progression of the Greek course cycle in your school

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Jesse Goulet
Posts: 87
Joined: October 15th, 2011, 12:48 pm

progression of the Greek course cycle in your school

Post by Jesse Goulet »

How did your Greek learning progress in school? At my Bible College we had Intro to Greek I and II and then Greek Exegesis which I guess you might consider as an intermediate class. We used Summer's Elements textbook (which I believe should have never been published since it is virtually unheard of and poorly done--a student in our class had to call the publisher to complain to them and many others in my class voiced their low opinion of it). In Greek I we did 1st and 2nd declension nouns and adjectives, present, future active & middle, and imperfect verbs, prepositions, personal and demonstrative pronouns. In Greek II we did aorist, future passive, perfect and pluperfect, subjunctive, and imperative verbs; participles, 3rd declension nouns, the rest of the pronouns, and some tidbits on articles and irregular adjectives/pronouns and conytract verbs and -mi verbs. Which I found to be quite the imbalance of introductory material.

In Greek Exegesis (under a new teacher) we reviewed the vocabulary in Summers' book and a few bits of basic grammar. We translated at least a half chapter of John's Gospel each week. We were expected to read Wallace's GGBB at a rate that none of us could handle so a couple people complained to the prof, who cut out some of the reading, which I still found too much so I only managed to skim through the parts labelled with a cross. And we also had to do an exegesis paper of a passage, including both a grammatical analysis and a historical background analysis, based on Fee's NT exegesis book.

I'm curious to know what your undergraduate and undergraduate education was like for Greek.
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: progression of the Greek course cycle in your school

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

I started with beginning Greek my first day of college. Our beginning text was the venerable Crosby & Schaeffer, which I use today as well to teach my intro class. After working through that, my intermediate Greek was Plato's Apologia. My first semester of advanced Greek was the Gospel of Mark. After that, having declared a Classics major, I took every advanced Greek course offered by my department. I then went on to take an M.A. in Classics at the Ohio State University, with a specialization in Hellenistic Greek. The recommended grammar for advanced works was, of course, Smyth, but it was never required for any Greek course. I never even looked at a grammar devoted specifically to NT Greek until I started teaching Greek at WTS, and then had to find out what they were all about.

At the American Academy, our students generally start Greek in 8th or 9th grade. Crosby and Schaeffer takes 1.5-2 years to complete. Our intermediate author is Xenophon, a little easier and more interesting to students than Plato (I did do Lucian's Verae Historiae with one class, but decided it would be a bit awkward for most students at that age level). After that, I'm not sure. My advanced student is currently doing a survey course, in which we've covered readings from the NT, Plato, Herodotus, and Homer (starting that in a few weeks). My tenth graders next year will be doing Xenophon and NT, but I have to figure out their 11th and 12th grade courses yet.
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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