Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Greek Class

The Biblical Greek class I've been taking since last fall is over. I'm not planning on taking the second year this fall, unless I find myself with a glut of time or God hits me over the head with a two-by-four and says "Hey, you, learn more Greek!" He might, or Elizabeth might "encourage" me to take it. Hopefully neither of those will happen in isolation. And probably not this year. Our daughter is due on July 2nd (which means she could be born at any time now), and I anticipate that having a child will keep me busy enough. It's amazing to me how much of the New Testament I can readily understand (particularly John's writings, but not exclusively). We didn't spend much time in class and the assignments with actual passages from the Bible until the last few weeks, but because of our preparation, we were able to jump in with both feet. I have a workbook with passages to translate and exercises designed to keep students honed over the summer, and I have a Greek New Testament that I can take out and thump around, looking all spiritual-like. The one I have has a lexicon in the back, so I'm considering getting one with the words used 25 times or fewer footnoted on the page. Zondervan has an attractive-looking leather bound version, but it's the NIV Greek text, and apparently they pieced together their own special compilation of the GNT that matches what the NIV says. Some of the reviews basically say, "It's great for students who don't know any better and just want to read Greek. It doesn't matter that the text disagrees with the accepted standard 285 times.", which sounds pretty pathetic if you ask me. So that leaves the UBS Reader's Edition, which is nice, has a good format, and uses the standard text (and comes highly recommended by my professor), I just wish they put it out in leather, not just hardcover and paperback. Also, I wish it didn't cost almost twice as much as the competition. Apparently, they know they can charge more. Yay for capitalism. Anyway, it will be nice not to have to flex my work hours so much to go to class twice a week.

2 comments:

  1. I'm so proud of you, honey! Your enthusiasm for the Scriptures is one of the many things that help me to keep falling in love with you. :)

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  2. Yet another reason to not bother adding NIV to my personal Bible collection... ;)

    Congratulations on no longer being able to say "It's all Greek to me" to express an inability to comprehend something!

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