Pastor and student

Please introduce yourself here, if you haven't already.
MRoe
Posts: 5
Joined: September 8th, 2017, 1:50 pm
Location: Cincinnati, OH

Pastor and student

Post by MRoe »

Good evening all,

I am new to the B-Greek forum and wanted to introduce myself. I'm a new pastor (just over 1 year) in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. One of the joys of being in full-time ministry has been daily time in the original languages. I feel that my ability to read and understand is slowly progressing and I want to keep sharpening myself as much as possible.

Up until the last year, my Greek study was very intermittent. I took beginning Greek twice, once in undergraduate studies at The Master's College and later in Seminary (since it had been several years). I took Greek Exegesis class in seminary but still felt that my reading ability was poor. After graduating seminary, I took several classes with Michael Halcomb's CKI group. The immersive approach was a lot of fun and I advanced much more quickly than I had in traditional study. But, I have found the best thing has been weekly reading and studying the text.

I'm currently preaching through Mark and I have enjoyed the vivid style of his writing. But, I still distrust myself at times in my reading and understanding of the text. I look forward to learning as much as I can on the forums.

I guess my first question would be what to read next in terms of grammars? I've studied Mounce, Machen, and Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. What would be your recommended reading after this?

Kind regards,

Michael Roe
Michael Roe
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: Pastor and student

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Michael, welcome to B-Greek. I would encourage you strongly to read more Greek, and use grammars for reference when you have questions about the text. Building your fluency in the language is the best way to take advantage of reference works which were never meant to be read like novels.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Garrett Tyson
Posts: 27
Joined: July 14th, 2018, 6:54 pm

Re: Pastor and student

Post by Garrett Tyson »

Welcome to the forums! How far into Mark are you? I'd love to see your sermons. I figure anyone who went through The Master's appreciates the value of expository sermons. I'm working through Mark right now as a series of Sunday school lessons/sermons (not sure how I'll give them). I'm in chapter 2, on fasting.

The two buys that helped advance my Greek rapidly were a Reader's Edition of the GNT, and Steve Runge's book Discourse Grammar. I started reading Runge's book about halfway through a series on Galatians, and it forever changed how I will teach through Paul in particular. His argument popped off the page in a way it never had for me before. With the Reader's edition, I found I could read through much larger chunks of scripture in one sitting-- it's more enjoyable, it's easier to get a sense of the overall flow, and it's something I can do in bed each night before sleeping, and/or bring to Dairy Queen/BK for lunch.
MRoe
Posts: 5
Joined: September 8th, 2017, 1:50 pm
Location: Cincinnati, OH

Re: Pastor and student

Post by MRoe »

Barry Hofstetter wrote: July 29th, 2018, 7:11 am Michael, welcome to B-Greek. I would encourage you strongly to read more Greek, and use grammars for reference when you have questions about the text. Building your fluency in the language is the best way to take advantage of reference works which were never meant to be read like novels.
Barry, thank you for the welcome. That has been my (limited) experience. I've learned so much more from reading and rereading the text each week.
Michael Roe
MRoe
Posts: 5
Joined: September 8th, 2017, 1:50 pm
Location: Cincinnati, OH

Re: Pastor and student

Post by MRoe »

Garrett Tyson wrote: July 29th, 2018, 8:20 am Welcome to the forums! How far into Mark are you? I'd love to see your sermons. I figure anyone who went through The Master's appreciates the value of expository sermons. I'm working through Mark right now as a series of Sunday school lessons/sermons (not sure how I'll give them). I'm in chapter 2, on fasting.

The two buys that helped advance my Greek rapidly were a Reader's Edition of the GNT, and Steve Runge's book Discourse Grammar. I started reading Runge's book about halfway through a series on Galatians, and it forever changed how I will teach through Paul in particular. His argument popped off the page in a way it never had for me before. With the Reader's edition, I found I could read through much larger chunks of scripture in one sitting-- it's more enjoyable, it's easier to get a sense of the overall flow, and it's something I can do in bed each night before sleeping, and/or bring to Dairy Queen/BK for lunch.
Thank you for the welcome Garrett. I just preached Mark 2:1-12 this past Sunday. It is one of my favorite passages. Guilty as charged! I do seek to faithfully exposit the text each week. One of the fun things about preaching the gospel narrative of Mark has been preaching the narrative form. By that I mean, trying to preach it in a manner faithful to the genre. In other words, not simply reducing it to a set of principles or application. The joy has been making the color and clamor of the narrative come alive for the audience. So I have been trying to help them imagine it as if they were there on the street in Capernaum. Mark makes it very easy to do so. I recently found two journal articles very helpful in thinking through how to do this: Thank you for the advice on what's been helpful for you. Runge's volume is on my wishlist as well as a GNT Readers edition. From what I've read, many prefer the UBS 5 Reader's Edition. Which edition/publisher do you prefer? Well, back to the text!
Michael Roe
Garrett Tyson
Posts: 27
Joined: July 14th, 2018, 6:54 pm

Re: Pastor and student

Post by Garrett Tyson »

MRoe wrote: July 31st, 2018, 9:35 am
Garrett Tyson wrote: July 29th, 2018, 8:20 am Welcome to the forums! How far into Mark are you? I'd love to see your sermons. I figure anyone who went through The Master's appreciates the value of expository sermons. I'm working through Mark right now as a series of Sunday school lessons/sermons (not sure how I'll give them). I'm in chapter 2, on fasting.

The two buys that helped advance my Greek rapidly were a Reader's Edition of the GNT, and Steve Runge's book Discourse Grammar. I started reading Runge's book about halfway through a series on Galatians, and it forever changed how I will teach through Paul in particular. His argument popped off the page in a way it never had for me before. With the Reader's edition, I found I could read through much larger chunks of scripture in one sitting-- it's more enjoyable, it's easier to get a sense of the overall flow, and it's something I can do in bed each night before sleeping, and/or bring to Dairy Queen/BK for lunch.
Thank you for the welcome Garrett. I just preached Mark 2:1-12 this past Sunday. It is one of my favorite passages. Guilty as charged! I do seek to faithfully exposit the text each week. One of the fun things about preaching the gospel narrative of Mark has been preaching the narrative form. By that I mean, trying to preach it in a manner faithful to the genre. In other words, not simply reducing it to a set of principles or application. The joy has been making the color and clamor of the narrative come alive for the audience. So I have been trying to help them imagine it as if they were there on the street in Capernaum. Mark makes it very easy to do so. I recently found two journal articles very helpful in thinking through how to do this: Thank you for the advice on what's been helpful for you. Runge's volume is on my wishlist as well as a GNT Readers edition. From what I've read, many prefer the UBS 5 Reader's Edition. Which edition/publisher do you prefer? Well, back to the text!
Anything by John Goldingay is worth reading. But I'm extremely biased, having had three classes by him. I've never seen anything other than the UBS Reader's edition--that's the one I have. My only small complaint about it is that the glosses on words/forms occurring 30 or less times aren't very formal/wooden, and it's easy to miss a word being reused-- it'll gloss the same word with two different translations, even within the same chapter/story. I wish it was more closely based on Louw-Nida, or BDAG... I'm not actually sure what it's based on (maybe I should read the intro).

I really struggled getting into Mark at the beginning, trying to figure out how I wanted to teach it. Ultimately, I've decided I'm going to try to read it left to right, without cheating ahead, letting Mark tell his story at his pace. Thanks for the links...
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: Pastor and student

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Garrett Tyson wrote: August 1st, 2018, 8:12 am
I really struggled getting into Mark at the beginning, trying to figure out how I wanted to teach it. Ultimately, I've decided I'm going to try to read it left to right, without cheating ahead, letting Mark tell his story at his pace. Thanks for the links...
You mean read it as Mark wrote it? Novel idea! (pun intended :lol: )!
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Garrett Tyson
Posts: 27
Joined: July 14th, 2018, 6:54 pm

Re: Pastor and student

Post by Garrett Tyson »

Barry Hofstetter wrote: August 1st, 2018, 8:58 am
Garrett Tyson wrote: August 1st, 2018, 8:12 am
I really struggled getting into Mark at the beginning, trying to figure out how I wanted to teach it. Ultimately, I've decided I'm going to try to read it left to right, without cheating ahead, letting Mark tell his story at his pace. Thanks for the links...
You mean read it as Mark wrote it? Novel idea! (pun intended :lol: )!
lol. yeah. it sounds really easy right? But the more comfortable I get in the book, the more difficult it gets to not cheat. A great example of that is Mark 2:18ff, with new wine and new wineskins, and the patch on the old garment, where I am right now. I think the main point of those two illustrations, is to ask the question, "What happens if you do something really stupid, and try to force a new patch onto the torn up old garment? What happens if you force the new wine into the old wineskins, instead of letting it do its own thing? What happens if you don't respect the newness (1:27) of Jesus?" The end result will be that the new patch "lifts up" (Jesus lifted up" on the cross; 15:21), the "tear" is made worse (temple curtain torn), the wine will be "destroyed" (Jesus is destroyed, Mark 12:7-9?), the wineskins will be "destroyed" (temple, Judaism; Mark 12:7-9). So this whole section is like a prophetic warning. "Stop expecting me to work within the structures of Judaism, or terrible things will happen." If you are teaching that, do you cheat? Or do you just make a list of the five bad things Jesus says will happen, and leave it at that, without showing Mark fulfilling them? For now, I have the fulfillment references in footnotes, and don't really explain them. But.... it's hard.

The way I'm going to explain it in church is by talking about my mom. She loves surprising people with Christmas presents. Loves giving. But she can't help herself; she has to drop obvious hints about what the gifts are ahead of time. She's too excited not to tell before she should. It's really hard not to teach through Mark like that, to drop hints or explain everything immediately.
Jonathan Robie
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Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: Pastor and student

Post by Jonathan Robie »

MRoe wrote: July 31st, 2018, 9:35 am I recently found two journal articles very helpful in thinking through how to do this:
I cringe when a preacher says "in the original Greek, the Bible says ...". I love it when a preacher uses his knowledge of Greek to highlight what the text highlights.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: Pastor and student

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Garrett Tyson wrote: August 2nd, 2018, 9:04 am lol. yeah. it sounds really easy right? But the more comfortable I get in the book, the more difficult it gets to not cheat. A great example of that is Mark 2:18ff, with new wine and new wineskins, and the patch on the old garment, where I am right now. I think the main point of those two illustrations, is to ask the question, "What happens if you do something really stupid, and try to force a new patch onto the torn up old garment? What happens if you force the new wine into the old wineskins, instead of letting it do its own thing? What happens if you don't respect the newness (1:27) of Jesus?" The end result will be that the new patch "lifts up" (Jesus lifted up" on the cross; 15:21), the "tear" is made worse (temple curtain torn), the wine will be "destroyed" (Jesus is destroyed, Mark 12:7-9?), the wineskins will be "destroyed" (temple, Judaism; Mark 12:7-9). So this whole section is like a prophetic warning. "Stop expecting me to work within the structures of Judaism, or terrible things will happen." If you are teaching that, do you cheat? Or do you just make a list of the five bad things Jesus says will happen, and leave it at that, without showing Mark fulfilling them? For now, I have the fulfillment references in footnotes, and don't really explain them. But.... it's hard.

The way I'm going to explain it in church is by talking about my mom. She loves surprising people with Christmas presents. Loves giving. But she can't help herself; she has to drop obvious hints about what the gifts are ahead of time. She's too excited not to tell before she should. It's really hard not to teach through Mark like that, to drop hints or explain everything immediately.
This is getting in to hermeneutics and away from language questions (which is what B-Greek is all about), but one question you might want to ask is what reading strategy is suggested by the text itself? In general, ancient texts were not meant be read once, but over and over, with much reflection on what the author is trying to communicate. What connections are suggested even by a linear reading of the text? Mark is not just writing a stand alone piece. He is writing in an already existing body of tradition and could expect his audience to make some of those connections. We, in turn, receive the text with not only the entire canon as the interpretive matrix, but our own body of tradition which we are expected to make use of. Considerations such as these mean to me that part of preaching is helping our congregations see those connections...
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
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