Other forms of Greek.
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- Posts: 21
- Joined: April 23rd, 2013, 1:12 am
- Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Other forms of Greek.
So I just finished my first year of seminary Koine, and I have started to work my way through Reading Greek put out by JACT (and I'm really enjoying it). I have heard studying Attic is helpful for Koine despite the differences, and I figure I can pick up some new vocab along the way before I start intermediate Greek next year, where we will be using Wallace. My question is, how helpful do you all think it would be to work on Homeric Greek? I have been thinking that if I am doing Attic I might as well dip into Homer as well. I am primarily looking to read the NT, though I do love history and would enjoy reading Greek outside the NT as well, and I have heard that reading widely is the best way to obtain fluency long term. I wonder if that includes reading in other dialects or if I should just focus on Koine. The other thing that has me looking at other dialects is the quality of books. The JACT set, for instance, just seems a lot better than the Koine books I have used. There is so much more reading. Anyhow, I am starting to ramble, so all of that to say, I have been looking at this http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Course-Ho ... op?ie=UTF8 and wanted to get some opinions on the value of Homeric Greek generally, and to see if anyone had knowledge of this book or suggestions of others. Thanks!
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Re: Other forms of Greek.
Well, I started with Homeric Greek. And I loved it.
But as a language, it's doing a lot of things differently from either Attic or Koine. For example, the article doesn't exist yet; it's still a pronoun (a relic usage of which survived into Koine's ὁ δὲ εἶπεν). The tense system is not quite as developed: the perfect has a more limited distribution and the older athematic forms are more common. Plus, you're reading poetry.
I don't want to be too negative. Homer was part of the curriculum and it continued to influence however subtly the literature of first century. Sort of like Shakespeare for us. And I think learning Homer would be as practical as learning Shakespeare.
A final possible downside is that you might love it and never look back.
Attic Greek is best route to expanding your Greek. There are a lot of resources for it and classical norms continued to influence the elite register throughout our time period.
But as a language, it's doing a lot of things differently from either Attic or Koine. For example, the article doesn't exist yet; it's still a pronoun (a relic usage of which survived into Koine's ὁ δὲ εἶπεν). The tense system is not quite as developed: the perfect has a more limited distribution and the older athematic forms are more common. Plus, you're reading poetry.
I don't want to be too negative. Homer was part of the curriculum and it continued to influence however subtly the literature of first century. Sort of like Shakespeare for us. And I think learning Homer would be as practical as learning Shakespeare.
A final possible downside is that you might love it and never look back.
Attic Greek is best route to expanding your Greek. There are a lot of resources for it and classical norms continued to influence the elite register throughout our time period.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne, Australia
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- Posts: 21
- Joined: April 23rd, 2013, 1:12 am
- Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Re: Other forms of Greek.
I appreciate the reply! I think I will look at Homer eventually, but it may be down the road a ways. I have enjoyed Greek quite a bit so far so I do want to broaden the scope of my studies to include that period but with Hebrew starting in the fall I probably don't need another project. Thanks for the info!