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    Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People
    Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People
    Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People
    Ebook118 pages

    Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People

    By Constantine R. Campbell

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    About this ebook

    Ten techniques for keeping your knowledge of Greek fresh long after college.

    Seminarians spend countless hours mastering biblical languages and learning how the knowledge of them illuminates the reading, understanding, and application of Scripture. But while excellent language acquisition resources abound, few really teach students how to maintain their use of Greek for the long term. Consequently, many pastors and other former Greek students find that under the pressures of work, ministry, preaching, and life, their hard-earned Greek skills begin to disappear.

    Constantine Campbell has been counseling one-time Greek students for years, teaching them how to keep their language facility for the benefit of their ministry. In Keep Your Greek, he shows how following the right principles makes it possible for many to retain--and in some cases regain--their Greek language skills.

    In Keep Your Greek, you will acquire strategies such as,

    • How to wisely use Bible software tools so that you don't become dependent on them.
    • How different methods of reading practices can assist your memory and keep you from becoming discouraged.
    • How to make time to keep up on your language skills for the sake of your busy ministry.

    Pastors will find Keep Your Greek an encouraging and practical guide to strengthening their Greek abilities. Current students will learn how to build skills that will serve them well once they complete their formal language instruction.

    Loosing a skill or knowledge set is always discouraging, but with a little guidance, you can dust off your Greek and continue making linguistic insights a regular part of your study and teaching.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateDec 21, 2010
    ISBN9780310591771
    Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People
    Author

    Constantine R. Campbell

    Constantine R. Campbell (PhD, Macquarie University) is a New Testament scholar, author, musician, and documentary host, and lives in Canberra, Australia. He was formerly professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and is the author of several books, including Paul and Union with Christ, Advances in the Study of Greek, Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek, Keep Your Greek, Outreach and the Artist, and 1, 2 & 3 John in The Story of God Bible Commentary series.

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    • 5/5
      Sure, I spent many semesters and countless hours learning and studying Koine Greek while in college and seminary. But what have I done with it since then? Truth be told, the thing I've done the most is to let my skills atrophy. Lately I have been wanting to regain those skills, but I wasn't sure of the best way to go about it. With extremely limited time at my disposal and many responsibilities to manage, I could use some advice. Luckily, I managed to get a copy of Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People. (Thank you, Zondervan!) Author Con Campbell provides a number of quick and easy ways to keep up on and even get better at Greek* in only a few minutes each day. I appreciated that he specifically states in the introduction that this is not a formulaic, "10-step" program, nor is it a magic bullet, but rather a list of habits and/or exercises that he has found helpful over the years. Ultimately, this is a pragmatic book: It's about getting back into the Greek NT by taking one, two or three of the ideas Campbell espouses and incorporating them into your daily routine--or even springboarding off of his ideas and creating your own.This book is an easy and quick read, full of good ideas and resources for Greek. As this book was originally a series of blog posts, Campbell includes the comments he received at the end of each chapter, which (surprisingly to me) added a fresh, new element of interacting with the material. As a bonus, he also takes a look at pros and cons of interlinears, software tools, and other resources commonly used by students. I share his dislike for interlinears and so did not learn much new here, but I did appreciate his comments about software tools, since that is one area I have never investigated using in my own study. Finally, I appreciated the last chapter, wherein Campbell articulates how he uses the techniques mentioned previously in his own personal study. It lends much credence to the author to know that and how he uses his own advice. The only thing I disliked about the book is that some of the tips and tricks mentioned, to my mind, seem like they would take a bit longer than advertised, at least initially.Overall, this book came just at the right time for me, as one who is seeking to regain his Greek (and Hebrew) skills. Now comes the hard part: Putting it into practice. But I don't think Dr. Campbell or anyone else can help me with that!*And, of course, the ideas presented apply equally to biblical Hebrew, as well.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Keep Your Greek - Constantine R. Campbell

    Introduction

    GREEK MAKES A DIFFERENCE

    Struggling to Keep Your Greek?

    I teach Greek at Moore College in Sydney, Australia. One of the most common questions I am asked by current and former students is: What are your tips for keeping my Greek going after college? Most of our students go into ministry after studying at Moore, though not all do. Whatever they end up doing, however, they know that they will have a lot less time to work on their Greek once they leave. How realistic will it be to maintain the knowledge they’ve acquired? Will they be able to keep up their Greek skills? Won’t ministry be so busy, with so many other things that need doing, that Greek will get squeezed out?

    I’ve chatted with many people already in ministry—some only for a year or two, and others a decade or two — who have shared how difficult it has been to keep their Greek. It seems that the fears of my students have been realized by many of the men and women who are already out there. Some guys have completely lost their Greek. Others are clinging on to it, but they have lost a lot of the details. Some others have managed to maintain their skills, but it’s been hard work and a constant struggle. Only a few seem to have actually advanced their ability with Greek and taken their skills and knowledge to new levels.

    Well, that all sounds pretty depressing, doesn’t it?

    As a teacher of Greek, it’s natural for me to think about this problem. Of first importance, I want my students to keep their Greek skills over the long term, for the sake of their understanding of the New Testament and for their ability to teach the New Testament to others. It’s a ministry thing. Of secondary importance (a distant second), I don’t want my teaching to be a waste of time and effort! I have to admit it’s been pretty demoralizing to hear that some former students have given up on Greek.

    A few years ago, I started sharing some tips in my classes about how to keep up with Greek over the long term. I figured that my students could put some simple habits and attitudes into practice now that would serve them long after they left college. That seemed to be a helpful step. Next, I began a series called Keep your Greek on my blog (http://readbetterpreachbetter.com). There were nine posts in the series, with one tip per post. I was surprised by how much interest and feedback there was, gauged by the responses to the blog posts, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. There are plenty of people out there who are struggling to keep their Greek, and many are looking for help.

    Those blog posts have since become the outline for this book, and I’ve turned the original nine blog posts into the first nine chapters (I’ve added new material too, in case you’re wondering). I’ve also included the comments and questions that the original blog posts generated because I think it’s helpful to hear the reactions of others to some of my ideas and suggestions. I don’t necessarily agree with everything my blog readers have said, but their comments may be of help to you (and some of them are good for a laugh!). I also think that this is a topic best discussed in community, and the comments help to reflect that vibe.

    Why Keep Your Greek?

    Most people reading this will not need to be persuaded of the value of keeping their Greek. The whole reason they’re reading this now is to find some help to do just that. But others may not be convinced just yet, so it’s worth outlining why keeping your Greek is worth the time and effort.

    If you’re a teacher of God’s Word, the main reason to keep your Greek is the same reason that led you to study it in the first place. Greek gives us certain insights into the text of the New Testament that are impossible to achieve any other way. This goes well beyond looking up particular words in the original, even though that is useful. It includes understanding the syntax and structure of sentences, so that we can discern what the author is drawing attention to and how all the parts relate to each other. It includes understanding the nuances of case, mood, tense, and voice, so that we can appreciate what the Greek means even if its full meaning cannot be translated into English. It gives us access to exegetical and theological debates, so that we can think for ourselves about the text, rather than rely solely on commentaries. It gives us access to the world of the text, so that we can be immersed in what was actually written two thousand years ago, pure and unadulterated.

    Keep your Greek for your own understanding of God’s Word.

    These great insights into the New Testament are not just for our own gain, of course. Most of us want to access the Greek New Testament for the sake of others, that we might teach God’s Word truly, with depth of insight and with a richness of understanding. I’m not saying that you can’t teach the Bible without knowing Greek. Fortunately, its story is so clear as it unfolds from Genesis to Revelation that it can be understood by a five-year-old.

    But while the story is simple, it is also deep. There is always more to learn, to discover, and to enrich our understanding of who God is and what he is doing in the world. We study the Bible in depth in order to teach its story in all its richness. Greek is one tool of many that give us access to the richness of the Bible. Without it, our teaching may be sound, but it may also lack depth. In other words:

    Keep your Greek for the sake of others.

    I’ve never met a Bible teacher who wished they had not learned Greek. It’s only the guys who have let it slip and no longer use it for their sermon preparation who try to tell me that Greek doesn’t enhance their teaching. There’s something wrong with that picture, isn’t there? Of course it won’t enhance your teaching if you don’t use it! And if you don’t use Greek, how can you really know whether it would enhance your teaching or not? It’s only the people who do use Greek that can judge whether or not it enhances their teaching.

    My own experience is that Greek always enhances my teaching of the Bible in some way. It may not always make a dramatic difference to my understanding of the text, though it sometimes does. But it always gives me a deeper appreciation of the text and insight into its nuances. This is the testimony of all those who have talked to me about their experiences of teaching the New Testament with a knowledge of Greek. It makes a difference.

    Sometimes students ask me whether or not it is good to talk about Greek in their sermons. I usually caution against talking about it unnecessarily,

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