Category Archives: Greek Class

Extra homework from class three

In the texts below, I marked the couple of things I noticed with bold and a letter. My thoughts on those are:

{a} Considering αυτος εστιν, I tend to like the NASB because the “he” is already built in to the verb, and we usually recognize the addition of a personal pronoun as being intensifying. However, based on what I understand about this week’s chapter so for, it isn’t specifically an “adjectival intensive” because there’s no article, so maybe the RSV weights that fact heavily.

Continue reading Extra homework from class three

Greek 2 – third class

Another fun class. Lots of translation time. Had a couple of examples of places where you can see emphases in the Greek text which would be very difficult to be keyed in to using only the English texts, such as the verb tenses/moods concerning “sin” (we went through 1 John 1:7-2:2).

We had an interesting optional homework piece which I will probably blog on later.

Book Recommendations:

– R. Guelich, Mark (1-8:26), WBC
– W. Lane, Mark (8:27-16:20), WBC
– R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary of the Greek New Testament, Int’l Greek Testament Commentaries
– M. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Black’s New Testament Commentary

Preview:

– Three uses of αυτος
– 2-1-2

Homework:

– Read Chapter 12
– Wkbk: Parse odds
– Wkbk: Translate 1-5

Greek 2 – second class

Reading was fun tonight. It was nice to have my brain start to see things, albeit with help. I can start to see what I don’t know. Maybe that sounds weird. What I mean is I am starting to recognize enough to say “I know what that is *supposed* to be, but I don’t know that form yet.” I really need to get a better handle on vocab, though. It’s not much good figuring out how a word is to work in a sentence, but not knowing what it means.

Notes from tonight: I must nail the full paradigm of definite articles. And I need to remember the definite articles on the vocab cards, since I can’t just *figure out* the gender of third declension words.

Assignments:

– Read Chapter 11
– Chapter 11 Vocab
– Workbook: Pg 33 parse odds
– Workbook: Pg 34 translate 1-5
– Memorize 1st and 2nd person personal pronoun paradigms
– Memorize πας paradigm

Preview (what we need to understand) from this chapter:

– Memorization noted above
– The difference between accented and unaccented pronouns
– How the case of a pronoun is determined
– How the person of a pronoun is determined
– How the gender of a pronoun is determined
– Distinctives of dentals in the 3rd declension

Book Recommendations:

– D. Hagner, Matthew, two volumes by Word
– W. D. Davies & D. Allison A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Matthew, three volumes by ICC
– R. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on his Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution
– R. Guelich, Sermon on the Mount: A foundation for Understanding

Retaining it all

It really is true that a huge part of learning a language is the habit of it. It’s repetition which makes this data I’m trying to assimilate accessible when I need it. And it’s neglect which allows it to get buried with all the other cares and tasks and happenings of the day. And after a few days, it’s hard to dig it back out.

This shouldn’t be surprising to me after learning programming languages from Lasso to JSP to Javascript to PHP and so on. I think the difference between a programming language and Koine Greek (a dead language) is that I can experiment with programming languages and get instant feedback and instant gratification. Failure in a programming language can be an annoying but benign null pointer error. Failure in Greek can be heresy.

As I’m learning the third declension nouns, I’m feeling like I don’t have the first and second declensions solid enough yet. Which just piles on the stress. I know them, but they’re not “at the ready” like I want them to be. Maybe I’m just being impatient.

Will that stop me? μη γενοιτο! Heck, four months ago, the word declension scared me. :)

Greek 2 – First class

Assignments:

– Read Chapter 10
– Chapter 10 Vocab
– Memorize σαρχ paradigm
– Workbook: Pg 31 chart
– Workbook: Pg 31 parse odds
– Workbook: Pgs 32-33 translate 1-5

Book Recommendations:

– H. Alford The Greek New Testament 7th Ed. (number one pick, more technical greek)
– W. R. Nicell The Expositor’s Greek Testament
– I. H. Marshall New International Greek Testament Commentary
– G. Fee New International Commentary of the New Testament (number two pick, more homiletic/application)

To my fellow Lackian followers, you can view just the “Greek Class” category [here][1] (you can bookmark that, too).

[1]: http://php.kpmartin.com/wordpress/?cat=2

Those links I promised

Hello fellow MacLaurin Greek students! Here’s a round-up of some links. The first one is the Greek New Testament I’d mentioned in our last class.

– [Greek New Testament PDF][1]
– Mounce’s site: [teknia.com][2]
– [Perseus][3] – Greek reference material. A little complicated.

The following line should actually appear in Greek letters. Please let me know using comments (below).

κυριος ιησους χριστος

Oh, and by the way, guess what I [got for Christmas][4]!

[See you all in January!][5]

[1]: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tayl0010/ntest.pdf
[2]: http://www.teknia.com/index.php?page=home
[3]: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0155
[4]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3438051133/
[5]: http://www.maclaurin.org/courses.php