Looking at a Passage

I’ve blogged here a few times about different ways of reading (here, for example). Lingamish has a series of posts on the topic as well that are well worth reading. They are:

• Grasshopper Greek: Getting Focused #1 (wide-angle)
• Grasshopper Greek: Getting Focused #2 (telescope)
• Grasshopper Greek: Getting Focused #3 (microscope)
• The fourth lens

I have found many partisans amongst Bible students, especially of serious, detailed reading, outlining, diagramming, phrasing, and so forth. Others are partisans for reading large sections at a time. But all of these approaches have their benefits, and it is only by looking at the text from more than one angle that we get the whole. Someone might diagram an entire passage and provide extended exegetical arguments, but if the connection to the whole is not made, then something may well be missing.

Lingamish has a “rubber meets the road” practical approach that is refreshing.

One last link to Lingamish, Grasshopper Greek: Apocalyptic Rock, in which he puts a portion of Revelation to music. The player at the top of the post doesn’t seem to work, but the alternate link he provides does.

As an occasional Greek teacher, normally of one or two students at a time, I take the opportunity both to read to them, and to have them read to me in Greek, before I ask them to translate. It takes a great deal of practice to smooth out one’s pronunciation and gain any ease in that process, but I find that students who do so can discuss the text and think about it more effectively. I’m guessing most of us who have studied Biblical languages remember a time early in our training when we would look at a word, but couldn’t really pronounce it, and then look it up in the lexicon. On failing to find it, we’d look back and realize that we weren’t looking for precisely the same word as was found in the text. Or was I the only one who ever made that mistake?

Learning to pronounce the text comprehensibly helps with that process. I’ve been reading Syriac recently, trying to revive my knowledge of that language, which was never all that good in the first place. I made precisely that mistake just yesterday, because my pronunciation has become weak, and I don’t clearly remember the form and the sound together.

I don’t know how many will take to rockin’ in Greek, but it’s an interesting idea!