Featured Take my Greek Quiz

Sorry Tim, never studied Greek. Why should I with all you intellectuals walking around. :smilewinkgrin:

 

I will play Greektim.

1. Meat = krea

2. He eats = phage

My method was to find the English word in the Greek New Testament, then use an interlinear to find the transliterated Greek word.

I have almost no language skills and so I would not do well in English, let alone a foreign tongue.

But I very much admire those who do, and use them to teach how to read God's word in their original languages.

 

Maybe that tells you the character of this forum. :laugh: But I am interested ....what is your level of proficiency of Spanish? I see you as an apple faced young intellectual from North Carolina. your teaching Hondurans....Greek? Do you have a good working knowledge of conversational Spanish? If so I would be interested in how you obtained it as I will have to learn it & during my school years, learning Spanish was an abject failure.

 

Tim, I looked at your quiz and figure I'd probably only get about a 50% without the material to study. Looks like a good one! :laugh:

I like your approach. Do I sniff Dr. Black's influence there? I only have one Japanese student right now, but may be travelling down to Sapporo to a church there to teach some ministerial students in a large church there, and am thinking of using your approach. Are you using a textbook of some kind? Dr. Black's? About all we have in Japanese is Machen. I may have to start translating Dr. Black's textbook.

My one Japanese student has finished most of Machen and we are translating 1 John right now from the Byzantine Textform. He is absolutely delighted, enjoying every minute of translation work. I've gotten the Fribergs' Analytical (love their definitions) for him to use, and it was the best thing I could have done. His knowledge of English (which he teaches) plus the Analytical help him to translate almost without error, though it's still too literal (even for me :smilewinkgrin.

 

I keep meaning to buy his text, but I think the major emphasis is on reading Greek.

So essentially are you writing your own textbook with this approach? Or are you aiming more at just an introductory approach to prepare them for college type Greek? If I am officially invited down to the church in Sapporo they will be college age, serious students.

I'll check out the link, 'cause you're making think. :thumbs:

 

The problem is that biblical Greek is not a living language with a living teacher to create the classroom environment you envisage. Now sure, some monks could get together like in Erasmus' time and only speak biblical Greek with one another, but still this is merely a simulation and anything spoken would have to be checked with actual written records from the biblical period. For example, how do you know that my καθηται επι της καθεδρας is not more accurate than your καθηται εν τη καθεδρα which would could indicate idleness or inaction? The revitalization of the dead Biblical Hebrew language in the making of the modern Jewish state is a neat case study however, but still modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew are two different birds.

I'm interested in how your classroom progresses, since I have the unenviable position of teaching Greek 1 and Greek 2 to foreign seminarians in two 10-day modular periods.

 

Why waste time learning what a computer can do in fractions of a second. The issue with understanding the New Testament is to discern the intended meaning of the words. We have the critical text in transliterated form so no need to muddy the waters with the Greek alphabet.

Does not the idea of "in the original language" simply allow preachers to claim scripture means something other than what the English translation says?

It is like some sort of cottage industry, an industry by the elites, for the elites, of the elites. Does not mesh with the gospel is so simple a child can understand it.

 

Erasmian pronunciation has been used standardly in both classical and religious Greek education for a very long time. Whoever learns exclusively a different pronunciation scheme will sound stupid whenever in any academic setting anywhere in the world. Standardization in such things as this is not bad but rather necessary. It's your pedagogy of teaching a dead language through a living language approach that fascinates me, and in fact it's not new since monks, and even Erasmus himself, have been using this approach for who knows how long. The problem is that most of us are not sequestered monks on the backside of a mountain somewhere with that much time on our hands.

 

If you listen to experts say something means this, and other experts say, no it means that, pretty soon you figure out the experts are not really expert.

The gospel as presented by "experts" is complex and riddled with paradox, and therefore no one can understand it. However scripture teaches the gospel is simple and a child can understand it, i.e. hidden from the self proclaimed experts but revealed to babes.

 

When did this thread become about the Gospel??

 

is this anoth back handed railing against calvinistic teachers/teaching, or against those holding to reformed doctrines?

 

From the website--

Kinda ironic, don't you think?