Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Biblical Greek

  • Discussion on Verbal Aspect

    I exchanged a few e-mails today with Dave Black about Greek verbal aspect. He has quoted me on his blog, and I’ve extracted the material for the jesusparadigm.com site, so there’s a permanent link. What I said wouldn’t make a full discussion, so it’s best to read it there in the full context.

    My own background involves an MA in Religion, concentrating in Biblical and Cognate Languages, which was built on a BA in Biblical Languages. I’ve tutored a few people and taught Greek and Hebrew in churches from time to time, but this is not my profession. I have taken about 12 graduate hours of linguistics.

  • Dave Black: 13 Things Greek Teachers Won’t Tell You

    Dave lists 13 things Greek teachers won’t tell you, but I must say that most of mine did. And Dave does admit that many Greek teachers do say these things.

    But do students listen? Do people in the pews and those who read books get the message?

    My experience is that many do not. Not infrequently someone will tell me that they trust my interpretation of a particular Scripture because I read Greek, or because I was reading it from the Greek New Testament. The same applies to Hebrew. There is a great deal of respect that is given to someone who knows their biblical languages. But as Dave points out in both items #1 and #2, Greek is one tool. It doesn’t mean you’re right.

    This reminds me of a conversation I had with a member of a Bible study group. He informed me that understanding the book of Revelation was really quite simple, because the author of the book he was reading on Revelation said it was quite simple. Not only that, but the author promised to present it simply so that anyone could understand. I told him that the problem was that I had a whole shelf of books on Revelation that claimed that they had the key and that it was really quite straightforward. No two of those books agree. In general, they don’t even agree broadly. Then there are the other books written by people who are more honest and admit Revelation is not that easy. And they disagree some more.

    Which leads me to point out that whatever interpretation you hear argued by someone who reads Greek or Hebrew, there are many other people who also read Greek or Hebrew who disagree. Skill in biblical languages relates to knowledge of the Bible as possession of a toolkit relates to repair of a car. Just because you have a good toolkit doesn’t mean the car is fixed. On the other hand, without the toolkit, things may be difficult!

    I’d also like to underline point #5. Greek words (and words in general) don’t have just one meaning. So when someone says, “What the Greek really means …” you’re probably about to get misinformed. Even those who might follow that intro with a carefully nuanced expression of the meaning of the word in that particular context ought to restrain themselves and choose a different way of getting the idea across.

    And then there are the people who use Greek or Hebrew to back up mundane points equally well expressed in English. I’m referring to things like, “Jesus said to build your house on a rock. Now the Greek word here means ‘house’ or ‘a place to live.’” Um, yes. That’s why the translators translated it “house.” But the speaker now sounds so much more educated or sometimes more spiritual.

    Then there are those preachers who have clearly been using their Strong’s concordance, but for the benefit of my blood pressure, I won’t go there.

    To #10, Greek is good for more than word studies, I can but say “Amen!”

    To #11, Greek can make you lose your faith, I’d add, “So can theology.” As someone who left the church approximately at the same time I left the seminary, only to return, though in a different denomination, about 12 years later, I can testify to this.

    There are folks who think this is all the fault of liberal seminaries presenting pure and innocent young students with dangerous critical theories. But for me it was more a matter of losing my experience of faith while becoming deeply involved with the minutiae of doctrine.

    In seminary I was studying the Bible many hours every day. With my concentration in biblical languages, my Bible study became almost constant. My attendance at church dropped off. In fact, I became so critical of sermons that I really couldn’t comfortably attend church. None of the stupid people who were preaching  could do a good enough job to suit me. So I just neglected the gatherings of the saints. At the same time my witness died out. I was no longer sharing. If I discussed with anyone, it was about the latest esoteric thing I had read. Christ and him crucified was forgotten.

    If you behave as I did, you can lose your faith whether you are in a liberal, moderate, or conservative seminary, or even in school studying another subject.

     

  • Free New Testament Commentary Ebooks

    The regular Kindle prices are great, but Baker is offering selected commentaries free for one day on Jan. 9 (past, alas!), Jan. 16, and Jan 23. Today’s is on James. More at Evangelical Textual Criticism.

  • Mounce on Matthew 2:8, May, and Might

    A good discussion, especially of the aorist adverbial participle followed by an imperative.

  • Dave Black on Greek Study Resources

    Dave Black suggests ten books for studying New Testament Greek during 2012. Four of these are on my regular list and a couple more are on my reading list. I might work on a list of my own when I’m back in Pensacola with my library. I’ve extracted the list onto The Jesus Paradigm since one can’t link to a particular post on Dave’s blog.

    One book I’m reading currently is Dave’s Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek: A Survey of Basic Concepts and Applications. Thus far I highly recommend it. I’ll review it here when I’ve finished reading it.

  • Helps and Keeping Up Your Greek

    Dave Black has another good paragraph on keeping up your Greek:

    I will not go into the mechanics of keeping up with your Greek this summer. For this, you can refer to my book Using New Testament Greek in Ministry, published by Baker Book House. Con Campbell and a host of other Greek teachers will tell you that the use of helps such as interlinears is anathema. Do I agree? You bet I don’t! Do I really care what helps you use? I want those of you who are struggling with your Greek to employ any tool available that will keep you in the Greek text. And if you are feeling like a nobody, just remember that God specially chooses nobodies to glorify Himself. The success or failure of your Greek studies depends on the extent to which your thoughts and attitudes and habits are brought under the control of the Holy Spirit. Our constant daily priority is to submit ourselves to the Spirit’s control so that His fruit may be manifest in our lives. I am the ultimate egalitarian when it comes to languages. Greek is for everyone who has a love for Bible study. It is hoped that through our class many will be led into a deeper knowledge of God’s Word and challenged to become more obedient to the call of God on their lives — despite their struggles and failings. Being able to read your Greek New Testament is one of the most joyous and rewarding activities possible, and I have labored diligently to equip you for this task. I make no pretense of having successfully accomplished this. But I have tried. Ultimately, however, the work is God’s. Now let us trust Him to accomplish it!

    Dave already linked to my own previous post on this topic, so I hardly need to add anything.

    But I will anyhow!

    The key problem I find amongst pastors and teachers who are not in an academic environment is not that they lack skill discovering lexical forms (though they generally do), but rather that they don’t have enough exposure to Greek text to provide context and background to their study, or more precisely, they take so look piecing together individual Greek words, that they can’t really study the passage.

    The best solution to this, in my opinion, is to read quantities of Greek. Large quantities. Reader’s lexicons and interlinears make that possible. Don’t neglect digging in and learning the nuts and bolts. But if you’re already used to the sound and feel, you’re going to find it easier to practice the details.

    Even though I always get in trouble on this, I must recommend both memorization and reading aloud. One of my own methods for keeping my Greek fresh is to read passages aloud and record myself doing so. I then put them on CDs which I have in the car. Right now I have Philippians, 1 John, and the first 8 chapters of Romans. I started doing this when I was teaching and noticed that my pronunciation was not as fluid as it once had been. I have been quite horrified to hear some of my “slips of the tongue” when listening to myself, but things have gotten better as I put this into practice.

    Besides, if you want your spirits lifted, there’s nothing quite like the text of Philippians to listen to as you drive!

     

  • Keeping Your Greek (or Not)

    Via Dave Black, I came across this review of the book Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People. I’m going to try to get a copy of this book at some point, as I deal with many people who would like to keep some Greek but really haven’t.

    Dave comments:

    In the teaching world we often speak of “outcomes” when we write our syllabi. Here’s what I tell my Greek students: “By the end of the course you should be able to read your Greek New Testament with the use of a lexicon.” Now, many different roads can lead to this outcome. The most important is probably grammar; then comes vocabulary (which unlocks the door to rapid reading). But should students be discouraged from using other helps in their pursuit of this objective — interlinears, for example? Looks like one writer thinks so — that students should “burn their interlinears” (see Mark Stevens’ review of Con Campbell’s book Keeping Your Greek.)

    I respectfully disagree. It is a day of conformity. Individuality is being erased until we all are like eggs in a carton. It is amusing to me to hear people proscribing tools that get students into the text. There is freedom in Christ, and it is unrealistic to think that our graduates will always master the languages to the degree we want them to. I’ve quoted it before, but the words of an old preacher bear repeating:

    Halitosis is better than no breath at all.

    Isn’t that great?

    I must respectfully agree with Dave, though my disagreement with Mark Stevens and the book itself must be very respectful, as I’ve had some nasty things to say about interlinears myself.

    I work largely with people who are either learning Greek for their own use, or who are in great need of keeping their Greek or Hebrew. Their primary need is to keep the tool available for their own use in teaching or sermon preparation. They’re not looking to pass a Greek proficiency exam (though I’ve had the pleasure of helping some people successfully for such), nor are they looking to doctoral studies.

    What they need to do is maintain enough proficiency with the language in general so that they can study specific things they need to study.

    I think there are two elements to this:

    1) Learning Greek or Hebrew as a language in the context of the texts we have available. By this I mean not learning it simply as a set of rules which you can apply to a text, but getting to the point where you see meaning in the text without processing every detail consciously. If you don’t get to that point, maintenance will always be incredibly difficult.

    2) Maintaining exposure to quantities of the language. We don’t remember our English vocabulary because we memorized lists. We remember it because we make use of it. The same thing goes for grammar.

    In order to accomplish these goals, I strongly recommend reader’s lexicons. I was introduced to these by my teacher in third year Greek exegesis class, Sake Kubo, co-editor of A Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. These allow reading quantities of text provided you have a minimum vocabulary (words over 50x memorized, which is a good idea in any case), and know enough basic grammar.

    Now when I’m teaching, I don’t like students to use interlinears, but used correctly, I think they can be of benefit. You need to use it to provide quick glosses to let you cover a quantity of the text. Reading quantity gives you context. If you’re getting dependent on the interlinear, then you need to spend some time away from it.

    Don’t use it in your detailed study of a text. The gloss provided by an interlinear is not enough to give you a serious understanding of a particular word or form. The same goes for the Reader’s Lexicon, however. But the either of these tools can help you get an overview of a passage, after which you apply your more detailed study techniques to specific portions as necessary.

    There are two dangers in this, I believe. First, you may get the idea that the interlinear’s gloss is the meaning, and thus become a person who studies in English but cites Greek words. Second, you can become lazy, and never get to the more serious study. But I think you can avoid both of those problems.

    I see the interlinear as a good tool for the fastest reading. The reader’s lexicon is the next level. Following that, you can get into detailed, word-by-word study. Hopefully after that you’ll get to the point that you can burn your interlinear (or give it to some poor soul who is not so far along).

  • Dave Black: Ten Best Books for Studying New Testament Greek

    David Alan Black has posted a new essay, Ten Best Books for Studying New Testament Greek.  The majority are books I have read and/or are on my shelves, but there are a couple that are just on my “need to read this list” and a couple more I’m going to add.

    I note that when I teach Greek classes locally, usually to a couple of people at a time, I use the #1 and #2 books on his list.  I know that as one of his publishers I should perhaps use one of his books as my text, but I will plead historical reasons–I picked the textbooks before I was his publisher!

    If I might underline a couple of books on his list:  #5. Peter Cotterell and Max Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation, and Dave’s related book, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek: A Survey of Basic Concepts and Applications. I take a small risk in recommending books I haven’t personally read. My introduction to linguistics started with my graduate advisor, Dr. Leona Running at Andrews University, and continued with some graduate work in linguistics at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle. Those linguistics classes did more for my understanding of translation and exegesis than did many of my exegesis classes.

    I always spend time talking about linguistics with my Greek or Hebrew students.  It makes a great deal of difference to how valuable one’s technical language knowledge will be.  When I studied Greek, I found that even syntax was neglected to some extent.

    Finally, #10. Rodney Decker, Koine Greek Reader: Selections from the New Testament, Septuagint, and Early Christian Writers.  In particular note the “Septuagint” and “Early Christian Writers.”  In my opinion, if your reading is limited to the New Testament, you cannot claim to really understand New Testament Greek.  I include the LXX in my regular reading, and I’m including more and more literature from the early church.  It will be well worth your while to do so.

  • On Etymological and Anti-Etymological Fallacies

    Clayboy has an excellent post on preachers who say “What the Greek really means…” or words to that effect.  I was drawn to this one because of my own experience.

    My wife tells me that when we first got married she quickly got used to watching me during sermons.  I need to tell you that my wife is extraordinarily observant and will catch people–especially me–trying to conceal feelings and reactions.  She told me that I was very good at concealing my reaction, but she would see me get a certain fixed expression on my face whenever a preacher said “What the Greek really means …”  (They rarely do it with Hebrew, but for what it’s worth, the comments on Hebrew are generally less accurate than those on Greek.)

    Often the preacher is simply replacing he word in his English translation with one that is possible, though not necessarily probable, but which better supports his point.  Besides the inaccuracy, I dislike the implication that someone with a couple of years of Greek can correct the work of translation committees in such an authoritative fashion.

    I also, however, understand the reservations expressed by Bob MacDonald in the comments in reminding us that etymology has value.  It can be useful in studying the history of words or in suggesting meanings for derived forms for which we have too few examples in the literature.  Of course, the context of the word in actual used, studied as synchronically as possible, governs, but the etymology can be very useful.

    I’ve encountered a few people who have heard of the etymological fallacy, and some of the very careless uses of etymology, especially in ancient near eastern studies, and have therefore determined that any use of etymology must be a fallacy.  There are legitimate uses.

    My suggestion to preachers and teachers has always been to use whatever skills they have in the original languages for they’re worth in preparing to teach, but to avoid making the sermon into a language lesson.  There are, after all, many factors other than the structure of language in understanding a text.

    I recall one professor I had in graduate school who was incredibly good at the structure and vocabulary of a language.  I took readings in Biblical Aramaic from him and I value highly the time I spent in his classes.  But while he could analyze the nuts and bolts better than anyone I have encountered, before or after, I would not rely on him for the exegesis of a passage.  The only thing he cared about were those nuts and bolts.  Which is fine–I’d build on his foundation any day.

    The problem, as I see it, is that when we use the language to give a single word for “what the Greek really means” or provide a few synonyms, we imply that getting the right gloss for the word is what using Biblical languages is all about.  It’s much better to learn to express the result in good English–assuming that’s the language in which we’re preaching.

  • Mounce on What the Greek Says

    Bill Mounce, author of the wonderful Basics of Biblical Greek, which I have used in teaching, has a post at Koinonia titled <em>Matthew 7:26-Is a moros a moron</em>, with the very proper answer–NO!

    There are two things I’d like to call attention to in this post.  The first is an excellent illustration of the false allure of etymology or seeking cognates.  This is more for the serious Hebrew student, but while sometimes one must look for ideas for a “hapax legomenon” in cognate language, one should be aware that the cognate provides ideas, not proof of a new meaning.  Context provides the final judgement, and if a word occurs once, that means that humility is called for regarding that final judgment.

    The second is the sprinkling of “what the Greek says” (or Hebrew) into sermons, especially by those who don’t really know, which is the vast majority of times I’ve heard this used.

    Mounce says:

    I know it is tempting to show a little Greek knowledge and try to create a helpful word picture, but unless you are absolutely confident that your Greek is absolutely right, I strongly urge you not to display your Greek knowledge.

    Which brings me to the general point. I encourage my students to never say, “In the Greek ….” Why would you do that? To impress the audience with your academic acumen? To convince them that you are right when you can’t prove your point with biblical logic? Perhaps I am being a little harsh, but I am sensitive to pastors claiming to be an authority and putting themselves up on a pedestal. That’s not where servants belong.

    Just so.  I have rarely been privileged to quote two paragraphs from a blog post with which I agree more completely.

    PS:  You’ll have to read Mounce’s whole post to discover more about morons!