From: Jonathan Robie (74144.2360@compuserve.com)
Date: Mon Jul 29 1996 - 12:05:18 EDT
David Moore wrote:
> Jonathan Robie wrote:
> > I have taken a morphological database of the New Testament text and formatted
> > it so that I can read the original text in the first column, the morphological
> > analysis in the middle column, and the root word in the third column.
> >
> > I have learned Greek by reading this together with a lexicon and several
> > grammars. I have this a very effective way to learn.
> That sounds like a good way to make use of
> free-for-the-downloading computer-readable texts. Have you found it
> easy to switch over to reading Greek text that is not morphologically
> marked?
Yes, I have, but I always end by reading the text out loud without the
morphological aids, and I think this is important. The complete process
I follow looks like this:
1. Skim the passage in the Greek New Testament from UBS.
2. Convert Greek text to 4 columns. First column is original Greek word,
second is morphological analysis, third is root word, fourth is for the
English translation.
3. (If in pedantic mode) Translate each word into English, using the
inflected meaning in context. Look up unfamiliar words in BAGD. Look up
grammatical forms in various grammars. Write the English rendering in the
4th column.
4. Do a phrase-by-phrase translation, which differs significantly from the
word-for-word renderings. In general, my phrase-by-phrase renderings are
much less literal than the word-for-word renderings.
5. Compare translation to several modern translations, check for errors,
look at differences among translations, try to account for the way each
translation renders the text
6. Read the passage out loud in the Greek New Testament from UBS
This has been helpful for me. Instead of being a crutch, it has helped me
to really understand what I read, and made it much easier to read new texts
without using this process. IMHO, the more you read any language with real
understanding, the more you are able to read new texts that you encounter.
But this is based on 1 1/2 years, 30 minutes to 1 hour a day. I am not a
Greek scholar by any means.
Jonathan
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