From: Burton J. Rozema (rozema@mcs.net)
Date: Tue Jan 30 1996 - 12:01:06 EST
Let me add an "amen" to what Carl Conrad has written in this post. It is
something I have tried to convey to students for many years. As always,
Professor Conrad makes being a lurker on this list a rewarding
experience for me. Keep up your inciteful and very learned responses!
________________________________________________________________________
Burton J. Rozema Phone: 708-239-4760
VP Academic Affairs FAX: 708-385-5665
Trinity Christian College email: rozema@mcs.net
Palos Heights, IL 60463
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(And Professor of Classics)
On Tue, 30 Jan 1996, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> Please forgive the patronizing tone of this. I have been tutoring a few
> students in NT Greek recently and meditating much over the attitudes that
> foster success in learning it and that inhibit success in learning it. For
> what it's worth, I'd just like to offer the following thoughts, most of
> which are probably obvious to many list readers.
>
> Many on this list are accomplished scholars in the GNT, but many are also
> in the process of learning the Greek of the NT, and in a deeper sense, I'd
> say we are all in the process of learning the Greek of the NT. So I want to
> offer some thoughts on means and ends in learning the Greek of the NT with
> regard to texts and lexicons that I hope may be helpful, particularly when
> one considers the number of hours that are spent puzzling through texts
> that begrudge you their meanings and poring over lexicon entries that seem
> to be pages long and (superficially) as meaningless as the sequence of
> names in a telephone directory.
>
> A student of the New Testament can readily come to hate an unabridged Greek
> lexicon. She or he is endeavoring to learn Greek with the primary if not in
> fact sole purpose of reading the GNT. In itself that is a reasonable and
> laudable objective, but it has to be understood and actualized in a much
> broader context for the obvious reason that the Greek language really
> wasn't created for the purpose of writing the GNT (however much one wants
> to praise (or blame) God for choosing to have the NT written in Greek). One
> has to see that the NT is one complex of documents written in a language
> used by people over a very broad geographical area for every purpose for
> which one uses any language. Consequently, although one may aim ultimately
> at reading of the NT with one's acquired facility in Koine Greek, one must
> learn the language and make learning the language--for the time
> being--one's primary objective. What this means is that any text--be it
> from the NT, from the LXX, from an Apostolic Father, or from a papyrus
> letter--any text that you undertake to read must be seen not as an end in
> itself but as a means to learn some more Greek. So one isn't aiming at
> working out an acceptable English equivalent of that text; rather you're
> aiming at understanding the Greek of that text and increasing one's
> knowledge of Greek through that text. The lexicon is one's friend, and the
> fuller the lexicon entry on a noun, verb, or whatnot, the greater the
> opportunity one has to expand his or her knowledge of Greek. If one views
> it as a hindrance, as a mass of verbiage to scan in order to find the one
> workable gloss that matches the phrasing of your text passage, then one
> won't learn anything from it and is likely to miss most of what he or she
> could have learned from consulting the lexicon on that word. One needs to
> labor "lovingly" (I use the word deliberately) over the array of structured
> meanings and relationships between meanings suggested in a lexicon entry
> and one should seek to ascertain the logic and psychological probabilities
> accounting for the ramifications of meanings from the primary to secondary
> and tertiary levels. A word, after all, is not, however much similarity it
> may have to a mathematical sign, is not a mathematical sign, but a page or
> a chapter in the history of human experience, loaded with metaphorical
> leaps and powerful emotional overtones and undertones. Words have
> personalities that need to be learned, as best one can learn them, and just
> as it is hard, perhaps impossible to know fully (EPIGNWNAI?) the spouse one
> has lived with for decades, so it is impossible to acquire any sense of a
> word whose lexicon entry one scans superficially in order to find a meaning
> that "fits" the context of what one's reading.
>
> May I suggest, therefore, that language learning be treated as an end in
> itself while one is in the process of learning it. The passage that one is
> reading and the lexicon that one consults are means to that end and should
> be exploited toward that end. The translation of the passage is at best a
> by-product of learning; much to be preferred is an understanding of how the
> passage conveys its thoughts and feelings through the linguistic medium it
> employs; it is to be viewed and grasped as an expression of a
> Greek-thinking person and one should endeavor to make it a means to assist
> one to become a Greek-thinking person onself. Ultimately this may be
> helpful when one endeavors to read and interpret the inspired texts
> transmitted to us by the Greek-thinking persons who put into writing our
> New Testament.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University
> One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
> (314) 935-4018
> cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
> WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:37 EDT