Bible Story in Pictures in Koine

[Paul-Nitz]

How about a comic book of NT stories in Koine?

It may soon become a reality.

My friends at Multi-language Publications (WELS) have taken William F. Beck's "Bible Stories in Pictures" and inserted a number of different languages into the speech bubbles. All the text is straight from the Bible. I asked if it would be possible to produce a digital version with the GNT verses in the speech bubbles.

Our first test story is found here:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B63Qgn ... NUl4SDEzdw

For some of the speech bubbles, I had to put together Greek from three Gospels. Let me know if I made any mistakes.

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

I'm trying hard to not be too negative. Anything is better than nothing when people create new material for Koine learning. But as a comics fan I can't get rid of the depressed and disappointed feeling when I see that the great possibilities of the medium are not used at all. Taking a text and putting some random pictures there isn't worth the name "art of comics". I'm not talking about the artwork, but the interaction between pictures and text, and between pictures. I have a gut feeling that the medium has great potential for language aquisition, but here they aren't used at all. (Or should I say "can't be used", because the work of putting the Greek text there is of course limited by the original comics which wasn't made for SLA.)

BTW, D. Streett introduced a comic strip in his blog: http://danielstreett.wordpress.com/2011 ... mic-strip/. That one was better, IMHO.

If someone spends time making something like this - and I hope someone does, despite my criticism - I recommend learning the "languge" of comics first. This is a good book to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics.

If someone is willing to discuss about this further, I might be willing to participate, but I'm not sure if this the right forum.

[Jonathan Robie]

Fun topic - I wonder if the Asterix & Obelix people would like a NT Greek version, like their Latin version ...

[Paul-Nitz]

Eeli,

I appreciate your comments. You're right, of course. But in the meantime, this Bible story book would be relatively easy to produce and still useful. I can imagine a Greek student getting a bit more out of reading this illustrated book and having more fun doing it.

You gave a link to one of Mcloud's books. I have his book, "Making Comics" myself. Brilliant author! I have wished I had time to learn comic drawing just so that I could make some of the Greek learning materials I can envision doing in that medium. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

[jeffreyrequadt]

I think this is a great project. No matter how poor the comics are (and I don't think they're all that bad for their purpose; it's not like this is going to be marketed in Walmart) they're already a step up from plain text. Do more!

[Jonathan Robie]

I think this is a great project. No matter how poor the comics are (and I don't think they're all that bad for their purpose; it's not like this is going to be marketed in Walmart) they're already a step up from plain text. Do more!

Agreed.

And if I *do* see them in Walmart, I'm likely to buy them ;->

[Shirley Rollinson]

Fun topic - I wonder if the Asterix & Obelix people would like a NT Greek version, like their Latin version ...

I think they may already have a couple in koine.
I use one in modern Greek with my NT Greek class - mainly to show Greek Question Marks and to decipher the meaning of some of the phrases.
It's published by MAMOYΘ COMIX, ΣOΛΩNOΣ 130, 10681 AΘHNA
It is of course very colloquial, but also uses brief phrases and is amusing.

Some of the Peanuts strips have also been published in Hebrew - they might be another possibility for doing in koine.