Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

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hornjbl
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Joined: September 15th, 2021, 3:57 am

Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by hornjbl »

Hi guys,

I've received the advice many times, even as a beginner, to start "reading" the NT Greek as soon as possible.

So, while I'm still busy working through Beginning With New Testament Greek, I haven't learned nearly enough grammar or vocab to actually READ through a book like 1 John, I'm trying to figure out what the best approach would be to actually start reading it with those limitation. I thought I would take this approach:

1. Start learning the vocab of 1 john 1. Managed to get a list of only the words used in this one chapter.
2. Continue working through the beginning Greek grammar at my own pace.
3. Then, for my daily "reading", to use https://greek.theopedia.com, basically going from one verse to the next, and just identifying the vocab and grammar rules that I DO know. I then go ahead and parse each of those, identifying the lexical form and gloss of the word, and parsing the form of the word as it is in the Greek to see if I get it right.

Once I'm done with the verse, having only parsed the grammar and vocab I do know and recognize, and ignoring those which I don't know yet, it looks something like the attached picture.

I realize that this is far from actually reading (as in, understanding the relationship between words and the meaning those relationships imply), and this basically only focuses on each individual word by itself, but this is the best way I could think of, with my limited vocab and grammar knowledge, to at least start getting into the actual text.

Having explained the process, my question is, is this a useful exercise and something that would eventually lead to me actually reading and interpreting the text as I get more familiar with the grammar rules and the vocab?
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Stirling Bartholomew
Posts: 1141
Joined: August 9th, 2012, 4:19 pm

Re: Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Not a bad plan. Couple elements I would add to your plan. Read the text out loud. Transcribe the text by hand. Look up all the words, don't skip the ones you don't know. In the last three decades students have had e-texts which link to lexicons. You can find these online for example the STEP bible.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
James McIntire
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Joined: October 1st, 2021, 2:09 pm

Re: Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by James McIntire »

I would suggest getting a New Testament Greek Reader, it has the text on the page and footnotes the difinition of uncommon words on the bottom of the page, more common words are defined in the back of the book. The reader gets you in the text, here is an online reader: https://www.gntreader.com/?b=MT&c=1&v=1
If you click on the words it will parse it for you.
I prefer book readers because using electronic ones it is too easy to use helps, thus impeding actually learning the language, with a book you are more likely to try to figure it out, and then if you can't then you look it up, at least that is my experience.
וַֽיִּקְרְא֥וּ בַסֵּ֛פֶר בְּתֹורַ֥ת הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים מְפֹרָ֑שׁ וְשֹׂ֣ום שֶׂ֔כֶל וַיָּבִ֖ינוּ בַּמִּקְרָֽא׃ ס
Nehemiah 8:8

Καὶ ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ Μωσέως καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν προφητῶν, διηρμήνευεν αὐτοῖς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς γραφαῖς τὰ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ.
Luke 24:27
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by Jonathan Robie »

We are all individuals, so our advice will vary.

Focus on time spent thinking in Greek, with understanding. If you are spending more time in English or in formal grammatical terms than in Greek, rethink what you are doing. If you don't understand the sentences you are reading, rethink what you are doing.

For a beginner, I think it is helpful to (1) read simple texts like John or 1 John, progressing to harder ones over time, (2) read each text at least several times to see if you can make sense of it before you start looking things up, (3) take notes, in Greek, to remember what you have encountered, and (4) use electronic texts that let you look things up fairly easily so you are less distracted when you do need to look something up.

Pick selections of 10-12 verses at a time. Read the text several times. Download YouVersion and the Patriarchal 1904 Greek. Slow it down to 0.75x speed. Read the text and listen at the same time, scrolling along. Repeat until it feels very familiar.

And don't get too lost in all the information available for each individual word. It's more important to be sure you know the subject, objects, and adjuncts associated with each verb, the relationships between verbs when there is more than one verb in a sentence, etc. We read sentences, not words. This assumes that you are learning the language systematically using some approach, as you are doing - you will start to recognize the forms you are learning as you read. When you think about forms, think about why the form is used - "this is nominative because it is the subject" or "this is nominative because it is the predicate" etc.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Shirley Rollinson
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Re: Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

You might supplement your grammar book studies with the "Daily Dose of Greek" - it's free. You can sign up to get a daily email with a link to a 2-minute video which goes through a section of the GNT in order, reading, translating, and discussing the text; or you can use their website to access previous videos for particular books of the GNT. At present they are going through John's Gospel. They have videos for 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Revelation (if you're a beginner, I don't recommend that), Mark, Philemon, James, and have now reached chapter 10 of John's Gospel.
website https://dailydoseofgreek.com/
list of videos https://dailydoseofgreek.com/read-greek/
I have a help page on "How to Learn a Language" at http://www.drshirley.org/greek/textbook ... ix-A03.pdf
Or you might try a textbook which intentionally aims at helping students to read the GNT with understanding as soon as possible http://www.drshirley.org/greek/textbook02/index.html
All best wishes for your studies
Keep on reading (aloud) a bit each day
Shirley Rollinson
mikeatnip
Posts: 79
Joined: May 6th, 2020, 12:07 pm

Re: Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by mikeatnip »

Jonathan Robie wrote: October 6th, 2021, 5:42 pm Download YouVersion and the Patriarchal 1904 Greek. Slow it down to 0.75x speed. Read the text and listen at the same time, scrolling along. Repeat until it feels very familiar.
Is this pronunciation common Erasmian, or is it a modern Greek pronunciation? I am almost completely ignorant when it comes to pronunciation and would like to learn what is most common, even if it is not necessarily the most accurate to what was spoken 2000 years ago.
Mike Atnip
May I not debate presumptuously; may I not be silent impudently. May I learn beneficial speech; may I acquire discerning silence. -Ephrem the Syrian
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by Jonathan Robie »

mikeatnip wrote: October 7th, 2021, 8:14 pm
Jonathan Robie wrote: October 6th, 2021, 5:42 pm Download YouVersion and the Patriarchal 1904 Greek. Slow it down to 0.75x speed. Read the text and listen at the same time, scrolling along. Repeat until it feels very familiar.
Is this pronunciation common Erasmian, or is it a modern Greek pronunciation? I am almost completely ignorant when it comes to pronunciation and would like to learn what is most common, even if it is not necessarily the most accurate to what was spoken 2000 years ago.
This is a modern Greek pronunciation. Which, when it comes down to it, is probably the most common pronunciation, even if the likes of you and me don't use it. But some biblical words are ambiguous in modern Greek, and probably were not at the time.

On B-Greek, a lot of us use some variant of Buth's Restored Koine pronunciation, which is close enough to the modern Greek pronunciation that it's not too problematic as long as you have the text in front of you so that you can distinguish ambiguous words that are pronounced differently in Restored. It differs by only a few sounds.

Erasmian is really hard to pronounce gracefully. And it's pronounced differently in different places. The one person who does this best, IMHO, is Christophe Rico, who is also just a delightful person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2HOgspXj8k
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Shirley Rollinson
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Location: New Mexico
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Re: Ways to begin working with the actual text as soon as possible

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

Jonathan Robie wrote: October 7th, 2021, 8:58 pm
mikeatnip wrote: October 7th, 2021, 8:14 pm
Jonathan Robie wrote: October 6th, 2021, 5:42 pm Download YouVersion and the Patriarchal 1904 Greek. Slow it down to 0.75x speed. Read the text and listen at the same time, scrolling along. Repeat until it feels very familiar.
Is this pronunciation common Erasmian, or is it a modern Greek pronunciation? I am almost completely ignorant when it comes to pronunciation and would like to learn what is most common, even if it is not necessarily the most accurate to what was spoken 2000 years ago.
This is a modern Greek pronunciation. Which, when it comes down to it, is probably the most common pronunciation, even if the likes of you and me don't use it. But some biblical words are ambiguous in modern Greek, and probably were not at the time.

- - - - snip snip - - -

Erasmian is really hard to pronounce gracefully. And it's pronounced differently in different places. The one person who does this best, IMHO, is Christophe Rico, who is also just a delightful person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2HOgspXj8k
Erasmian is the convention used in many seminaries, and it's really not difficult to pronounce. For excellent pronunciation, there's a gal named Maria (she does not give a last name) who is a native Greek speaker, who has made videos (both Erasmian and modern) of biblical texts. She is an online Greek teacher. 'Reading the Bible in Greek with Maria' https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvniRD ... B9DQCajGQQ
She has John chapter 1, Matthew chapters 1-7, Genesis chapter 1, but she does not seem to have posted any more for the last 2 years. I tell my students to listen to her, not me :-)
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