with the ninth edition (1954), but Debrunner sent Funk his
notes for the projected tenth edition. Using Debrunner’s notes, Funk produced a new translation and thorough revision of the ninth-tenth edition of Blass-
Debrunner in 1961. Yale scholar Nils Dahl wrote that Blass-Debrunner-Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature “is one of those rare cases in which a translation is definitely better than the original.” During this same time W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich produced an English translation of the fourth edition of Walter Bauer’s Griechisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der übrigen urchristlichen Literatur (1957). Both Bauer’s dictionary and Funk’s edition of the Blass-Debrunner grammar continue to be basic reference works for New Testament students and scholars.

By his early thirties, Funk had already established himself as a solid scholar and major authority on the Greek New Testament. Immediately following the publication of Blass-Debrunner-Funk in 1961, Funk began work on his own hellenistic Greek grammar. The Blass-Debrunner tradition was based on a classical philological approach to language analysis and pedagogy. During the 1950s a new approach to language called linguistics challenged the assumption of classical philology that meaning resides primarily in the lexical stock of a language. Funk also recognized that grammatical analysis at the word level is inadequate while writing his dissertation, “The Syntax of the Greek Article: Its Importance for Critical Pauline Problems” (1953). Funk was thus motivated by two overarching questions in designing his own grammar: Should New Testament Greek grammar be presented as a deviation, even corruption, of an earlier classical standard, or is it simply a distinctive dialect that deserves its own definition? What insights from modern linguistics and second-language pedagogy can improve the way New Testament Greek is taught and learned? In order to address these questions, Funk spent the next decade creating a new database, analyzing the essential features of hellenistic Greek, and writing A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek (1973).

The major innovative features of Funk’s Grammar can be summarized as follows:
1. It is both a lesson grammar and a reference grammar. Reference grammars are encyclopedic treatments of all facets of a language, topically arranged and usually divided into three categories: phonology, morphology, and syntax. They are thus resources for those who already know the basics of the language. In contrast, lesson grammars jump around from topic to topic. They are not suitable as reference sources since various aspects of a topic are scattered throughout. Funk combines the two types, so that his grammar is useful for both beginning and advanced students. The material is arranged topically, but within each lesson a distinction is made between introductory content for beginning students and advanced material that can be skipped until later.
2. It is a narrative grammar, not an outline of topics to be covered by the instructor. Most lesson grammars assume that explanations of the content will be presented by the instructor. Funk’s grammar includes clear explanations of each topic so that it can be assigned as reading before class meetings, thus allowing
for student questions to the instructor and further elaboration of difficult issues during the limited time available in-class. Conceivably, those wanting to learn Greek on their own could do so with Funk’s grammar and a copy of the Greek New Testament.
3. It employs actual texts, not artificial examples. Greek illustrations of topics covered in Funk’s grammar are actual sentences from the database of selected
passages from the New Testament and other hellenistic Greek texts. Students thus are learning to read the New Testament from the start and assimilating its
grammatical signals and patterns.
4. It describes the Greek of the New Testament as a distinct dialect. In the fifth century bce, the Attic dialect of Athens came to be regarded as the normative
form of Greek. Following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Middle East in the late fourth century, Attic Greek was transformed into a new dialect called
Koine (hellenistic Greek), which became the universal language of the Greco-Roman world for over a millennium. Later literary purists viewed this transformation of Attic as a corruption of the classical standard. Because of the notion that there is a pure form of a language, the European philological tradition has tended to treat the grammar of New Testament Greek as a series of notes about the changes from fifth-century Attic. Modern linguists, however, regard all stages in the history of languages as distinct dialects and equally adept as vehicles for human communication. Greek grammars produced from this point of view are thus comprehensive descriptions of the bread-and-butter features of a particular phase in the history of a language. One implication of this view of languages is that students can learn hellenistic Greek without first having mastered classical Greek.
5. It highlights syntactic structures rather than vocabulary. The most significant feature of Funk’s Grammar is his analysis of syntax. Funk identifies the six basic
sentence patterns in hellenistic Greek and describes how all actual Greek sentences are derived, via various transformations, from these six patterns. This
approach reflects the linguistic claim that there are regular patterns underlying all levels of human language. With respect to morphology, Funk identifies
models for the inflection of nouns and verbs and then describes how one can decline nouns or conjugate verbs by applying predictable changes to the
models. This approach eliminates the need for rote memorization of multiple paradigms and stresses the fact that adults who are learning a second language
need to recognize its underlying patterns, rather than trying, often vainly, to memorize an array of random examples.

Scholars Press published the first edition of the complete three-volume Grammar for the Society of Biblical Literature in 1973, followed by a second,
corrected edition in 1977. At Funk’s request, I produced a student workbook with exercises, reading assignments, and translation notes to accompany the
Grammar. It was published in 1976 and will be made available on-line from Polebridge Press. Although Funk’s Grammar went out of print in 1987, a loyal cadre of instructors continued to use it. But, as the original version of the Grammar was produced on a typewriter, there was no electronic version available. Jonathan Robie, list owner of the online Biblical Greek Forum, volunteered to facilitate the production of an electronic text and members of the Forum helped with its production, thus giving the Grammar new life until a reissue was possible. Carl W. Conrad of Washington University in St. Louis encouraged the reissue of the Grammar, facilitated the process through the Biblical Greek Forum, and helped check the Greek in this edition. Ken Penner, St. Francis Xavier University of Nova Scotia, led the team that did the OCR scanning and prepared the initial HTML formatting of the text. And Louis L. Sorenson, a Biblical Greek Forum administrator, heroically proofread the Greek, not once but twice.

In addition, Robaire Ream, graphics designer for Polebridge Press, has done a masterful job of producing what he describes as the most complicated book he
has designed. Mahlon H. Smith III, Rutgers University, offered valuable advice about the organization of heads and extracts in the new edition. Polebridge’s
proofreader, Jon Andreas, painstakingly checked the proofs against a printout of the second edition. We want to express our deep appreciation to all these
friends of Funk’s Grammar and others who gladly and skillfully assisted with the preparation of this new edition. Despite the best efforts of so many dedicated people, errors will inevitably have made their way into these pages. We hope you will help us find and fix them by emailing corrections to: errata@westarinstitute.org.

Finally, Westar and Polebridge folks will not be surprised to learn that Char Matejovsky has spearheaded the effort to bring out a third edition of her
late husband’s Grammar. Both she and I believe that A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek is still an up-to-date and innovative approach to ancient Greek and so are delighted to see its reissue in a single volume for future generations of students.

Lane C. McGaughy
Westar Institute
Willamette University
May 27, 2013
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Huzzah! Thanks to those who worked hard on this.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Jonathan Robie »

I got a copy too. The layout is very attractive, I'm really happy to have it. And it's the same great grammar.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
cwconrad
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by cwconrad »

I too got a copy in yesterday's mail and it's a great satisfaction to see our efforts now come to fruition in such a handsome volume. It retains the content of the 1977 3rd edition, but it's in one volume of handy dimensions (Louis described it precisely) and nicely indexed for ready reference to items sought. By comparison with the clunky three-volume mechanically-reproduced typescript pages that wouldn't hold together in the cheap binding, this single volume is just right for reading as a narrative grammatical text or as a reference grammar. While there may be some question of the suitability of this book as a classroom textbook, it seems to me that it is a superb resource for self-study. And while it is true that in one or two areas our shared understanding of how Hellenistic Greek works has advanced beyond what Funk sets forth here, it is nevertheless, in my opinion, far and away better than both older and more recent primers and second-year grammars in use in classrooms and in self-study at present. I stand by the blurb that I wrote for it: "a clear and intelligent presentation displaying a linguist's understanding without the linguist's jargon."
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
David M. Miller
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by David M. Miller »

Funk identifies the six basic sentence patterns in hellenistic Greek and describes how all actual Greek sentences are derived, via various transformations, from these six patterns
I really like Funk's approach to syntax, but have always wondered about its theoretical underpinnings. Can someone with a background in linguistics comment on where Funk's theory of 'transformational grammar' (?) fits in the grand scheme of linguistic theory? Has his approach been superseded by more recent developments? Are there weaknesses in the theory that we should be aware of?
David M. Miller
Briercrest College & Seminary
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