Wow. I'm impressed by the Greek. Can you recommend a good textbook?

 

he he he...

 

Marcian - I liked Bill Mounces Basics of biblical Greek - as a good intro. There are some free resoures online, if you look around you will find them pretty easily. My Greek is best described as self taught, and woefully inadequate - the reason I set out to teach my son was primarily because I didn't have the personal discipline to keep it up unless or until it became an unshirkable responsibility. The text we are going through with the kids is actually a nice slow pace (it is a three year course and we are in the first year) that I originally learned about through Kim Shay, as she is another homeschooler and was putting her son through it. Here is a link

The price is what attracted me to it, and so far even my six year old has been able to follow along - though not without a lot of instruction.

 

Beautiful post, Daniel. I don't know where you find the time for such great blogging!

BTW: minor nit on the Greek. Just because the definite article is missing doesn't make the noun indefinite. At best, you can say that a noun is fairly definite if the article is there, but if the article is missing, the noun may or may not be definite.

 

TomGee - I agree on the Greek, the problem wasn't that it couldn't be done in Greek, it was that the textbook had not yet even mentioned the definite article.

The sophistication of such a translation was out of place in the context of the textbook. It would have been somewhat different had the text already discussed the definite article, but that discussion hadn't taken place yet.

Up until this point, the text had only dealt with translations of a "nominative + verb" format, such as : αποστολος βλεπει - but on this day they were building upon that with the addition of a genitive to the mix, such as: αποστολος θεου βλεπει. The translations up until this point had all been indefinite, and so it struck me as unlikely that this would be the place to [1] introduce the articel, and [2] to introduce it thus - without defining the article or describing its use.

My translations of εὐαγγέλιον κύριου διδάσκει therefore must be understood as reflecting not the whole of Greek grammar, but rather recording the only tranlation options that the text had (up until that point) permitted - and even then, the text hadn't yet discussed the use of the accusative - so when the text described εὐαγγέλιον as being in the nominative, and then translated it as though it were in fact an accusative I found it quite confusing. My greek is spotty enough that I presume the textbook must be right, and my understanding must be flawed - that is where all the time was spent - checking to see if what I thought was right was in fact right.

Thanks for commenting though, it shows you're reading!

 

Good for you for teaching the kids Greek! We homeschool, and plan on doing Greek, but not for a few more years yet. (They're starting French next year).

Thinking about the article, I remember one introductory text saying that in Greek, there are 24 different ways to say "the," and you will soon be grateful for them. :-)

So true. Parsing is much easier if the article is there to guide you.

 

TomGee - Mounce said something similar (and I found it helpful at the time) in Basics of Biblical Greek - very few people have memorized all the noun paradigms.

I should like to teach the kids french too, but we might tackle Hebrew and Latin first. If we live through all the dead languages, perhaps we can try a few live ones? ;-)

 

<speachless>     </speachless>

 

David, I take it you eat a lot of peaches... ;-)

 

That's speachless!

I do like peaches though, and am currently peachless as well.

 

oh.

I thought you meant speechless.

 

That's the Canadian spelling. Duh!