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Cal Redmond

Posted: November 16th, 2011, 10:56 pm
by calred
Greetings! I was active on B-Greek in the 1990's until it became imperative that my dissertation be completed. I received help from a few people on B-Greek on specific issues related to my dissertation.

I have a PH.D. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, a TH.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and an M.Div. from Western Seminary in Portland, OR. At Southern, I was the NT department's paid remedial Greek tutor for a couple of years. When I was at Western, M.Div. students had to complete a quarter with almost nothing except intensive Greek if they had no Greek as a undergraduate. I survived that, and learned to love the language, as well.

I came to love Greek at Western Seminary, and found much to my surprise that if I really worked hard, I could do pretty well at the thing. I have taught Greek at a small seminary in a rural setting in Cameroon, West Africa, as well as in a larger seminary in Manila.

Among the worst moments of my Greek life are the moments when whoever is preaching on a Sunday morning starts out, "the Greek really says ..." In my experience, whatever follows is wrong, silly, or both, about 80% of the time. I have learned different ways of trying to be kind when the speaker asks me afterwards if he got it right. Those who know the story of Pinocchio will understand that my nose keeps growing longer.

Re: Cal Redmond

Posted: November 16th, 2011, 11:44 pm
by Mark Lightman
Among the worst moments of my Greek life are the moments when whoever is preaching on a Sunday morning starts out, "the Greek really says ..." In my experience, whatever follows is wrong, silly, or both, about 80% of the time.
Hi, Cal,

I'm still waiting for the other 20%. :D

You see, the Greek never really says anything. The CONTEXT says everything, and the English almost always conveys that context as well as the Greek.

Re: Cal Redmond

Posted: November 17th, 2011, 8:09 am
by Barry Hofstetter
calred wrote:Among the worst moments of my Greek life are the moments when whoever is preaching on a Sunday morning starts out, "the Greek really says ..." In my experience, whatever follows is wrong, silly, or both, about 80% of the time. I have learned different ways of trying to be kind when the speaker asks me afterwards if he got it right. Those who know the story of Pinocchio will understand that my nose keeps growing longer.
I simply tell them the truth if asked such a question. Oddly enough, I don't get asked very often. :evil:

However, I have heard "the Greek" used correctly on occasion. Maybe that's because it was Moises Silva or Richard Gaffin speaking...

I already has my M.A. in Classics when I started at WTS. One of the courses was what at the time they called "Intro to Theology" and Dr. Gaffin started the first class with a passage in Greek on the overhead. I looked at it, and read it in English to the student who was next to me. He looked at me with something akin to awe and said, "Is that how much you learned in Summer Greek? Man, I wish I had taken that now!" I did tell him that I had had a little more than 4 weeks of intensive beginning Greek.