Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek

cwconrad
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by cwconrad »

Jeremy Adams wrote:I am curious as to how people feel this compares to the Mounce/Wallace combo. I am always looking for supplemental material in addition to my class texts and I am wondering if this is worth working through on my own if I am going to be doing the aforementioned combo in seminary.
You're probably going to get divergent perspectives on this question, but you need to realize that BDF is aimed at users who have a familiarity with classical Attic, while the Mounce/Wallace combo seems aimed at (and, I'd guess, used primarily by) those whose grasp of Greek is pretty much restricted to Biblical Koine.

I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that there are two common perspectives on Biblical Koine: some hold that this is a Greek that should properly be understood synchronically without taking seriously earlier and later phases of the language; others hold that Biblical Koine is a language in flux -- that there is sufficient inconsistency in Biblical Koine that one should have some sense of earlier and later stages of development.

Postscript (several hours later): I won't delete this, but I should note that I goofed altogether in the above response, thinking the question was about Blass/Debrunner/Funk, Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature when it's really a question about Funk's BIGHG. I'll respond separately to this in a new response.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Jeremy Adams
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Jeremy Adams »

cwconrad wrote: You're probably going to get divergent perspectives on this question, but you need to realize that BDF is aimed at users who have a familiarity with classical Attic, while the Mounce/Wallace combo seems aimed at (and, I'd guess, used primarily by) those whose grasp of Greek is pretty much restricted to Biblical Koine.

I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that there are two common perspectives on Biblical Koine: some hold that this is a Greek that should properly be understood synchronically without taking seriously earlier and later phases of the language; others hold that Biblical Koine is a language in flux -- that there is sufficient inconsistency in Biblical Koine that one should have some sense of earlier and later stages of development.
Hmmm interesting. I may hold off on looking at it until I can do some Attic study then. I am most interested in reading the NT and early Christian writings, but it seems to me that broadening the scope of my Greek study will help me in the long run. I would like to obtain a high level of reading fluency so I am hoping to eventually be able to read more unfamiliar texts to that end. While I am making progress with Mounce one thing I don't appreciate is how he leaves out verb forms and such that don't appear in the NT. What if I want to read the Septuagint?
cwconrad
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by cwconrad »

Jeremy Adams wrote:I am curious as to how people feel this compares to the Mounce/Wallace combo. I am always looking for supplemental material in addition to my class texts and I am wondering if this is worth working through on my own if I am going to be doing the aforementioned combo in seminary.
My earlier response was in terms of BDF (Blass/Debrunner/Funk), the standard reference grammar for NT Greek in English.

On the other hand, I have had nothing but praise for Funk's Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek. Some might say that it's linguistic approach is outdated, but I personally think it's much more useful than the Mounce/Wallace combo. I played my own role in the move to put this work online through the efforts of B-Greekers (It's still there: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/f ... pre-alpha/) and also in the effort to bring this work back into publication in the new Polebridge Press edition. If I were to step back into active teaching of Biblical Greek, I'd be hard put to choose between this textbook and Rod Decker's forthcoming new Reading Koine Greek.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Jeremy Adams wrote:I am curious as to how people feel this compares to the Mounce/Wallace combo. I am always looking for supplemental material in addition to my class texts and I am wondering if this is worth working through on my own if I am going to be doing the aforementioned combo in seminary.
Using Funk along with Mounce/Wallace might create some confusion. Funk has a nasty habbit of employing obsucre terminology. His lingistic framwork is pre-chomsky. Wallace also uses obsucre terminology but it will be lingo inteliagable to the professor who assigned the textbook. If your objective is to pass the course with the least hassle then I would stick with the assigned textbooks and then unlearn everything later on.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
cwconrad
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by cwconrad »

Stirling Bartholomew wrote:
Jeremy Adams wrote:I am curious as to how people feel this compares to the Mounce/Wallace combo. I am always looking for supplemental material in addition to my class texts and I am wondering if this is worth working through on my own if I am going to be doing the aforementioned combo in seminary.
Using Funk along with Mounce/Wallace might create some confusion. Funk has a nasty habbit of employing obsucre terminology. His lingistic framwork is pre-chomsky. Wallace also uses obsucre terminology but it will be lingo inteliagable to the professor who assigned the textbook. If your objective is to pass the course with the least hassle then I would stick with the assigned textbooks and then unlearn everything later on.
I love that comment, and it reminds me of the long-ago-and-far-away description that you offered of your more provocative posts to a thread: driving into a crowded city square, hurling a Molotov cocktail, than driving speedily away.

I guess I've been around long enough to unlearn quite a bit of what I have learned over the years since I started learning Greek in 1952, but I was lucky enough to have a splendid teacher at the outset (Joe Billy McMinn of blessed memory), who taught my first class in Biblical Koine with a wretched primer based on Mark's gospel (it's still in print!: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Greek-B ... 1414759997). He pointed out the flaws in the textbook as we went along, using it most for the paradigms of inflected words. I have to say that most of the primers for Biblical Koine I've used have been weak, bad, or worse: Machen, Mounce. When I first encountered Funk's BIGHG in the late 1970's, I wondered why its binding was so poor that it would't hold up for a semester; I thought it was the first to present Koine Greek grammar in an intelligible and well-ordered sequence. The linguistic terminology may be "obscure" but I didn't know enough about academic linguistics to discern weirdness in it -- the terminology and descriptions of usage seemed to me more intelligible than anything I'd seen in other Koine primers. What I found most gratifying about it was its concentration from the outset on structural patterns -- from the introductory chapter itself on "How we understand sentences" (http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/f ... tro-1.html. I didn't know anything about Linguistics then (and haven't learned all that much about it since then), but I found this sequence of instruction to be a presentation of how Biblical Greek works that made more sense than anything that I'd ever seen before -- almost like Keats' experience of reading Chapman's translation of Homer.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Jeremy Adams
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Jeremy Adams »

cwconrad wrote: My earlier response was in terms of BDF (Blass/Debrunner/Funk), the standard reference grammar for NT Greek in English.

On the other hand, I have had nothing but praise for Funk's Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek. Some might say that it's linguistic approach is outdated, but I personally think it's much more useful than the Mounce/Wallace combo. I played my own role in the move to put this work online through the efforts of B-Greekers (It's still there: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/f ... pre-alpha/) and also in the effort to bring this work back into publication in the new Polebridge Press edition. If I were to step back into active teaching of Biblical Greek, I'd be hard put to choose between this textbook and Rod Decker's forthcoming new Reading Koine Greek.
Hmm interesting. I will have to browse the on-line edition some. Currently I am using Mounce but also working at different times through Croy, Dobson, and Dr. Shirley's books and that has been helpful. The non-Mounce books give a lot more reading practice which I like and Croy is sometimes clearer, though less detailed. I compared several Greek graded readers at the library and thought Decker's looked much better than Mounce's or JACT's so I am planning to use that after I finish my first year. I looked at Decker's grammar a little on Amazon and it looks good. It seems to integrate a lot of reading and the way he gives vocabulary with a paragraph giving the gist of a word along with several possible glosses is interesting. I see you have a blurb on the back of Decker's grammar so I wonder, if it is not a bother, if you (or anyone else who is familiar) would mind discussing some of the relative strengths of his book alongside of Funk's BIGHG. I am considering purchasing one or the other.
Stirling Bartholomew wrote: Using Funk along with Mounce/Wallace might create some confusion. Funk has a nasty habbit of employing obsucre terminology. His lingistic framwork is pre-chomsky. Wallace also uses obsucre terminology but it will be lingo inteliagable to the professor who assigned the textbook. If your objective is to pass the course with the least hassle then I would stick with the assigned textbooks and then unlearn everything later on.
Hm? That seems a bit drastic! I think I would rather not unlearn the different forms of the article and what not. What is it that you mean exactly? My objectives are to certainly pass the class, but to also learn Greek very thoroughly while shoring up any weaknesses that might be imparted by only using one text to learn from.

Thank you both for replying. Lots to consider!
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Jeremy Adams wrote: Hm? That seems a bit drastic! I think I would rather not unlearn the different forms of the article and what not. What is it that you mean exactly? My objectives are to certainly pass the class, but to also learn Greek very thoroughly while shoring up any weaknesses that might be imparted by only using one text to learn from.
No, they are not talking about "unlearning" paradigms or basic grammar and syntax (the kinds of things you need to know actually to start using the language). They are talking more about the theoretical understanding of the language, which certainly can influence our understanding and use of the language at the meta- level, but for the most part has little relevance to the learner who is in the process of acquisition.
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.
Paul-Nitz
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Paul-Nitz »

I've read parts of Funk before. I just got the new reprint of the book in the mail and have been looking at more carefully the past few days. This book appeals to the way I learn far, far better than the Mounce/Wallace combo.

A very big THANK YOU to the B-Greekers who worked on the reprint. It is well worth the money.

We often talk about how the golden age of books on Greek have passed. Probably true, but three books very high (maybe top three) on my list have all been written recently.

Buth's Morphology
Funk's Hellenistic
Coderch's Classical Greek
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
Gerald Polmateer
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Gerald Polmateer »

I downloaded the workbook and it seems that page 129 is missing. Anyone know where I could download page 129?
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Funk - A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic G

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Gerald Polmateer wrote:I downloaded the workbook and it seems that page 129 is missing. Anyone know where I could download page 129?
You can probably get it from the resources page for the grammar, which also includes some useful appendices.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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