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John Leake

Posted: May 12th, 2013, 10:36 am
by John Leake
Hi, I'm John. I'm a Classicist and Arabist. I'm doing work on pre-Islamic Arabia.

I am joining the forum for linguistic and cultural reasons. Personally I am not a believer in any religious viewpoint. I have no interest in challenging other people's beliefs, nor in being preached to. My interest in the NT and Patristic literature is as a student of the ancient world. For me, the LXX and NT are important texts in the corpus of Greek literature, shedding light on aspects of their world that would be otherwise unilluminated. However, my primary Greek interest starts with the Second Sophistic.

Re: John Leake

Posted: May 12th, 2013, 5:14 pm
by John Leake
Perhaps I should add that I'm rather better versed in the Hebrew OT than the Greek NT, though my Hebrew is rusty. I do have a little Syriac. And I'm English, based in Oxford. I hope my earlier post wasn't too cold - the NT of course underlies so many of the attitudes, particularly ethics, of someone brought up in Christianity (the Baptist church in my case). So I'm going to enjoy visiting a literature I've rarely revisited since my early teens.

Re: John Leake

Posted: May 12th, 2013, 10:43 pm
by Louis L Sorenson
John,

Welcome to B-Greek. Your expertise and advice is welcome. (P.S., you should now be able to post freely after two messages - that is part of the forum's checks on newcomers that the first two posts need the approval of moderators). B-Greek is not a faith-based forum, but a forum for the Greek language which was used to write the NT/LXX; most of our members are deeply religious people who are involved in many different denominations and faiths, but neither religious involvement nor affiliation is a requirement to post on our forum. We are really more of an academic list which demands respectful discourse from its members and whose only requirement is "B-Greek is about Greek texts and the Greek language, and most of the forums in B-Greek require a working knowledge of Biblical Greek."

Quoting our policy on 'Respectful Discourse,' which is the only place now where the topic delineating what membership on this forum requires (other than a knowlege of Greek):
Those who participate in the conference represent a wide range of theological and denominational perspectives, perhaps even including some whose interests are purely academic. Deep religious convictions surely characterize many, perhaps most, of the list-participants, and some of these convictions bear directly upon how the Biblical text is to be understood. At the core of our discussion, however, is not what our convictions are but what the Greek text may legitimately be understood to mean.

If discussion of this nature is to succeed, proper respect and courtesy to other list members is important. While scholarly debate, including disagreement, is encouraged as a goal of this conference, attacks upon the character, intelligence, or faith of those participating are not acceptable. Criticism must focus upon the arguments of others; it may not be directed to the individual.

B-Greek must not be used either to attack or to defend any particular doctrine deemed "orthodox" by one or another individual or group; this is not the forum for apologetic controversy. Those who violate this policy will be contacted politely by the B-Greek staff and requested to conform to these guidelines. Those who continue to violate the policy will no longer be welcome in the conference.
So you are more than welcome.