Timothy Nelson

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TimNelson
Posts: 61
Joined: October 17th, 2014, 11:04 pm
Location: Australia, Victoria, Geelong

Timothy Nelson

Post by TimNelson »

Hi all. I've just completed (June 2014) a supposedly 3-year M. Div. at the Reformed Theological College in Australia. They offered one year of each of the Biblical languages, and kindly allowed me to a) re-audit the language units that I'd done (especially valuable with Greek, since both the lecturer and the textbook had changed) and b) do an Intermediate Greek unit elsewhere. They also offered exegesis units in both Hebrew and Greek in most semesters (which were separate from the English ones, although that may soon change). My Greek came first via Wenham, and the lecturer's notes which were compiled before Wallace was available, although Wallace was recommended as a good supplement to the notes. The second time around, the new lecturer went with Mounce/Wallace, but added some material from a variety of places (some stuff on aspect, plus a few charts that Mounce seemed to be lacking).

The semester I did Intermediate Greek, I was also doing an Intro to NT Exegesis unit. Wenham had taken me to about all words occurring 30+ times in the NT (except 12 words which I memorised over the summer). The NT exegesis class was supposed to take me to 20x or more. The class I joined for Intermediate Greek was down to 20x already, and we were to know all words occurring 10+ times by the end of the semester.

In my final semester, I did a Project Unit. This involved the pedagogical applications of derivational morphology, ie. teaching people who already had one year of Greek about -ινος, -τος, and the like. I then published a 6000-word paper on this (with appendices twice the size). I still feel like my training (of myself, let alone anyone else) in this area is incomplete.

Since then, I've been doing my devotions in Greek, trying various aids, but finally settling on Kubo and Trenchard (along with a little Greek NT in a small size that I picked up second-hand somewhere). I also get together with various friends once or twice a week to read the Bible in its original languages, and that's Greek about half the time. I've discovered that I've forgotten some of the vocab, so I'm aiming to get to vocab for 12x+ (in the NT, about 970 items), and then figure out where to go from there.
--
Tim Nelson
B. Sc. (Computer Science), M. Div. Looking for work (in computing or language-related jobs).
Barry Hofstetter

Re: Timothy Nelson

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Good to see you keeping up with it, Tim. One thing that always helped me: try to do just a little bit more each day than you feel comfortable with. Occasionally spot check texts and read them without any aids whatsoever. Make sense of stuff from context. These kinds of exercises really help in the long run.
TimNelson
Posts: 61
Joined: October 17th, 2014, 11:04 pm
Location: Australia, Victoria, Geelong

Re: Timothy Nelson

Post by TimNelson »

Thanks for the advice Barry. I think what I really need to do at the moment is just knuckle down and a) read text, and b) memorise vocab, but I will keep your advice in mind, and hopefully get the opportunity to do it. Certainly the comment about doing more than you are comfortable with is immediately applicable. One thing I forgot to add to my earlier comments is that I was mainly in the M.Div. for the languages; despite having finished my M. Div., I'm currently looking for computing work (Perl programming or Linux SysAdmin work, preferably in Pittsburgh, Boston, or Indianapolis, despite the fact that I currently live near Melbourne, Australia). So with the languages having been my goal from the beginning, it's not surprising that I'm keeping them up (and am even being useful to others in helping them keep them up).
--
Tim Nelson
B. Sc. (Computer Science), M. Div. Looking for work (in computing or language-related jobs).
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3355
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
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Re: Timothy Nelson

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Welcome to B-Greek! I live near Melbourne too.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Shirley Rollinson
Posts: 437
Joined: June 4th, 2011, 6:19 pm
Location: New Mexico
Contact:

Re: Timothy Nelson

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

TimNelson wrote:Thanks for the advice Barry. I think what I really need to do at the moment is just knuckle down and a) read text, and b) memorise vocab, but I will keep your advice in mind, and hopefully get the opportunity to do it. Certainly the comment about doing more than you are comfortable with is immediately applicable. One thing I forgot to add to my earlier comments is that I was mainly in the M.Div. for the languages; despite having finished my M. Div., I'm currently looking for computing work (Perl programming or Linux SysAdmin work, preferably in Pittsburgh, Boston, or Indianapolis, despite the fact that I currently live near Melbourne, Australia). So with the languages having been my goal from the beginning, it's not surprising that I'm keeping them up (and am even being useful to others in helping them keep them up).
Welcome, Timothy,
I'd recommend memorizing words in context - i.e. learn a short phrase rather than just the dictionary meaning.
The way I do it is to make notes as I read the GNT or the LXX, - new vocabulary, parsing tricky bits, working out the etymology, etc. - a bit each day keeps the brain in gear. And work steadily through a whole book at a time.
If you want to keep the Hebrew up - try reading the LXX and the Masoretic text together - there are some surprises when one tries that.
Enjoy,
Shirley Rollinson
TimNelson
Posts: 61
Joined: October 17th, 2014, 11:04 pm
Location: Australia, Victoria, Geelong

Re: Timothy Nelson

Post by TimNelson »

Shirley Rollinson wrote:
TimNelson wrote:Thanks for the advice Barry. I think what I really need to do at the moment is just knuckle down and a) read text, and b) memorise vocab, but I will keep your advice in mind, and hopefully get the opportunity to do it. Certainly the comment about doing more than you are comfortable with is immediately applicable. One thing I forgot to add to my earlier comments is that I was mainly in the M.Div. for the languages; despite having finished my M. Div., I'm currently looking for computing work (Perl programming or Linux SysAdmin work, preferably in Pittsburgh, Boston, or Indianapolis, despite the fact that I currently live near Melbourne, Australia).
Replying to myself here; I thought I'd also comment that I'm open to work somehow involving the Biblical languages, but, despite the fact that I can teach, I don't think I'm cut out to be a pastor.
Shirley Rollinson wrote:
TimNelson wrote: So with the languages having been my goal from the beginning, it's not surprising that I'm keeping them up (and am even being useful to others in helping them keep them up).
Welcome, Timothy,
I'd recommend memorizing words in context - i.e. learn a short phrase rather than just the dictionary meaning.
The way I do it is to make notes as I read the GNT or the LXX, - new vocabulary, parsing tricky bits, working out the etymology, etc. - a bit each day keeps the brain in gear. And work steadily through a whole book at a time.
Hmm. I should keep this thought in mind. I think, though, that I still want to focus on some of the more frequent vocab. While I've supposedly learned all words occurring more than 10x (1129 words), it's really only about 2/3 of that. I have Trenchard, and, while that book is only about 90% accurate in its derivational morphology (I think this is effectively what you're meaning by "etymology"), I've picked up enough bits of that that I can often figure it out. I intentionally picked Sakae Kubo's book over the newer ones because it suggests vocab for each book(s) of the NT, unlike the more recent ones. I try to remember to do some every day, although I often forget. I have indeed been working steadily through whole books. I'd already read Matthew, Mark, and I John before I got hold of Daniel Wallace's reading order for the NT, and I've since been working through that. I've read everything by John, and am working my way through Paul (although not at Daniel Wallace's suggested speed). I expect eventually to go back to the start, and at that point I hope to ramp up my speed. I've also recently ordered Conybeare and Stock, and I've also ordered the rewrite of Rouse's "Greek Boy at Home", since I enjoyed the first few pages of the PDF of that.
Shirley Rollinson wrote: If you want to keep the Hebrew up - try reading the LXX and the Masoretic text together - there are some surprises when one tries that.
Enjoy,
Shirley Rollinson
OK, I'll definitely keep that in mind. The first time I did Greek, the brightest student in the class (I probably ranked 3rd/4th out of 20), or possibly just the student with the most prior learning, knew that one particular day was our lecturer's wedding anniversary. This particular lecturer was the kind who also knew German, Dutch, Latin, Hebrew, and probably some other languages, and had been teaching Greek for probably about 30 years. The student put a quote from Song of Songs, taken from the LXX, on the board on this particular day. The lecturer read it, laughed, and then said that this would be a good example of why we shouldn't read the LXX as inspired. He then had us read the same passage in our English translations (most of the class didn't know Hebrew). We noticed that there were a few differences in meaning between the two, and we discovered that the LXX had bowdlerised the Masoretic - 2 millennia before Bowdler :).

Hmm. So maybe I should consider that edition with the MT and the LXX on facing pages :). (I don't yet have an LXX).
--
Tim Nelson
B. Sc. (Computer Science), M. Div. Looking for work (in computing or language-related jobs).
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