Dewayne Dulaney-Devenios Doulenios

Please introduce yourself here, if you haven't already.
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Devenios Doulenios
Posts: 230
Joined: May 31st, 2011, 5:11 pm
Location: Carlisle, Arkansas, USA
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Dewayne Dulaney-Devenios Doulenios

Post by Devenios Doulenios »

χαίρετε, ὦ ἑταῖροι και φίλοι! πῶς ἔχουσι;

I'm happy to be a member here at B-Greek and would like to introduce myself. My first exposure to Greek was in 1969 or 1970 while a high school student in West Monroe, Louisiana. I was a member of the White's Ferry Road Church of Christ, which sponsored a preacher training school. One of the instructors offered a night class at his home in beginning NT Greek to interested church members who were not students at the school, so I began taking it. After a while, the homework load for my high school French class left me without enough time to continue the Greek, so I had to drop the course. I continued to be interested in the language, however, and kept the textbooks (Summers' grammar and the 1st ed. of the United Bible Societies' Greek NT), which I dipped into from time to time. Later I bought a lexicon (probably Thayer's) and did a few limited word studies. I also picked up a discontinued high school Latin I textbook (probably Latin for Americans) and used it some. (Later on I would start reading the Vulgate and work through part of Wheelock's Latin grammar.) I continued taking high school French for 2 years, then took two years of high school Spanish. This led to my majoring in Spanish at Lubbock Christian College (now University) in Texas, where I received my B.A. in Spanish with a minor in French and also took 2 years of German. I continued to be interested in Greek, but did not have time then to enroll in the courses offered at the college.I was exposed to more Greek in the required Bible courses (word study level), and started learning how to do NT textual criticism as part of the work in an elective History of the Bible course.

3 years later I attended preaching school myself (the Preston Road School of Preaching in Dallas, Texas, sponsored by the Preston Road Church of Christ) and at last was able to formally study Greek again, to my great joy. The school only offered 1 year of NT Greek, but it provided a good foundation for further studies. We used Summers' book and translated portions of 1 John. At that time I also became interested in Biblical Hebrew and began to teach myself some, both during school (we took courses on every book of the Bible, including the OT books) and after graduation in 1983 (it was not offered at the school then). Later, in 1990, I was able to take a first year course in BH there as an extension student (using Mansoor's volume 1), and then took 2 courses in Hebrew readings, where I and 2 other preachers worked with the instructor privately and read and translated portions of Genesis, 1-2 Samuel, Psalms, Jeremiah, and Ruth. A couple of years after graduation I took a refresher 1st year Greek course by correspondence, using Machen and a workbook, and translated some passages from John.

In the years since I have worked through some intermediate NT Greek grammars (Dana and Mantey, Vaughn and Gideon) and read the entire Greek NT numerous times, as well as large portions of the LXX. I also have used A.T. Robertson's advanced grammar, Βurton's Syntax, Moule's Idiom Book, and done numerous word studies. I bought BAGD and and the Middle Liddell, as well as Moulton-Milligan, and used them constantly, and also bought and used the NA (26th and 27th eds.) and UBS Greek New Testaments (3rd & 4th eds.), as well as the Textus Receptus and Hodges and Farstad's Majority Text editions and Rahlfs' Septuagint. I also bought and began using Schmoller's Greek NT concordance and Hatch and Redpaths's LXX concordance. I also used Wuest's word studies on Hebrews and James, as well as William Barclay's volume of Greek NT word studies. Later I got software editions of A.T. Robertson's and Vincent's word studies. I also bought and used Vine's dictionary of NT words. As I also like to read commentaries on the Greek NT, I added several of these to my library.

As background and preparation for a sermon series on Philippians I translated the entire book. I also translated the Gospel of John while teaching an adult Bible class on the book. I also did preliminary translations (interlinears) of 1, 2, and 3 John. Reading the Greek NT devotionally and for preparing sermons and Bible class lessons became a regular and happy routine for me. I also made use of Greek in writing a church bulletin column called Guidance from Greek. (I hope to resurrect this and restart it as a feature on one of my blogs sometime.) Translation and exegesis of the Bible have continued to be interests of mine, so at times over the years I also subscribed to journals such as The Bible Translator and Themelios. As I also did volunteer Spanish/English interpreting and translating for church mission efforts over the years, I became convinced that Bible translation work should always aim at making the text understandable to the average reader, as well as the scholar. As I read technical works in the field by Eugene Nida and Beekman and Callow, I became more convinced of this need, and so aimed my Bible translation efforts in that direction as I shared them with the congregations where I preached and taught.

I first encountered B-Greek by accident in about 1999, while doing an online search for exegesis materials on something in my reading (I forget the details). I subscribed for a while, but because it was so active—20 or so messages per day, on average—I had trouble keeping up with it, so reluctantly dropped it. I was not aware of the Digest option at the time. I came back to the fold a couple of years ago, and have greatly enjoyed it, even though I haven't always had time to post to the list myself. The discussions on pedagogy and learning Greek on one's own, especially the posts by B-Greekers such as Mark Lightman, Louis Sorensen, and Randall Buth, encouraged me to add Greek for communication to my approach to the language, and to expand my reading to include other Hellenistic works and Attic. So, over the last year, I began work on both areas. I joined ΣΧΟΛΗ and tried my hand at writing in Koine, and also have done a little emailing in Greek. (I plan to do more over time.) I dropped the Erasmian accent in favor of the Modern Greek one after starting to use the GreekLatinAudio.com NT files, and began doing more reading aloud from the Greek NT, and also from the LXX. I'm about to start learning some hymns in Koine (thanks to Louis Sorenson's wonderful Let's Read Greek site). Returning to using the NT devotionally on a regular basis is also a goal of mine, including memorizing some Scripture verses in Greek. I am trying to get back to that now. As I've also taught an adult Bible class on OT non-writing prophets (Elijah, Elisha, etc.) over the past year, I've been doing more LXX reading and reading of the Hebrew MT in 1 and 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Thanks to a post about it in B-Greek, I've also found and started consulting Funk's Hellenistic Grammar online for my NT Greek work.

I also started using Smyth's Attic Grammar, the full LSJ (via Perseus and the Diogenes software; I had used the print version of LSJ in preaching school and then bought the "Middle Liddell"), the online TLG demo site, and a couple of beginning Attic grammars. Last year I began reading Plato's Symposium in a bilingual edition (I just finished the initial reading a few weeks ago). I also began reading the Didache and started reading selections from Colwell and Mantey's Hellenistic Greek Reader. The latter contains extracts from the NT, LXX, some Pseudepigrapha (Enoch, Maccabees, Acts of Paul), Philo, Josephus, Epictetus, and some papyri. (It is a bit of a challenge to read because it was typeset from work done on a typewriter, so the Greek font is not so legible. Also, the notes are all at the back of the book. Nevertheless, it is useful even though it was produced back in the 1950's or thereabouts.) Over time I hope to read more Attic authors and also read more in Patristic Greek, Josephus, Philo, and various Hellenistic writers. I also have started learning some bits of conversational Koine/Attic, though so far I haven't gotten to use them except in writing (and talking to my dog).

During the last several months I also came back to my work on John's Gospel and started revising the text of the translation and revising and expanding the notes and ancillary materials, with the plan of eventually posting it in installments online. This work is ongoing. I hope to be able to announce here before long about it actually being available online for your feedback so I can improve it. Later, I want to do the same with my other NT translations and then go on over time to tackle the rest of the NT. B-Greek member Refe Turma has graciously offered to host the work on John in the Translation group of his new Greeking Out website. Meanwhile, I encourage you to make use of his site because it is very helpful. I certainly have profited from his insights and resources. I also refer to the Greek NT in some of my occasional blog articles (I hope to resume work on the blogs later this year).

While I miss the B-Greek messages in my inbox, I am comfortable with forums (I've posted some on Textkit and Ellopos' Koinonia forums, as well as Wieland Willker's Textual Criticism forum) and welcome the new one for B-Greek. I hope to make some useful contributions here over time. Kudos to Jonathan Robie and the gang for an outstanding resource!

Ἔρρωσθε, ὦ κοινωνοί! :D

Devenios Doulenios
Δεβένιος Δουλένιος
Dewayne Dulaney
Δεβένιος Δουλένιος

Blog: https://letancientvoicesspeak.wordpress.com/

"Ὁδοὶ δύο εἰσί, μία τῆς ζωῆς καὶ μία τοῦ θανάτου."--Διδαχή Α, α'
Jason Hare
Posts: 951
Joined: June 2nd, 2011, 5:28 pm
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
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Re: Dewayne Dulaney-Devenios Doulenios

Post by Jason Hare »

Welcome to the forum, Dewayne.

?מתי נשוב לכתוב איש לרעהו
(Then, I remember how much easier it is to type in modern Hebrew!
?מתי נתחיל להתכתב מחדש)

I hope you're doing well.

I didn't realize that we had a semi-similar background. I was introduced to Koine at the age of 17 by my pastor at the Lockwood Christian Church. It's a close sister church (same movement) of the Church of Christ. I went on to Bible college for three years, where I studied Greek and Hebrew, along with general Bible and "Christian living" classes. My favorite classes were the languages by far (I also studied American Sign Language there), but I thoroughly enjoyed my classes in the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles to the Galatians and Philippians. In fact, I took that class in my third year and did all of my memorization work in Greek - since the prof was also my Greek professor! :-) In the head of the semester, he told us that we could memory work from any version of the Bible we wanted. Most chose the NIV, which was the prevalent version in the college, but I asked if it was OK if I did my memory work from the USB, and he agreed. It was a fun class, no doubt.

It just so happened that Hebrew really took with me, and I pursued it a lot further than I did Greek. I've consumed textbook after textbook in Hebrew, and I started to attend the synagogue back in 2000 to improve my Hebrew - and ended up converting to Judaism by the end of 2003 (to the chagrin of many of my friends, but it was a personal decision and remains so). Anyway, I came to Israel for the first time in 2004 for a 10-day visit, and I returned for another 10 days in 2006 while planning to move here. I've been here since July 2007, and it's going well.

Last year I decided to pick up Greek again. I had basically given it up since I left the Bible college (and my former faith). Only in the last couple of years have I been able to disassociate the study of Greek from the devotional form of learning that I was doing before, so that I have disconnected my emotional attachment to Greek from my past religious affiliation. I can now study Greek for the passion of it and not feel the odd religious feelings that I was having before. So, I'm happy to be back in Greek and eager to get stronger and stronger.

I look forward to your Hebrew letters. It's been a while. It's not my turn to write now, is it? If so, let me know - and you'll have a letter in biblical Hebrew by the end of the week. :)

Hope you're doing well always.

Best wishes,
Jason Hare
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
refe
Posts: 53
Joined: June 2nd, 2011, 11:16 am
Location: Kansas City

Re: Dewayne Dulaney-Devenios Doulenios

Post by refe »

Thanks Dewayne - I'm excited to read your translation of John. I've appreciated our interactions both in English and Greek, and I look forward to many more in the future!
Devenios Doulenios
Posts: 230
Joined: May 31st, 2011, 5:11 pm
Location: Carlisle, Arkansas, USA
Contact:

Re: Dewayne Dulaney-Devenios Doulenios

Post by Devenios Doulenios »

I've appreciated our interactions both in English and Greek, and I look forward to many more in the future!
καγω, ω φιλε. αει φιλω σοι γραφειν. :D

refe wrote:Thanks Dewayne - I'm excited to read your translation of John.
Me too. I am almost finished with the note on the textual variants in 1:34, then will do some font substitutions in the rest of the notes for ch. 1, write a preface, and start posting. There have been some unforeseen delays, but things are on track. Ι have no doubt the feedback from you and our fellow B-Greekers will be a tremendous help in improving the work.

Devenios
Δεβένιος
Dewayne Dulaney
Δεβένιος Δουλένιος

Blog: https://letancientvoicesspeak.wordpress.com/

"Ὁδοὶ δύο εἰσί, μία τῆς ζωῆς καὶ μία τοῦ θανάτου."--Διδαχή Α, α'
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