[quote="Barry Hofstetter in reply to Jordan Day in the "Unseen" Koine Text tread"]Another issue is context. ... a context in which the sentence makes sense ... connected, sensible readings are necessary along with short exercises...[/quote]cwconrad in response to Jordan Day in the [url=http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2549#p15677]Homeric, Classical, Koine...whats the REAL difference?[/url] thread wrote:to know what's Attic Greek you'll need to read some ...
Invitation: If anyone would like to follow Barry's suggestion and read a longer piece, then it would be my pleasure to read one together. It has been suggested to me that Lysias' Λόγος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου (Speech on behalf of the disabled man) might be a good one to work through.
Manifesto: This is an open invitation to read a text together. Ancient Greek as a language was the language of a city, and this is a speech made by one of the disadvantaged members of that society. Ancient Greek is often mentioned on B-Greek as both worth learning and very valuable for understanding the (Attic) Koine. This thread is an attempt to democratise the learning of Ancient Greek and to facilitate access to one of the canonical texts of Ancient Greek oratory. I have no pretense of wanting to write an exhaustive commentary, or for this to be a definitive analysis of the text. I only hope that as readers of the New Testament, our reading ability in Greek will improve and our ability to both appreciate and handle Ancient Greek sources will be easier and more profitable as a result of working through this.
Text: Lysias' Λόγος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου is an example of forensic oratory ( speech delivered in a legal case). It is number 24 in the list of Lysias' speeches. Lysias' speeches have been read as examples of good Greek since ancient times, and are appropriate for 2nd year (upper) intermediate level students.
Suggested approach(es): There are twenty-seven sections in the speech, we could work through them one by one, like we did for the unseens - without aids for as long as possible - that's what I would prefer to do. (Another way - much quicker - is that you read the translation then read the Greek, and we discuss the places where you can't see how the two match - that would be good to improve your knowledge of specific points in the language, but Barry is suggesting that it is good to read for context).
Where to begin: Let's start with the historical and social context. You could read an introduction to the speech presented here. The older edition of the Loeb is available online at Internet Archive, (look for page 519) for those who want that kind of resource.
Proposal: We could read and discuss our understanding of the text as was done in the two previous "unseens"; I can supply some hints that seem relevant to people who are already somewhat familiar with New Testament Greek, which could be used in a way that suits individual learning styles.
My hope: I hope that in each section we could identify at least one way in which our understanding of the New Testament has been helped by dealing with this text. Either a word, a phrase or a social custom would be great.
Expected problem: Because this is an asynchronous discussion, and will probably have more than one participant, it would be better if the title for each post contained the section number(s) that the post is about, i.e. §1, §2, ... etc., and your name.
If this speech of Lysias' were the only destination for ferries on B-Greek's harbour, it would be much better if "Reading Lysias 24" had it's own sub-forum, where the text were introduced and hinted at in one thread all at once and indexed at the beginning (with the double circle and exclamation mark that always remained on top), and then everyone participating created their own separate threads in the sub-forum and could get underway at their own pace - without feeling that they had missed THE boat, and could feel post responses to as many or as few of the sections as they felt they needed to.
As it stands, however, in a high traffic, multi-interest forum like this, keeping everybody's work together in one interwoven thread is a way to both give sense of cohesion to the task without altering the structure of the forum and to not appearing to SPAM the active topics list for the duration of the undertaking.