I don't think there's a fixed optimal point for this, Jim; I would only say
that one ought to switch over at the earliest discernible opportunity.
Mounce's workbook uses real sentences from the GNT right away and expands
to longer units of connected writing where possible.
Although Edward suggests that beginning with John's gospel is not a very
good idea, I have, in the past,just because they are relatively easy,
started using Johannine narrative segments directly pretty early with NT
Greek students--but I don't usually teach beginning NT Greek (we ask them
to do a year of classical Attic before doing a tutorial in Biblical Greek
with me; my arm has been twisted to teach NT Greek at the beginning level
rather rarely).
> And
>also, couldn't your second objection to Machen be leveled at many
>first-year textbooks?
Aye, verily, indeed, against most of them. My colleague at Eden Seminary
here in our area has put together a reader in GNT to accompany his
beginning NT Greek course that was inspired by the pattern of _Reading
Greek_. It's by no means an easy task to accomplish--developing a graded
series of readings offering larger paragraph units of narrative or
epistolary or expository nature in NT Greek. But, speaking for myself
alone, I'm convinced that it's the only right way to go toward developing a
real sense of thinking in Greek thought-patterns.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/