First, I thank our colleague James for the hardly-deserved epithet
"esteemed"; on this list, I'm strictly a bench player. (I'll wait till
someone starts the b-hermeneutics list to vie for esteem.)
I haven't said anything about my textbook because I have very mixed
feelings about it. I was originally commissioned to fix up the Efird
grammar a little, a task I undertook a little reluctantly because my
gifts in teaching Greek fall heavily on the "teaching" and much less
firmly on the "Greek." At the same time, I thought I could help people
out by remedying some of the more egregious problems with the first
edition of that textbook. What eventually happened was that the
publishers encouraged me to make more and more changes, so that
eventually it became a separate book altogether (not what I had intended
at all, and once again far beyond the pretensions of a
small-to-middling-height Greek). I then arranged that they pay a really
big Greek ("why man, he doth bestride this narrow list like a
Colossus!")to look it over, and call its more blatant problems and
mistakes to my attention, but due in part to financial considerations
and in part to internal administrative shifts, that final step in
preparing the manuscript never took place.
I'll be editing the proofs soon, trying to catch as much as I can,
trying to fix as many of the problems as I can, and it will be published
soon in a much less refined state than I would have wished.
Some of the textbook's characteristics were influenced by list
discussions (and I thank the list in the acknowledgments!); I give
modern pronunciation as well as Erasmian, commending the former but
noting that many profs will use the latter. I try to present aspect in a
version that runs close to Mari Olsen's. I eschew treating the middle as
"self-involving," since in my experience that inevitably leads to
students asking whether every single m/p form might not be middle
instead of passive even where distinct syntactical and lexical
considerations militate against the middle (instead, I simply note that
some verbs appear in the middle, others usually don't, and when they do
one needs to ascertain what that verb usually means in the middle). I do
use separate sentences for the exercises, drawn as much as possible from
Scripture, but there are some made-up sentences too, and they will no
doubt seem hokey (this is one thing I had hoped very much for help
with). On the plus side, two of my students are preparing a companion
book with continuous-narrative exercises, with some spoken-Greek basics,
with hints and tips, and perhaps with desiderata that listmembers
stipulate.)
I work with it very well; my last class caught on to what I asked of
them very rapidly. I expect, though, that that is more the effect of my
enthusiasm for the text--I'll bet that one reason Dale Wheeler's
students accomplish so much with Story's text is a comparable harmony of
pedagogical practice with textbook direction.
This is much more answer than James invited, but I'm especially
concerned that my esteemed colleagues on the list situate my
contribution in the rather complicated circumstances of its production,
rather than reckoning (as they might readily do) that it constitutes
arrant hUBRIS on my part. . . .
I recommend my textbook with hesitant enthusiasm--we'll see how it looks
after the proofs are done.
Thanks for your patience and interest--
Grace and peace,
A K M Adam
akm.adam@ptsem.edu
Princeton Theological Seminary
"Melius est dubitare de occultis quam litigare de incertis."
Augustine