Mark Illustrated with Greek

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fredrick.long
Posts: 9
Joined: November 23rd, 2016, 9:21 am

Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by fredrick.long »

Hi, I am new to this forum and wanted to introduce a great resource, Halcomb, T. Michael W., and Fredrick J. Long. Mark: GlossaHouse Illustrated Greek-English New Testament. Accessible Greek Resources and Online Studies. Wilmore, KY: GlossaHouse, 2014. I am uploading a sample image.
Mark_Illustrated_Greek_Sample.PDF
Excerpt from Mark Illustrated
(759.42 KiB) Downloaded 260 times
Jason Hare
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Jason Hare »

fredrick.long wrote:Hi, I am new to this forum and wanted to introduce a great resource, Halcomb, T. Michael W., and Fredrick J. Long. Mark: GlossaHouse Illustrated Greek-English New Testament. Accessible Greek Resources and Online Studies. Wilmore, KY: GlossaHouse, 2014. I am uploading a sample image.
Mark_Illustrated_Greek_Sample.PDF
Hi again, Fred.

I removed the link to your website from the post. You can find the rationale here in the forum policies - that we cannot allow people to use B-Greek as a source of advertizement by posting multiple links to their own sites. The example given is in the use of links in personal signatures. Since I left the link to your site in what I have taken to be your introduction thread in the resources subforum, I have removed it here. As was suggested in the policy thread, you can certainly add the link to your personal profile on the forum and refer people to your profile to retrieve the link to your site.

That said, I looked at the PDF that you've attached here, and it is indeed well illustrated and well put-together. Very nice job. I'd certainly be interested in seeing more, and I hope that others would, too. Good luck!

I'm going to go check out your site and see what else you have to offer.

Good luck!

Jason
B-Greek Co-Moderator
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Stephen Hughes »

fredrick.long wrote:Hi, I am new to this forum and wanted to introduce a great resource, Halcomb, T. Michael W., and Fredrick J. Long. Mark: GlossaHouse Illustrated Greek-English New Testament. Accessible Greek Resources and Online Studies. Wilmore, KY: GlossaHouse, 2014. I am uploading a sample image.
Mark_Illustrated_Greek_Sample.PDF
Generally speaking a comic or an illustrated picture book is "good" if some most or all of the test is illustrated in the pictures. Looking at that sample and asking the question, "What of the text is clearly illustrated in the picture, wich is in the text?" I have come to a conclusion about the quality of this work.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jason Hare
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Jason Hare »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
fredrick.long wrote:Hi, I am new to this forum and wanted to introduce a great resource, Halcomb, T. Michael W., and Fredrick J. Long. Mark: GlossaHouse Illustrated Greek-English New Testament. Accessible Greek Resources and Online Studies. Wilmore, KY: GlossaHouse, 2014. I am uploading a sample image.
Mark_Illustrated_Greek_Sample.PDF
Generally speaking a comic or an illustrated picture book is "good" if some most or all of the test is illustrated in the pictures. Looking at that sample and asking the question, "What of the text is clearly illustrated in the picture, wich is in the text?" I have come to a conclusion about the quality of this work.
And what conclusion is that, Stephen?
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Paul-Nitz
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Paul-Nitz »

In reaction to this sample page of an illustrated Bible with GNT speech bubbles, Eeli Kaikkonen had this insightful feedback:
B-Greek Post
Re: Bible Story in Pictures in Koine
Post by Eeli Kaikkonen » 05 Apr 2012 13:38

I'm trying hard to not be too negative. Anything is better than nothing when people create new material for Koine learning. But as a comics fan I can't get rid of the depressed and disappointed feeling when I see that the great possibilities of the medium are not used at all. Taking a text and putting some random pictures there isn't worth the name "art of comics". I'm not talking about the artwork, but the interaction between pictures and text, and between pictures. I have a gut feeling that the medium has great potential for language aquisition, but here they aren't used at all. (Or should I say "can't be used", because the work of putting the Greek text there is of course limited by the original comics which wasn't made for SLA.)

BTW, D. Streett introduced a comic strip in his blog: http://danielstreett.wordpress.com/2011 ... mic-strip/. That one was better, IMHO.

If someone spends time making something like this - and I hope someone does, despite my criticism - I recommend learning the "languge" of comics first. This is a good book to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics.

If someone is willing to discuss about this further, I might be willing to participate, but I'm not sure if this the right forum.
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jason Hare wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:I have come to a conclusion about the quality of this work.
And what conclusion is that, Stephen?
Let's just say that there is little or no easily identifiable connection between the pictures and the text. A few points about the second picture for example:
  1. The text says thatnthe sun has set and that it was already evening. The picture shows highly constrastive shadows of a length of about a quarter longer than the height of the person casting them (i.e. the picture indicates it is about 3:30 or 4pm.
  2. The text says that the whole population was milling at the room (presumably to get in). The picture shows our Lord outside and some distance from the door, with just a few people nearby
  3. The text says that many types of illnesses were represented. The picture shows that quite well.
  4. The text says that many were healed. The picture shows only the sick.
  5. Admittedly, I only have Hollywood images of demoniacs to go by. However, I don't see a picture reference to anything that might be a real demoniac, or to disembodied demons being castigated.
The quality of the artwork itself is great. The connection between art and text is, well ... generally non-facilitous. The illustrator fails to accurately limn the background to the action, the surrounding circumstances, nor indeed the accomplishment of the specific action that the story is about. He does, however, illustrate one narrator-knowledge detail very well - the varieties of the illnesses.

If this was in English and I took it to a class of 9 to 12 year olds, they'd eat it alive on the details.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
fredrick.long
Posts: 9
Joined: November 23rd, 2016, 9:21 am

Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by fredrick.long »

Hi Stephen and Jason,

Thanks for your feedback on this bottom left image. I am not the illustrator, nor do I fell the need to defend the images. You raise some really important points. Agreed, there should be more people there, it should be dark for sure, but how one could identify a healed person from the ones standing there apparently healthy, I am not sure. I would agree that more creativity here would be possible--people walking away with a mat, or something. Also, I think the obvious answer about the demoniacs (unless the surly looking guy in the middle is one) is that the demoniacs would be kept in the well until Jesus could get to them. :D

Again, thanks for the good feedback. I bought the book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art GlossaHouse's Illustrated Genesis in Hebrew (Tim McNinch) does some very creative things with the Hebrew text during the days of creation.

Also, I am planning on working through Mark Illustrated with more of this sort of critical eye, Stephen--I think I can adjust the darkness of that image, perhaps add more people, for subsequent printings. If you are interested in helping me think through this, I would gladly send you a complimentary copy.

Fred
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Stephen Hughes »

fredrick.long wrote:Also, I am planning on working through Mark Illustrated with more of this sort of critical eye, Stephen--I think I can adjust the darkness of that image, perhaps add more people, for subsequent printings. If you are interested in helping me think through this, I would gladly send you a complimentary copy.
Mark is the Gospel that I first did the hard yards with, many years ago, so now it is rather straightforward and a pleasure to read.

I'm not currently assigned to a work unit, and receiving mail as an individual is not so convenient here, so let me ask about and try to find somewhere you could send it to. I could deface the complimentary copy for you, post it back, then you may consider my scribbles when you make your emendations to the artwork.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

I agree with Stephen, but I would have much more to say. I have had some kind of vision (not in a religious sense :) ) for a comics about Mark's Gospel. It would be very different from this one and I doubt if I could help much with this kind of work, if you want to keep the basic structure intact. I'm glad to hear you are willing to take criticism and planning forward. It will certainly be better if you listen to Stephen, and of course read Understanding Comics and do some kind of critical exegesis with some well known critically acclaimed comics.
Emma Ehrhardt
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Re: Mark Illustrated with Greek

Post by Emma Ehrhardt »

I came across this book right at the stage where I was trying to make the shift from "parse word, deduce a gloss, parse next word, deduce a gloss, put the two together to figure out meaning" to "actually read several words as a unit and try to understand them directly rather than through a intermediate grammar analysis stage".

I found that the illustrations in the book were very useful to me as a learner. They functioned similarly to section headings, and to the background knowledge that comes from being familiar with the English version. They functioned as 'contextual scaffolding' in the sense they gave me good context clues to puzzle out the meaning of words I did not know. I knew my requisite "words that occur 50+ times", but was just getting my feet under me in terms of recognizing them in context as I read. So less frequent vocabulary (at the rate that occurs in Mark's gospel) would have prevented me from being able to read Mark in any meaningful way. This book allowed me to get there. I haven't ever been a comic reader, but I liked the pictures. Anything that helps me mentally get into a story is usually a good thing.

This was a resource that didn't exist elsewhere in Greek, so I was glad to hear about it. As we all find in curriculum & resource development, it does take an incredible amount of work to make something world-class. But given that we mostly agree there needs to be more Greek resources, not fewer, I'm all about encouraging up & coming projects that are already useful and valuable to students. For me, this is a solid entry in that latter category.

-Emma
Emma Ehrhardt
Computational Linguist
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