cwconrad wrote:
I will not let pass an opportunity to bad-mouth Machen's Greek primer for the ad-nauseamth time in this forum. I would ask: Why revise it at all, rather than start over? When I first encountered it half a century ago as a textbook for tutoring a student in Koine, it seemed pretty clear early on that it was conceived with a notion that Greek is an odd-sounding way to speak and write English; constructions were poorly explained; exercises seemed designed to promote equivalent expressions in KJV English and Koine Greek -- as if the only English into which Koine Greek could be converted was the English of the early 17th century. While I'll agree that was a beautiful English, it's not what I would encourage students to speak or write four centuries later. A.T. Robertson's big book published in that same era has a far better right to continued publication after a century than does J. Gresham Machen's little book.
I was at WTS when McCartney was revising the text. He was originally going to incorporate some of my handouts I had developed for my classes, but eventually decided not to do so. He had an opportunity to do a complete rewrite, but just dropped the ball and and basically gave the world leftovers with a little seasoning added to disguise the taste, which in fact it didn't. More than one instructor and a number of Greek students gave suggestions which would have been helpful to incorporate, but few of them were followed. It was very disappointing.