From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 09 1999 - 06:30:56 EST
At 6:02 PM -0800 12/8/99, George Goolde wrote:
>Some of us would select a grammar largely because it equips the student to
>understand biblical Greek. I know this may be a "shortsighted" approach to
>some of you. But many of us study Greek only to translate and apply the
>Word of God rather than out of a love for and appreciation of classical
>languages.
>
>A case in point: There was a question a few posts back about the grammar
>of Eugene VanNess Goetchius. I used that grammar as a student and hated it
>because there was so much in it designed for linguists. I have nothing bad
>to say about linguists; I just wasn't trying to be one!
>
>That is why I personally prefer an eight case grammar to a five case
>one. I think it is a strong step in the right direction toward teaching
>students to understand their Bibles. The main idea of the ablative is not
>the same as the main idea of the genitive whether or not we chose to
>identify them as separate cases or uses of one case.
>
>I guess I am sort of arguing for an "engineering" approach rather than a
>"liberal arts" approach to the study of Greek.
>
>Maybe we need more than one "standard grammar," depending on our approach
>and purpose for studying.
(1) We currently have more than one "standard grammar." Most teachers of
Greek, unless they have written their own textbook (and perhaps even then,
as well) are not quite happy with the best choice available to them. I've
always felt that the interaction between teacher and students was at least
as important to successfully teaching/learning Greek as which textbook one
uses; I've even had the sneaking suspicion that if that interaction is
good, it can overcome a very wretched textbook's deficiencies, and if it
isn't good, a very good textbook is not likely to achieve the best results.
(2) While I've said this before, I'll repeat it since George repeats his
EITHER/OR assertion about reasons for studying Greek as "to translate and
apply the Word of God" OR "love for and appreciation of classical
languages." They are not exclusive approaches, and I am one of those who
holds that these approaches are complementary, at least to the extent that
the language and cultural setting of the NT corpus are hardly isolated from
the context of the Greco-Roman world and its cultures and languages. Some
might go even further and say that an exclusive approach to the Greek Bible
and its language in isolation from some endeavor to grasp the broader
dimensions of ancient Greek language and ancient cultures is
self-defeating, but I wouldn't want to argue that point here and now as it
really gets into hermeneutical issues.
(3) I was unaware that teaching an eight-case system was more
characteristic of a NT Greek teacher than of one who teaches Classical
Attic or who teaches a broader range of Greek language and literature, and
in fact, I don't believe it. I've always taught it myself, thinking that
when one deals with the earlier Greek literature it is all the more
important to be able to distinguish an ablatival from a partitive or
pertinentive genitive or to distinguish an instrumental-comitative from a
referential and from a locative dative. My impression, for what it's worth,
is that it is those who want to focus solely on NT Koine Greek who are more
likely to take a four-case approach to the language. But then, I don't
really believe that this EITHER/OR stance toward the Greek language is all
that widespread among teachers of Greek. I may very well be mistaken.
Perhaps Biblical Greek should be taught in Engineering Schools, or perhaps
Seminaries ought to be structured more like Engineering Schools.
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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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