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Reading the Gospel of St Mark in Greek (Greek Edition)

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 9:00 am
by cwconrad
This was announced in a blog entry yesterday at N.S. Gill's About.com site on Classical History:
http://ancienthistory.about.com/b/2012/ ... -greek.htm
For those who are impatient and can't wait to complete a couple of semesters of college level Biblical Greek, Bolchazy-Carducci has published a book that may work. Reading the Gospel of St. Mark in Greek: A Beginning, by Norbert H. O. Duckwitz provides what native English-speakers need to translate the Gospel word by word. A combination of very short passages, extensive notes and a pertinent list of vocabulary make it unnecessary to rely on the back of the book vocabulary list or the summary grammar notes at either end of the book, but the lengthy notes do refer to grammatical concepts that may propel you to further study. It's not exactly lightning fast, but starting from the first word you will get a sense of having actually digested what St. Mark wrote.
Just think! You don't need to learn the language first in order to "translate the Gospel word by word." I have not looked at this personally, but I am just a teeny bit incredulous at the promise of empowerment of the Greekless enthusiast for scripture here presented. This is a "Reader's Edition" with a vengeance.

Publisher's site -- Bolchazy-Carducci: http://www.bolchazy.com/prod.php?id=7761

Re: Reading the Gospel of St Mark in Greek (Greek Edition)

Posted: January 28th, 2012, 9:27 am
by Barry Hofstetter
With all due fairness, it seems that neither the publisher nor the author are claiming that you can actually read the Greek without having first studied for a few semesters -- that claim seems to be peculiar to the blog you cited. I have been using "reader editions" of texts for my intermediate and "beginning-advanced" Greek students for 2 years now, and found them excellent tools for helping the students read a greater amount of Greek than they might otherwise and also keeping them in the text longer. Of course, I combine it with quizzes on knowing the most common vocabulary and grammar review, for a bit of extra motivation... :shock: