Greek is a paradox. On the one hand, now with some background in it from years ago, a whole year of undergraduate Greek and the better part of a year of graduate level Greek, one would think I’d finally be comfortable with the language. Up until recently, I didn’t think it would ever happen; nevertheless, even without that, there is something amazing about reading a so-called “dead language” and bringing it back to life, especially when one realizes the words one is reading are the words God inspired. If, as Christians believe, the Bible is God’s written account of His entering into this world, how amazing it is to see a grammatical construction — even if it is extremely frustrating — and think, “wow, that was written by the author of John, it is not an attempt to reconstruct what was written by the author of John in English. This is the real thing.” A frustrating periphrastic construction can suddenly seem almost exciting (admittedly, it is not always so).
In the midst of that, as of this weekend, I finished translating the book of 1 John for class. I’ve read through all of 2 John and 3 John in Greek as part of an assigned 10 minute devotional reading each day, and I’ve read some interesting key parts of the Gospel of John for the same assignment (you can read anything Johannian you feel like, other than Revelation). Doing that much translation — and I’ve tried to translate all of 1 John twice in the last month, once on the official class scratch paper, and once on the final assignment pages — along with the timed, non-translated reading, I realize I am not yet thinking Greek, but I am beginning to. I can anticipate common phrases used in these books. When I do not recognize a word, often I can figure out enough from the rest of the words to know what it means with some degree of certainty — it is starting to feel more like reading unmodernized Chaucer than reading untranslated Beowulf.
That’s pretty neat; I’m excited. I’d still like to expand into Classical Greek, but one step at a time…
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Dude. You are sick. You know that, right? I envy your ability and appreciation for the class. I am fighting tooth and nail and am not enjoying much of it, if any. I am looking forward to Exegesis. The pastoral focus and big picture will hopefully appeal to me more. I have never been good with languages.
Yes, I’ve suspected it. I don’t think it is ability so much as time. Greek is sort of like taking a can of paint and tossing it at a wall from twenty feet away. Not much sticks, but if you keep doing that long enough, you might almost paint the whole wall.
I'm looking forward to exegesis too -- I hope it is going to get into the type of interpretative issues I'm hoping it will. If so, it will almost remind me of literary criticism theory class!
This is interesting! A decade ago, when my son started Awana Cubbies (is “Cubbies” the only kid’s program in the diminutive?), we joked, and said, “This is the Greek Generation”. Our thoughts were that the millennial generation would grow up studying the Bible in Greek. We used to have “NIV stickers” to put over the KJV verses in the Awana books, and we talked of making “Greek stickers”, to put over our NIV stickers.
Although the generation produced lots of smart kids (and caused the “New Ivies”), the demographics of Awana shifted more toward the academically declining demographics of the church, and away from the rising academics of the millennials. Culture beats strategy every time, and the “socials” pushed out the “brainies”, just like high school cliques.
Language is still a big topic in my home, despite my son’s retirement from “competition”, and we still talk a lot about languages. There’s not a lot of pressure around our table (a decent ACT score can do that), maybe we should look at Greek in a casual sense? Some - like Tim - see it as “Fun”.
I often wonder if Greek should be taught, not as a 3 credit class in a couple of semesters, but one credit every semester for a two year (or more) period? Like phys education (and I mean true phys ed - not just sports), you start jogging, etc. and it takes a long time to make a difference, and jogging three times as much does not produce huge changes.
That would have been nice if adding Greek stickers had been necessitated!
Yes, you and your son might enjoy it. It’s kind of fascinating to anyone who enjoys language, and certainly, if one goes into it already sharp on things like what a genitive or a participle is, it will make life much easier.
I think your idea is a good one. Undergraduate two semester courses are fast enough; seminary teaches the same material in one semester. That’s insanely fast. Your idea would probably result in more people who actually know the language rather than merely being able to pass a test.
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