Other forms of Greek.

Resources and methods for teaching and learning New Testament Greek.
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Jeremy Adams
Posts: 21
Joined: April 23rd, 2013, 1:12 am
Location: Kansas City, Missouri

Other forms of Greek.

Post by Jeremy Adams »

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!
Stephen Carlson
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Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
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Re: Other forms of Greek.

Post by Stephen Carlson »

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.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Jeremy Adams
Posts: 21
Joined: April 23rd, 2013, 1:12 am
Location: Kansas City, Missouri

Re: Other forms of Greek.

Post by Jeremy Adams »

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!
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