using lexicons and learning Greek

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 30 1996 - 09:13:25 EST


Please forgive the patronizing tone of this. I have been tutoring a few
students in NT Greek recently and meditating much over the attitudes that
foster success in learning it and that inhibit success in learning it. For
what it's worth, I'd just like to offer the following thoughts, most of
which are probably obvious to many list readers.

Many on this list are accomplished scholars in the GNT, but many are also
in the process of learning the Greek of the NT, and in a deeper sense, I'd
say we are all in the process of learning the Greek of the NT. So I want to
offer some thoughts on means and ends in learning the Greek of the NT with
regard to texts and lexicons that I hope may be helpful, particularly when
one considers the number of hours that are spent puzzling through texts
that begrudge you their meanings and poring over lexicon entries that seem
to be pages long and (superficially) as meaningless as the sequence of
names in a telephone directory.

A student of the New Testament can readily come to hate an unabridged Greek
lexicon. She or he is endeavoring to learn Greek with the primary if not in
fact sole purpose of reading the GNT. In itself that is a reasonable and
laudable objective, but it has to be understood and actualized in a much
broader context for the obvious reason that the Greek language really
wasn't created for the purpose of writing the GNT (however much one wants
to praise (or blame) God for choosing to have the NT written in Greek). One
has to see that the NT is one complex of documents written in a language
used by people over a very broad geographical area for every purpose for
which one uses any language. Consequently, although one may aim ultimately
at reading of the NT with one's acquired facility in Koine Greek, one must
learn the language and make learning the language--for the time
being--one's primary objective. What this means is that any text--be it
from the NT, from the LXX, from an Apostolic Father, or from a papyrus
letter--any text that you undertake to read must be seen not as an end in
itself but as a means to learn some more Greek. So one isn't aiming at
working out an acceptable English equivalent of that text; rather you're
aiming at understanding the Greek of that text and increasing one's
knowledge of Greek through that text. The lexicon is one's friend, and the
fuller the lexicon entry on a noun, verb, or whatnot, the greater the
opportunity one has to expand his or her knowledge of Greek. If one views
it as a hindrance, as a mass of verbiage to scan in order to find the one
workable gloss that matches the phrasing of your text passage, then one
won't learn anything from it and is likely to miss most of what he or she
could have learned from consulting the lexicon on that word. One needs to
labor "lovingly" (I use the word deliberately) over the array of structured
meanings and relationships between meanings suggested in a lexicon entry
and one should seek to ascertain the logic and psychological probabilities
accounting for the ramifications of meanings from the primary to secondary
and tertiary levels. A word, after all, is not, however much similarity it
may have to a mathematical sign, is not a mathematical sign, but a page or
a chapter in the history of human experience, loaded with metaphorical
leaps and powerful emotional overtones and undertones. Words have
personalities that need to be learned, as best one can learn them, and just
as it is hard, perhaps impossible to know fully (EPIGNWNAI?) the spouse one
has lived with for decades, so it is impossible to acquire any sense of a
word whose lexicon entry one scans superficially in order to find a meaning
that "fits" the context of what one's reading.

May I suggest, therefore, that language learning be treated as an end in
itself while one is in the process of learning it. The passage that one is
reading and the lexicon that one consults are means to that end and should
be exploited toward that end. The translation of the passage is at best a
by-product of learning; much to be preferred is an understanding of how the
passage conveys its thoughts and feelings through the linguistic medium it
employs; it is to be viewed and grasped as an expression of a
Greek-thinking person and one should endeavor to make it a means to assist
one to become a Greek-thinking person onself. Ultimately this may be
helpful when one endeavors to read and interpret the inspired texts
transmitted to us by the Greek-thinking persons who put into writing our
New Testament.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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