Welcome to My Laboratory!

I have no pretensions to expertise as a teacher of ancient Greek. I don't have an advanced degree in it. I took two years of Greek as an undergrad and did pretty well at it, even winning a prize for my work at one point. My main concentration at the seminary was in exegetical theology, where again I won an award for doing some of the top exegetical work in my class.I love Hebrew as well, but have used my Greek a great deal more. Throughout my ministry I have made a general habit of translating whatever text I am preaching on from the original language; and since I generally preach on the Gospel lesson, if at all possible, I have been more motivated to stay on top of my Greek.

Nevertheless, I am worried about it slipping away. I haven't been serving in the parish these last few years. Last year I preached maybe 18 times. So my Reason #1 for starting this blog is to polish some of the rust off my own Greek.Right up beside it, say #1.5, is a question that has interested me for some time: Could biblical Greek be learned by an inductive method, working from the text to infer vocabulary and grammatical usage, rather than working from a grammar to prepare to study the text? I think this might be more like the way most people learn the languages they know and use best. And I think it might make things more interesting for the student, who needn't plod through endless skill-building exercises before jumping into the game itself. "Learning by doing," you might call it.

So, if you're reading this blog, let me know what you think. May your comments help me to refine this "method-in-process" for learning NTX (New Testament Exegesis) by induction!Now, if you don't already know the Greek alphabet, you'd better learn these tables of Greek letters and symbols before you go any further. It's up to you to get them down by heart. Recite their names, know what sounds they make, learn to recognize them by sight, and practice writing them--whatever it takes!