Tagged: Greek

Living Koine Greek Review – Part 2: Picture Lessons

I have thoroughly worked through the first part of the BLC Greek materials, which consist of 10 picture lessons on mp4 and an accompanying PDF. (For my first post in this series, see here.)

Each lesson is around 14-17 minutes long and cycles through 100 pictures. After every second lesson there is a quiz that tests comprehension of the previous two lessons. The idea is to watch the videos and merely soak up what you are seeing and hearing, becoming familiar with the way the language sounds and making sense of the language itself, all without translation into English.

In the accompanying PDF there is a section that provides some helps for especially tricky parts of speech as you’re working through listening. I didn’t have trouble with the Greek because of previous study but in my use of their Hebrew materials I did find them helpful at just the right points where I had trouble making sense of what was being communicated through the picture.

Once the learner has gone through the audio/video lessons, they are encouraged to begin learning how to read Greek by using the reading lessons in conjunction with the pictures. The reading lessons provide all 100 clauses from the picture lesson verbatim.

The PDF advises that the learner is exposed to 270 lexical items and 700 forms that cover a great deal of the grammar of the language. 270 lexical items nearly matches the number you get in an entire year of learning from Mounce’s grammar, and this is just part one! And the vocab, I would assert, provides a more helpful foundation already for reading widely in Greek since Mounce focuses merely on the most frequently occurring words in the NT (50x+). But if one wants to read profitably in the Greek NT, to say nothing of outside the NT (which should be a goal), then a much greater vocab base is needed than Mounce provides. 25-50 hours is recommended for the picture lessons (I believe the “500″ number on p. 85 is a typo).

The entire course utilizes a reconstructed pronunciation of Koine and you’ll need to use it as well. It’s pleasant to the ear, reads well, and is probably as close as we’re going to be able to be certain of to how it actually sounded given that we have no recordings of 1st c. speakers! The pronunciation is taught through listening to the audio but is also detailed in the PDF.

The alphabet is taught in the PDF and numbers 1 through 20 are taught in separate picture lessons. Numbers 1 through 10 are drilled in extremely thoroughly as each of the main picture lessons counts them 10 times each for the 100 pictures.

Some assessment of part one:

The first thing to say about this part of the course is that I know Greek better now than I did when I began. Now, just about any disciplined study with time in the language will result in knowing the language better so that first sentence doesn’t yet say anything positive for the course, though it is helpful to note I didn’t regress in my learning and I didn’t stay stagnant!

But, more can and should be said.

I found the videos generally fun which makes language learning enjoyable. I normally don’t have a problem with finding language learning fun, though I know I’m the exception and not the norm. But the videos nonetheless gave me a fresh approach to learning vocab and clauses. There were times where I felt they were moving much too slow but that might be a result of my previous study.

The videos engaged more senses than I customarily use in my Greek study. I have always been a proponent of audio learning with Greek, however, and I would record vocab on mp3 for me and my classmates during exegesis courses at school. They helped me study on my commutes to work and enabled me to master the vocab. I have never utilized pictures for Greek study though.

As such, I find the picture lessons to be helpful memory tools. The PDF asserts that more is going on here though: the structure of the language is being drilled in and you’re learning to understand Greek without translation.

Yes, but.

Yes, you’re learning without translation. I think that’s an important goal and one I’ve sought to achieve through disciplined study of Greek texts, reading more and more and seeking to think in Greek rather than translation. Being able to translate doesn’t actually show you know the language itself very well. Unfortunately I have lots of criticism of NT scholars that utilize Greek and show they’ve not sought to understand the attendant linguistic issues or have not moved past notions of one-to-one correspondence between Greek and, say, English. Lots of problems have been created by judging Greek based on English that are really no problem in the Greek.

But, I think there’s a place for starting with traditional approaches that utilize translation to get you up to speed and then you begin to shed that through reading more and more Greek. That’s what I’ve done. I don’t really translate in my head. I read Greek. If Koine Greek were a real living language—something we cannot actually recover—I’d be persuaded by the BLC approach. It’s easy for a picture of a concrete entity, e.g. a camel, with a corresponding concrete noun, to be correctly communicated through “immersion.” But this can’t be sustained as we get into abstract nouns and clause-level/discourse-level meaning and so much more that would have been understood in the 1st c. that cannot be communicated through modern “immersion” methods [update: I wasn't entirely clear here. I'm not saying no abstract nouns can be communicated through immersion; something that is patently false. I'll clarify and address what I believe are the limitations in a separate post]. I have to think some more on this one and will come back to it in the last post in the series. I welcome your criticism but keep in mind I’m merely processing out loud. My assessment isn’t written in stone. At any rate, the senses are engaged in this course and I’m remembering more Greek as a result.

The materials are well-conceived and I noticed some clear growth once I sat down to read through the lessons and found my reading to be very easy and enjoyable. Lots of thought has gone into the content. Specific registers (or, social situations let’s say) are focused on at any given time, helpful for the learning process. So, one lesson largely focuses on wine production from the grapes and the vineyard, to the plucking of the grapes, to the carrying of them in the basket to the winepress, to the stomping on the grapes to produce the juice to the fermenting of the grapes in the vats to produce the wine. We learn vocabulary and language in this way rather than by producing word lists in alphabetical order or anything like that. This sure beats trying to learn vocab by memorizing out of a dictionary or frequency list! Another lesson focuses especially on Israeli geography, teaching biblical place names, directions for north, south, east, and west, etc.

The bottom line:

This was a helpful use of time to supplement and grow my understanding of Greek. Recall I am coming at it already having a basis in “traditional” approaches (largely) so I need to take account of that. But for those beginning with no prior knowledge, I think that anything that helps a person get into the language is good. Whether it is best is another question that I haven’t decided upon yet. In the last post in this review I will engage with the pedagogy some more. I do have some big unanswered questions. A hint in the meantime: I’m really liking the materials so far and will already recommend the picture lessons as a very helpful learning tool though I’m not 100% convinced by the methodology as a sole approach. I’ll be in a better place to assess this after working through part 2 of the course. That will be the subject of the next post, hopefully later this summer.

Living Koine Greek Review – Part 1: My Background and Hopes

I have just received my copy of the Biblical Language Center’s (BLC) Greek materials for review. (As usual—I have purchased from them before—the package was shipped the next day and it arrived safely and quickly. Great service.)

Here is my plan for review.

Since this is a language learning program, and I want to genuinely test the program and the claims of some people for the benefits of “immersion” techniques for Hellenistic Greek (or, living language techniques), I won’t provide a one-time 1000 word review or anything. I’ll handle it in stages.

So, in this post I’ll explain my Greek background and why I’m interested and what my hopes are. In a second post in the next month or two I will outline and evaluate the materials to whatever point I’m at, also making use of the claims of its proponents. In a final post I will try to engage with the theory and practice of “immersion” with respect to a dead language. I envision this as a summer-long project.

MY BACKGROUND

I have been studying Greek since 2007 in my undergrad when I began with a year and a half of Classical Greek study and then moved on to Hellenistic Greek study thereafter. I first learned with Athenaze for Classical and then I moved to Mounce’s beginning grammar for Hellenistic. I have spent the last few years at McMaster Divinity College studying Greek with one of the foremost experts in the field. I’ve had the opportunity to take two Greek exegesis courses, an advanced grammar and linguistics course, Johannine studies with linguistic study applied to John’s Gospel, and I’m about to begin my last Masters course, linguistic modeling, and my thesis, which is investigating—and hopefully contributing to the field with my research—linguistic issues in Greek linguistics applied to John’s Gospel. I recently presented some of my research at a linguistics circle gathering and have been encouraged to move to publication in the near future.

So, I’ve got what would be considered a good background, I think.

That said, all of the training has been with tools that are reading based and use an English metalanguage to discuss Greek grammar. This is largely because Hellenistic Greek is a dead language; no one speaks it natively so we can’t learn it like we learn German today.

Or can we? This is a big question in Greek pedagogy.

I began with Erasmian pronunciation but last August I switched to Randall Buth’s reconstructed Koine pronunciation. The transition only took a week or so (maybe I can detail that on another occasion). My main three reasons for the switch were 1) to make use of the audio materials coming out of the BLC including readings of the Gospel of John and Letters; 2) to enjoy the sound of the language more in hopes that it sounds closer to a native pronunciation than Erasmian does; and 3) to be helped along in text critical matters as I investigate manuscripts and make sense of spelling changes and variants across texts.

HOPES

My number one hope is simply to continue to become a better reader of Hellenistic Greek. I’m a good reader now (I try to shun translation in reading so I don’t mean I’m a good on the spot translator) and I have a good handle on linguistic issues related to Greek. But, I want to go deeper, driving the language further and further into my mind. Audio materials should benefit me to that end.

My second hope is to be able to better navigate the debates occurring in Greek pedagogy. I’ve had opportunity to teach Greek and may yet again, so I want to decide what approach to take. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the immersion approach (yes, I’m sure there are disadvantages, contra one opinion!) and should it be used as supplementary to traditional approaches or can they take the place of them? Maybe I will be converted. Maybe I won’t. I’m open.

I think talking about Greek pedagogy is important for our own development in the language and for future generations of Greek students.

If you have any experience with these matters, what do you think about it all?

Gregory P. Fewster – Word Studies, the Pastor, and the Layperson

The continuation of my interview series sees a good one here. Greg Fewster is a PhD student at McMaster Divinity College, adjunct instructor of Greek at Great Lakes Bible College and an assistant editor with the journal Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics. He has a book coming out this year with Brill Academic called Creation Language in Romans 8: A Study in Monosemy. I have read significant portions of it and it is top rate. I will certainly draw more attention to it when it is released.

Here I interview Greg on the topic of lexical semantics and word-studies.

AR: So-called “word studies” are popular amongst Christians, from scholars to pastors to lay people. Pastors and teachers, for instance, will sometimes talk about the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word in a sermon and say it is the “literal” meaning. Or, interested lay people will attempt to look up all instances of a perceived key-word like “faith” or “justified” in the Bible or dictionary to give them a better understanding of those words.

Greg, you have been working in this area but have attempted to break new ground from an informed linguistic perspective. Can you give us some insight into what the discipline of lexical semantics is?

GF: Lexical semantics is a fairly broad discipline within linguistic studies. It seeks to answer the question of how words mean. Lexical semantics is not a specific model or theory that attempts to answer this question. Rather, it sets the agenda for particular questions we ask about language.

As you note, this is a question that is often raised in Christian circles, I think because Christians tend to take the words of the Bible pretty seriously. It is fairly common when we are interpreting a passage to ask the question, “Hmmm, what does that word mean here?” That essential question is the basis for lexical semantics.

AR: How does your research inform how we should handle words in the Bible?

GF: In a word: carefully. Possibly the biggest hindrance to excellent lexical semantic work is an implicit (or sometimes explicit) assumption that words, especially biblical words, are magical or something. We want to cram bucket-loads of significance into certain word choices. However, language studies in the last few decades have revealed that meaning in language is not a product of isolated pieces of information, but results from the melding together of these pieces. Meaning is greater than the meaning of its constituent parts, in that, the melding of those language pieces is what gives the pieces specific meaning. It is that specific meaning that we are trying to get when we interpret the Bible, right?

What that says to me is that if we focus too much on the meaning of these little pieces (words) we end up missing the whole point. Don’t get me wrong, words are really important, that’s why I have studied them so much. But that importance needs to be understood in relationship to the other meaningful components of language.

AR: Where do you see pastors and teachers most go wrong when handling ‘words’?

GF: There are a number of ways pastors and teachers can go wrong, a number of them have been identified in D.A. Carson’s little book Exegetical Fallacies. I’ll give you some of my own thoughts though.

1. They overemphasize etymology. The history of a word is not a clue to its meaning in a specific context.

2. They define the meaning of a word based upon one or two other examples. Just because a word seems to mean something in one context doesn’t necessarily imply that it will mean the same thing somewhere else. Look out for defining a word based on “how Jesus used it” or “how the Old Testament uses it.” These attempts often amount to oversimplification and can ignore what is going on in the passage you are reading. By the way, Philo and Josephus are not definitive resources for word meaning either. They can be useful resources but if you’re going to use them, consult other ancient non-biblical writers as well.

3. They confuse words with concepts. This is a tough one, but it means that a word, which linguistic, is different than a concept, which is a mental. So, a particular concept might appear in a passage without a particular word being used. On the other hand, a word is not a cipher for a large conceptual framework. In that case, we need to be careful about how we talk about word meaning since we can only talk about concepts etc. using words. Confusing, I know.

4. They see words as having multiple, discrete meanings. The problem with this view (something called polysemy) is that it enables a practice we like to call sense-selection. This is when we just go to a dictionary and pick the “meaning” that seems to work best in the passage that we are reading. Sometimes dictionaries over-divide the possible ways that a word can mean or give the impression that these distinct “meanings” are not as connected as I think they probably are.

AR: What advice would you have for those performing word studies in order to keep from making interpretive mistakes?

GF: The biggest thing I would suggest is that we need to change the question we ask about words. I think this would go a long way to improving our “word studies.” Rather than asking “what does this word mean and therefore what does this passage mean?” it is more helpful to ask, “how does this word contribute to the meaning of this text?”

Besides this major question let me add a few other suggestions.

1. Use concordances, but use them well. When examining a concordance for a word, try to see what sort of patterns occur. Look for the other words that seem to appear around your target word a lot. Look for the grammatical patterns that frequently associate with your target word. Look for certain concepts (remember these are bigger than words) that associate with your target word. Once you notice these patterns it can give you a better idea of how that word is contributing to the meaning of the passage. Remember, meaning is a product of these larger patterns, not the word itself.

2. Words are not always selected because of the specific content they may represent (though that will inevitably be part of it). Words may also be selected for some stylistic reason (rhyming, repetition, etc.) or because of how it might influence the relationship between the reader and the writer. For example, some words may be synonyms in their content but have different negative or positive connotations. Don’t get too excited about a particular word choice until you seriously consider all the reasons why it may have been used.

3. Don’t rely too heavily on commentaries. Unfortunately, there are lots of authors who have not taken the time to keep on top of lexical semantic theory and, as a result, they make the kind of mistakes that I have been warning about. Don’t ignore the commentaries but have a healthy level of suspicion. Check with other commentaries/dictionaries/etc., and feel free to do your own study.

AR: Do you have any advice to those who are constrained to working with the Bible in translation? What limitations should they be aware of?

GF: This is an important question, because we don’t all have the benefit of knowing Greek or Hebrew. My advice would actually be to avoid doing word studies with too much frequency. Bible translations are not consistent in how they translate Greek words. Sometimes one word will be translated using quite a few different “glosses” and the same English word might be a translation of several different Greek or Hebrew words. Unless you have Strong’s numbers or something, your English concordance won’t help to differentiate these things.

Don’t be discouraged, though. Remember, words aren’t the be-all and end-all of meaning. So if you can’t do an in depth word study for your upcoming sermon (or whatever) it shouldn’t affect the quality of your overall interpretation. That should go for those of us who do know the languages as well. Other options are to learn Greek (it’s a lot of fun!) or make friends with someone who knows it. Two heads are better than one at times anyways.

AR: Are there any good resources (current or forthcoming) for those interested that would help direct them to a more responsible handling of words?

Unfortunately there haven’t been too many studies written recently on this subject. Many are dated by now and some promote some of the ideas I warned about earlier. Many of these are still worth reading though.

If I can put a plug in for myself, I would recommend my own book. It is very technical and very expensive, but I hope worth the read if you are familiar with the Greek language. The book is called Creation Language in Romans 8: A Study in Monosemy. It is published by Brill Academic in their Linguistic Biblical Studies Series and will be hopefully coming out in the late spring or early summer.

You also might check out the following resources:

James Barr. The Semantics of Biblical Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.

D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996.

Benjamin J. Baxter, “Hebrew and Greek Word-Study Fallacies,” MJTM  12 (2010–11) 3–32.

Benjamin J. Baxter, “The Meaning of Biblical Words,” MJTM 11 (2009–10) 89–120.

Wally V. Cirafesi, “‘To Fall Short’ or ‘To Lack’? Reconsidering the Meaning and Translation of ὙΣΤΕΡΕΩ in Romans 3:23,” ExpT  (2012) 429–34. (This is an application of good lexical semantic principles)

M.A.K. Halliday, “Lexicology.” In Lexicology: A Short Introduction. Edited by M.A.K. Halliday and Colin Yallop. London: Continuum, 2004: 1–22.

J.P. Louw, Semantics of New Testament Greek (The SBL Semeia Series; Atlanta: Scholars, 1982).

Eugene A. Nida, and Johannes P. Louw, Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament: A Supplement to the Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains. SBL Resources for Biblical Literature 25. Atlanta: Scholars, 1992.

Matthew Brook O’Donnell, “Some New Testament Words for Resurrection and the Company They Keep,” in Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs (eds.), Resurrection (London: T&T Clark, 1999) 136–65.

Stanley E. Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” in Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough (eds.), Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century, Essays in Honor of D.A. Carson on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011) 19–61.

Colin Yallop, “Words and Meaning,” in M.A.K. Halliday and Colin Yallop (eds.), Lexicology: A Short Introduction (London: Continuum, 2007) 23–93.

Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics, vol. 1

Congratulations to Stan Porter, Matt O’Donnell, Greg Fewster, and Wally Cirafesi! The first print volume of Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics is available from Wipf and Stock.

It features four articles, including three by MDC Ph.D. students, and can be read here. Wally’s article on the pistis christou debate with respect to grammatical metaphor will need to be interacted with by future essays on the topic. Greg adapts the lexical priming model of Michael Hoey to test the intertextuality of mataiotes in the New Testament and with Ecclesiastes, pushing forward the discussions of intertextuality from a linguistic perspective. Hughson tackles Jesus’s sociolinguistic setting, helpfully encouraging us to see Jesus’s use of Greek as more prominent than is usually thought. Steve Runge has the last article in there, and sorry Steve, I haven’t read it yet!