τοῦτο φιλῶ!Adam Denoon wrote: ↑November 12th, 2019, 4:04 pm Thank you all for your deep responses! This is the kind of can of worms I enjoy to smush around on the table as I pick it apart (how's that for evoking imagery in a shared cognitive framework )
Excuse me? Not a dead language, an immortal one. We are still studying it, and we will know it even better in eternity...The flip side to this is that I believe God chose writings as a vehicle for His self-revelation for a purpose: they can be read and examined, even if they are in a dead language.
Wrong! You are absolutely the first one ever to have this problem... except for a couple million or so who have preceded you, including ἐγὼ αὐτός.Part of why I find it so hard to read straight through a book in Greek is that I can become fixated when I find something I've never seen before. For instance, I barely made it into Matthew when I came across "μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός", and the author's chosen word order, combined with the theological/historical significance of the child, struck me and I couldn't move past it that night. Ὁ θεός has been there all along, but with this child, He's now "With us, God". I'm probably not articulating this accurately, but it provides a small but succinct example of my interest in currently-understood Greek nuances (e.g. word order often used for emphasis), and how it adds something special to the reading of His Word, of which I possess a high view. I don't think I'd enjoy it nearly as much if I read it quickly without as much comprehension Of course, I pick back up where I leave off and keep going till I get stuck on the next thing. I'm also vaguely aware that a tendency to fixate could indicate some sort of cognitive issue
And seriously, don't give up chasing those rabbits (they can lead you to very interesting and profitable places), but discipline yourself so that you really get through your "rapid reading." The long term benefits are inestimable.I'm in total agreement with reading extrabiblical, contemporary literature because the authors didn't invent a liturgical language... they wrote to people who read and spoke a common and secular language shared with the other authors (still nodding to special Semitisms and community-specific language features, of course). Reading such is a major help to comprehension of the New Testament, and if that's truly someone's goal, they'll read the other stuff too!
We have zealous living language advocates as members here who can give their ἀπολογία. I personally have found mixing in some conversational "living language" elements helpful both for me and for my students (though I am currently doing so for Latin, since I don't at present teach Greek). It helps us to remember that this really was a language for communication and not just a literary language or a frozen archetype of some sort. To that end I've found the Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana quite helpful. While the manuscripts are somewhat later than the NT (late third early fourth century) I don't know how many parallels I've seen to the NT in the Greek columns. Since they were largely designed to teach Greek speakers Latin, they tend to use real examples from real life situations, some of them quite hilarious (my students love the sections on insults and how to get money back from a deadbeat):I might be rustling some jimmies with this question: but how much value is added to New Testament interpretation by reviving Koine and turning it into an anachronistic living language usable only by the rare folk who care to learn it? I don't think my students would be interested in using Koine as a spoken language. Their motivation for taking my class has been expressed as gaining a clearer understanding of the underlying text so they can apply it and communicate its precepts more clearly to those who endure their sermons and theology papers. How valuable would living language precepts be to them? (I'm not being snarky, I promise; This is a real question.)
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Hermeneumata ... nb_sb_noss