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brothers/sisters koine/classical
Ted Brunner is not always so tactful. Surely he and I are not
the only ones to cringe at the inappropriateness of sectarian
sorts of greetings and signoffs on this list -- there are many
students of things pertaining to "the NT" who have no personal
commitments to "Christian" positions, some of whom do have
commitments elsewhere on the religious spectrum (e.g. "Judaism").
For better or for worse, in academic discussions we try not to
worry about such matters.
As to whether, as Ted suggests, knowledge of the range of Greek
necessary for adequate understanding of "NT" writings also requires
knowledge of classical Greek, I wonder (didn't we go through this
lightly once before? Is it easy to check these logs?). It certainly
would be desirable, but isn't it likely that some early Christian
authors themselves were not intimate with classical Greek, and thus
need first to be seen in terms of their own linguistic context?
This is, of course, in part a rationalism for my own failings on
the classical Greek side! Still, I think the point has merit even
apart from that.
On the matter of teaching Greek for studying the early Christian
literature and related materials, have any of you used the
available electronic aides such as John Hurd's Greek Tutor or
the GreekTools package from Parsons Technology? It would be nice
to be able to put together hardcopy and electronic approaches into
an integrated pedagogical approach; the computer does well on a
sort of "flashcard" function, and probably has great potential in
other directions as well (some of them already being exploited
by John Hurd). What is already in place, and what is needed?
Bob Kraft, UPenn