General principles for Paul
Posted: July 21st, 2014, 6:09 pm
Hi,
I'm still very much a beginner, but over the last few months I've worked my way through John's letters and his Gospel. By the end of the gospel, I was still sometimes hitting vocabulary woods I hadn't seen before, but felt pretty comfortable figuring the text out. Then I decided to dip a toe into Paul and worked through Philemon. Tougher, but not too bad. Now I'm in Philippians, and it is considerably more difficult. I'm going very slowly. I can figure out what most of the words mean. I can identify subjects and verbs when Paul deigns to use them. But it doesn't always help--it feels like there's a deep subtext there that I'm just not getting.
What advice can you offer to a newbie trying to work his way into Paul. Are there some good general principles for making sense of Paul's Greek? Or, is this a case of sticking with it until it starts to make sense.
Thanks for any help, advice, or encouragement.
David
I'm still very much a beginner, but over the last few months I've worked my way through John's letters and his Gospel. By the end of the gospel, I was still sometimes hitting vocabulary woods I hadn't seen before, but felt pretty comfortable figuring the text out. Then I decided to dip a toe into Paul and worked through Philemon. Tougher, but not too bad. Now I'm in Philippians, and it is considerably more difficult. I'm going very slowly. I can figure out what most of the words mean. I can identify subjects and verbs when Paul deigns to use them. But it doesn't always help--it feels like there's a deep subtext there that I'm just not getting.
What advice can you offer to a newbie trying to work his way into Paul. Are there some good general principles for making sense of Paul's Greek? Or, is this a case of sticking with it until it starts to make sense.
Thanks for any help, advice, or encouragement.
David