Learning Biblical Greek

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:02:49 GMT

There are two basic approaches to learning Greek in the seminary. The first approach is to spend an incredible amount of hours to pass the standardized Greek test at the end of the semester, or spend an incredible amount of hours to pass the standardized test, plus a few more hours to actually gain a mastery of the language. I have met several students who have taken the first approach and I cannot help to think that this is a huge waste of time and effort. I have decided early on that I am going to go the extra ten percent to push my Greek knowledge past the tipping point between knowing and knowing. (hearers of my sermons and teaching will be familiar with this seemingly subtle difference) The difference, in my mind between the two different approaches is the difference between translating a Biblical text and reading a Biblical text. I want to move toward reading Greek for pleasure instead of being glued to a lexicon for every other word.

The most obvious reason is that a Pastor can benefit with an ability to read the original languages. Secondly, mastery of Greek will help me learn Hebrew since much of learning a language is increasing your understanding of your own language's grammar. When I take Hebrew, I will have already gotten over the hurdle of re-learning the grammar of English. It is not entirely the fault of English speakers that we do not know our grammar. Many languages, like Greek or Latin, are inflected and the grammatical structure is much more transparent since words have different endings depending on how they are used in the sentence. "Chair", for example, is always Chair no matter if it is the direct or indirect object, but Greek words change endings when they are used as the direct object or indirect object. English depends on word order for this distinction.

There are some modern languages that I will need to learn in the next few years as well. I will need some modern language skills for any PhD work that I want to do (probably German) and I am not going to go to Iraq without some knowledge of Arabic. As a matter of fact, I think that some Spanish would be handy too (for use at the Olive Garden). Anyway....

Now I want to write about my approach to learning Biblical Greek. Like most people, I have had some false starts in language learning (Do YOU remember your high school French?) so I am trying to draw from those quasi-failures in my latest attempt. First of all, learning Greek is different than learning modern languages in that you cannot go to a "Greek Club" and have conversations with native speakers or advanced students. There are disagreements about how the language was spoken out loud and it is for this very reason that Greek is the perfect language for the scriptures since it has stopped changing through use. This lack of conversational Greek limits the sort of passive absorption that we use to learn languages (especially when we are young). There is also limited use in translating from English to Greek since you have a limited vocabulary (although in college we translated sentences like "touch that sword and you will die where you sit!") For these reasons, I have adopted a strategy that is based more upon writing than speaking.

My first step is to learn the raw vocabulary and the most basic meaning of the words. For example "agape" (transliterated) means love. I make flash cards and learn these meanings thoroughly. I have an extensive Greek vocabulary from being exposed to the language for 15 years, so I have a head start in this area. If I did not have mastery of this level, then when I add in other layers of information such as tense, voice, mood, number, gender, etc. I would have multiple layers of information to recognize. If I do have mastery of the meaning of a word, I can then spend my mental energy trying to recall the higher orders of information. After I have the meaning I can then add on the layer of how the word changes in a sentence. For example agape is also agapes. agapie, agapen, agapai, agapon, agapais, agapas depending on how it used in the sentence and depending on if it is plural or singular. Once I have this declension down (using flash cards and writing it out multiple times) then I can then break out each form onto its own card and write the parsing on the back. I use these parsing cards to quiz myself on recognizing the word form outside of the declension chart. After this I move on to contextual recognition in sentences. This is where the exercises in the Greek book come in handy. My only wish is that I could find some more exercises to work through than the book provides.

Earlier I mentioned that Greek is not really a conversational language, but this does not mean that it is not profitable to speak it out loud. Greek is much more phonetic than English so it has less strange spelling rules. If you can say a Greek word (correctly) then you can probably spell it. I have a few pronunciation CD's in my toolbox of Greek resources, so I play these in the car over and over again. After following this pattern of adding layer upon layer of knowledge (not moving on until I master the lower level) then I start being able to "intuitively" find mistakes in my flash cards or in my writing. Intuitive is not the best word for this situation since this kind of intuition comes from A LOT of hard work. When you get to the point where you can do it "without thinking" then you know that you are on the way from just translating to actually reading like a native speaker.

On a final note, I think that every single school in America should teach Latin or Greek. This is not for religious reasons, but rather to provide a base of knowledge that will increase our knowledge of our own language and for the learning of foreign languages in the future. My mother took Latin at Mattoon High School back in the fifties and I have to wonder why they ever got rid of the program. At 36, I wish that I had learned these languages as a child so that I could now be focused on higher order learning instead of learning the basics! I realize that the kids will say, "What am I ever going to use this for in the future?", but from what I have seen, kids say this about Algebra, History, Geography, English and practically every subject taught in school! Kids do not know any better, that is what makes them kids!

Fear and Trembling: Education

Learning Biblical Greek