Tagged: languages

Porter et al.: Fundamentals of New Testament Greek

I may have an opportunity to teach Greek next year and so I’m thinking through pedagogy and textbooks. I started with classical Greek in my undergrad and used Athenaze. Once I had completed a year of classical I went through Mounce’s beginner’s grammar, Basics of Biblical Greek, on my own. I appreciate that the book is clear, easy to follow, and even mildly entertaining, but I don’t find his incorporation of semantic discussions of various morphological forms extremely helpful. That’s not to say I wouldn’t use this text with supplementary discussion, but I’m also interested in looking at other options. I did teach from Mounce once before.

Of course, a natural place for me to look (seeing as I’m an MDC student) is to the fairly recent Porter, Reed, and O’Donnell volume: Fundamentals of New Testament Greek, published by Eerdmans.

At this point I haven’t used the grammar so I’m not going to provide a full out review. Instead I thought I’d provide a number of links to reviews and helpful pages related to the book along with some of my initial impressions.

First, there is a website devoted to the book: portergreek.com. There you can view some chapters in both the text and the workbook, read D. A. Carson, A. C. Thiselton, and Craig A. Evans’s positive blurbs and gain access to accompanying study materials like paradigm charts.

Second, there is a blog post from the Eerdmans editor, Craig Noll. He highlights a number of exciting features of the book.

Third, there are some published reviews that contain both positive and negative elements:

RBL: Vance.
RBL: Coutsoumpos.
Themelios: Mugridge.

Fourth, blog reviews:

Paroikos analysis of 4 first year grammars.
There is another from Ricoblog but it’s making my computer freeze.

Finally, my impressions:

Just as others have picked up on, this is a serious first year grammar. In thinking about how to teach from it, I was a little scared at first but once I analyzed the ordering of the chapters and the layout of each chapter, I became more comfortable with it. I got a vision for how to set in front of the student the big picture at the start and produce a “map of the language” so that they don’t get lost moving through the chapters (helpful for any 1st year grammar perhaps).

And serious isn’t a bad thing. Porter et al. are consciously providing a rigorous first year grammar to challenge and bring students up to an excellent start in Greek. My only hesitation in this area is knowing the context of the students. I think that I would certainly use this textbook if teaching in a seminary/university environment. But I’m not yet sure about pastors and students who are currently in ministry and don’t have the same amount of time to devote to their Greek study. My hesitation is lessening as I become familiar with the text and think about how to approach that. I’m curious to get Porter’s thoughts on whether there are any groups of students he doesn’t think this book is for also.

Not surprisingly, I like the content. Aspect, as the primary semantic component of the tense-forms, is introduced with the introduction of verbs in chapter 4. The timeless model of the verbal tense-forms is explained. Great descriptions of the verbal moods and other parts of the verbs are given. My gripe with Athenaze and Mounce is that I felt the semantic component of verbs was not adequately dealt with off the bat. Or maybe I just don’t like the “list approach” to the verbs and cases: dative of time, dative of this and that; gnomic aorist, etc. For cases, I’ve found it much more helpful to begin with the core semantic component. For example, the genitive case signals restriction. I’d rather engage with that first than to be given a list of umpteen different uses with no real idea of how they hang together or to be told it means “of” in English, which it doesn’t.

And, I like the idea of starting with learning the aorist tense-form given it’s being the most frequent and its aspect (perfective) is the default one. I haven’t yet thought through how that affects the learning of the principal parts. It may be strange to me since I learned the present tense-form first.

More thoughts to come in the future as I look at it some more.

Preaching and the Languages

I’m always interested in how the handling of the original languages of the Bible intersect with preaching the Word. What is their value? Are they a necessary part of pastor’s toolbox? Rod Decker has an excellent paper here on that very topic.

Here’s an excerpt:

Some of you may protest, but we have good translations in English, why bother with the hard work of Hebrew and Greek when we can read what it says in English? The simplest answer was well put by a Jewish poet: “reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your bride through a veil”! I doubt any of you would be satisfied with that sort of kiss! We want the real thing. So it is with the Bible. If we want the real thing, we don’t want an English veil between us and our text. Not that the Bible in translation is bad, but not everything comes through when the original texts are transformed into another language. The limitations include the simple fact that no two languages say the same thing in exactly the same way. Every time we translate we must, of necessity, both omit and add information. That might be a foreign concept to some of you— but that makes the point: if we know only our own mother tongue, we have no way to know what has necessarily been added or deleted to put the Bible’s message into English dress (5-6).

And then he addresses (starting on p. 10) whether the use of the languages is the garnish or entrée and then mellon (think Lord of the Rings) or mantra. A good discussion ensues that I think helpfully locates the use of the languages for the pastor and will challenge some pastors’s approaches to them. Here’s a gem:

And if you are preaching to average people, what does the citation of Greek words and grammatical technicalities accomplish? The people do not understand them. The only purpose they serve is to impress people with your ability, but is that a proper goal for a minister of Jesus Christ? There may be one other purpose served by “preaching Greek.” You have perhaps heard the old preacher’s adage that is too often written in the margins of sermon manuscripts, “Point weak. Shout loud!” The way some preachers use Greek might suggest that they would write in their margins (if they were honest), “Point weak. Quote Greek!” (14).

And finally:

We must spend all the time it takes in the study grappling with the text in Hebrew or Greek, wrestling with it until the walls between us and the first century become as transparent as we can make them. But then we must leave the tools in the study and expound the text in the heart language of God’s people (15).

Learning a New Language (Beginning German)

Nine days ago I began studying German. As I engage in Johannine scholarship I have become very aware of the breadth of study that has taken place in German (and to a lesser extent in French, perhaps). Since my thesis centres around John’s Gospel, I think it worthwhile to be able to engage with the German and French works alongside the English language works on John. This has provided the immediate push to study German but I’ve desired to do so for some time.

I’ve studied a lot of languages to varying degrees: 3 “dead” ones (Classical Latin, Hellenistic Greek, Classical Hebrew) and around 6 living ones (Spanish, French, Ukrainian, Russian, Swahili, and now I’ve started German). Now, keep in mind I said “to varying degrees”! That’s an important qualifier. My Greek is excellent and my Hebrew is slowly coming along but I remember very little Spanish, Swahili, and Ukrainian and I’m a poor communicator in French and Russian. Thankfully I can use some reading knowledge of Russian for work on verbal aspect and reading French will also be important for my academic work.

I’ve learned a thing or two as I’ve been studying languages of various sorts for the last 9 or so years. And I’m trying to put that to work in my approach to German this time. I want to succeed. For starters, it should come as no surprise that my fastest language learning came from being around people that spoke the language. So, Swahili came along at a fast rate in the six weeks I spent in Tanzania and Russian, which I had been studying for a bit before, was moving quickly while trying to interact with Russian speaking Ukrainians over 10 days.

But, it’s a given that I’m not, at this time, going to be in a properly immersive environment for German. And, my end goal is first and foremost to be able to read academic literature in German anyway.

At the same time, I have not decided to start German with a reading approach. I have done that with other languages and a lot of my Russian study was reading-based. I was rather ill-prepared to converse beyond a basic ability in Russian when I arrived in Ukraine. And I’ve decided that since I’m going to study German, I would like to benefit from learning from real-life conversations, movies, radio, etc. and be able to hold a conversation.

So, this time I’m starting with the oral component. I’m speaking and listening. And since the oral component is the primary component of language (reading isn’t), I’m going to start this way and add reading after a bit of time. I think it is easier to add reading to a foundation of oral understanding than to move from reading to oral comprehension.

I’m hoping this will encourage a few things:

1) My pronunciation will get off on the right foot and I’ll work on sounding somewhat native.

2) Vocabulary acquisition should move at a faster pace as I listen to native speakers.

3) I should be able to start making sense of native German conversations which will then help me grow.

4) Once I do begin studying grammar formally and reading text, I should have laid a good foundation with a good feel for the language.

I’ve decided to begin with Pimsleur. I was impressed four years ago when I borrowed the German Quick and Simple audio package (8 lessons) from my library and I felt I learned those 8 lessons very well. For whatever reason I didn’t buy the others and continue it.

I’ve especially decided not to go with Rosetta Stone. I went through the first 3 levels in Russian a few years ago, and while it helped my pronunciation greatly, I didn’t come away knowing nearly as much as I thought I should have given the price of the package and time I spent on them.

I’ve also looked at a whole host of other programs and I may move to them after Pimsleur but Pimsleur seemed the best for me to start with since I don’t have a lot of time each day for another language (I’m already engaged in lots of Greek and Hebrew work and want to further develop my French) and it offers a strictly oral component that is graduated for 100 levels (3 phases with 30 units each + 1 phase with 10 units). I’ve looked at a number of critiques of Pimsleur. I’m willing to push through the valid critiques and give it my own go.

So far so good. I feel I’ve made incredible progress in these nine days and I’m going to update again as I go. Maybe things will change. But maybe, just maybe I’ll progress faster than I have with any other language.

How have you been successful at learning another language?

Reading Greek and Hebrew as Greek and Hebrew

It is so refreshing to read the following from John Walton:

“When people want to study the Bible seriously, one of the steps they take is to learn the language. As I teach language students, I am still always faced with the challenge of persuading them that they will not succeed simply by learning enough of the language to engage in translation. Truly learning the language requires leaving English behind, entering the world of the text and understanding the language in its Hebrew context without creating English words in their minds. They must understand the Hebrew as Hebrew text” (Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One, 9).

One of my contentions in modern study of the ancient languages is that this desire to teach and learn the languages for the purpose of only being able to translate has led to some major problems in the understanding of the biblical text amongst scholars and preachers. Being able to translate a text is not the same as being able to understand the text. And the best translators will be the ones who really understand the languages.

Preparing to Preach & Seminary’s Purpose

I was encouraged by reading Jim Hamilton’s post on how he prepares to preach through Jeremiah. What helps him most is… get ready for it… God’s word as given in the Hebrew text. It’s a good post and helpful in a day where seminaries seem to be dropping the languages rather than ramping them up.

Also on his site is a post about the proper purpose of seminary that is worth reading. It also focuses on issues related to the languages. I found this quotation especially juicy since I’ve never heard anyone say this so boldly:

Seminary students who want to learn the Bible in the original languages should take the languages early and often. Why let a semester pass in which you’re not in a Greek or Hebrew class? No one expects to be fluent in Spanish after two semesters. We’re unwise to think that after two semesters we’ll “know Greek.”  You’re at school to begin to learn Greek and Hebrew so you can spend the rest of your life studying the Bible in the original. Why not give all your electives to Greek and Hebrew exegesis classes? There are lots of conference opportunities where you can learn everything from counseling to preaching to evangelism and missions. There will never be a conference for pastors on Hebrew syntax. There will never be a Greek exegesis of 1 Peter conference where you are taught to diagram the Greek text and trace its argument. Get from the seminary what you can only get from the seminary, what the seminary exists to give you. You can get the rest in a good church, in a pastoral internship, or at a conference.