Classes

1. Required Texts

Moises Silva. Biblical Words and Their Meaning

WHD Rouse Greek Boy (online) www.biblicalgreek.org/classes/images/GreekBoy1-10.pdf

John Schwandt Schwandt’s Arnold (online) www.biblicalgreek.org/classes/images/SchwandtsArnold.pdf

J. Gresham Machen, New Testament Greek for Beginners (2nd Ed.) ISBN 013184234X

Goodrick, A Reader's Greek New Testament, ISBN 0310248884

Warren Trenchard, A Concise Dictionary of New Testament Greek, ISBN 0521521114

Peckett, & Munday, Thrasymachus: Greek Through Reading, ISBN 0862921392

2. Recommended Texts

Online References

S.C. Woodhouse. English-Greek Dictionary

Perseus Parsing Tool

Herber W. Smyth. Greek Grammar. (Available Online: http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/classical.php#helps)

William Goodwin.  Greek Grammar. (Available Online)

3. Course Requirements

I. Participation (5%)

By its very nature language is a skill that involves participation. Not only are students expected to attend every class and recitation, (Unexcused absences will always negatively effect final grades and students are responsible for all missed class notes and materials.) but students should come to class on time, with readings and homework completed, prepared to participate fully, and remain for the entire class time unless prior approval is granted. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussion with appropriate Christian humility, charity, and respect. Students who do not contribute to class and recitation discussions should not expect to earn more than a CH in this area.

II. Summer Project (5%)

The summer project consisting of a notebook showing all verb forms that students have covered up this point used in composition.

III. Translations and Reading Assignments (10%)

Students will be graded on their ability to stay current with translations and compositions. Students will be graded upon their ability to translate at the pace of the course. The instructor will take note from time to time which students are current and which are not.

IV. Composition Assignments and Quizzes (15%)

Students will be graded on their completion of a few homework assignments and their performance on pop quizzes.

V. Mid Term Examination (30%)

This exam will mainly cover the material in the assignments. There may also be some sight-reading, as well as an essay question pertaining to the reading.

VI. National Biblical Greek Exam (10%)

Since we will be finishing basic Greek grammar this term, it is the perfect time to try the National Biblical Greek Exam. The exam is multiple-choice and may be taken multiple times. Students must present their results to the instructor by the last recitation. This exam is intended to give students a reason to review material from previous terms and should give students a clear idea of how much of the language they understand.

VII. Written Final Exam (30%)

There will be a written examination, which will entail some double translation from I John, discussion of this terms grammar and some translation and some unseen translations.

STUDY EXPECTATIONS AND TIPS

The importance of daily review cannot be over emphasized. Some students find it difficult to set aside but an hour per day, even though their language is a substantial part of their course load. Constant review is the most important part of language study and the only way to become fluent. Six hours spread across six days is much more profitable than all of it done in one sitting. Students need to make Greek study and conversation part of their daily life. Even on the most hectic days students should not find it difficult to set aside one-half hour for Greek. Of course this time is not sufficient to effectively learn any foreign language. The average student will have to spend eight hours every week in regular Greek study and allow additional time to prepare for exams.

In addition to consistent study there are a number of ways to increase the productivity and quality of your study time. It should be obvious that it is a good idea to read the new material and review past paradigms for at least 30 minutes before getting started on translation homework. This brings all of the important paradigms and vocabulary to mind and will help you translate more quickly. Perhaps the easiest, most rewarding, and most unnatural is to simply take 5-10 minutes immediately after finishing your translations and translate it all again using your written translations as a help when you get stuck (even if you have divided your homework into smaller portions and this is the first portion.) Not only will you discover mistakes in your initial work, but this will help you better recall the lessons you learned in the exercises. I know that reviewing your homework is the last thing on your mind when you have just completed your initial translation, but remember, homework exercises are not merely hoops to jump though or tasks to be checked off. Your job is to learn the material. The best way to do this is to review your work. This method applies to many areas of life, even your research papers.

The next thing you can do to improve your understanding of each lesson is to budget time and review your homework once more at least 6 hours after your initial translation. This is what I expect when I assign homework. The minimum is three translations, of course more is acceptable.

4. Schedule

5. Colloquium Overview

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES AND MEANS FOR THE SIX TERM COLLOQUIUM

Not only do the greatest and most foundational classics come to us through the Greek language, it is the language of the fullest revelation in our Holy Scriptures. Therefore it is a sine qua non of Christian Education. New Saint Andrews College requires a six term colloquium of Historical Greek and offers additional courses in Greek for students to continue onto higher levels of proficiency and acquaintance with more classic works than are contained within the colloquium.

The primary objective for the colloquium is to bring students to a basic reading level for the New Testament in the original language and to ground them so well in the basics that their skills will continue in their life after graduation. The colloquium will provide students with an enduring confidence in their ability to translate New Testament books by guiding students through the translation of a minor epistle (I John), an entire gospel, and a Pauline epistle. Students will engage exegetical issues and hermeneutics as they translate these works. Students will memorize portions of these works in Greek and learn the structure of each work well enough to identify the chapter reference of any passage in the work. In additional to New Testament material students will translate, compose, and converse in material from classical Greek. This broader exposure to the language will help students ground their understanding in broader historical trends in the language, ensure that they are learning the language rather than merely relying on scripture memory, and open up the language of the greatest classics.

In order to bring students to a basic reading level, students will memorize all of the vocabulary that occurs 30 times or more in the New Testament. Additionally, students will memorize vocabulary that occurs in their thorough translations as well as common classical Greek vocabulary. Students will also memorize the principal parts to common Greek verbs and gain an understanding of how to take educated guesses for unfamiliar forms.

The recent trend in higher education is to reduce the language requirements to allow time for other supposedly more practical courses. The result of these reduced requirements is that Greek courses have been stripped down to bare bones translation lessons or merely how to use language tools to gain an understanding of original vocabulary and grammar. Traditional education that included composition and sometime conversations with a goal toward fluency have been cast aside by the argument that today’s Christian scholars don’t have to be fluent but merely have to decipher to the original meaning of the text. Composition and conversational skills would then overshoot this goal and be a waste of time. New Saint Andrews college disagrees with this argument and maintains with modern language theory and thousands of years of language teaching practice that active language skills such as composition and conversation are necessary to truly learn a language even if only to read it. If one can’t compose the language himself, he has no way of being surprised by a particular author’s choice of words or gaining a feel for the various styles of different authors and genres. New Saint Andrews stands against this reductionistic trend that has so devastated Christian education and the church over the last century. It has consciously committed itself to a position dedicated to preserving a central place for classical languages in the college (a total of four years are required of which 1 ½ - 2 ½ years are historical Greek) and continually strives for the inclusion of more active language methods in the classroom.

For these reasons students in basic courses that emphasize grammar acquisition learn to compose and converse using the grammar with a limited vocabulary. Once the grammatical foundation has been laid and the courses focus more on vocabulary and reading while reviewing the basics. In the final terms of the colloquium students focus on exegesis, hermeneutics, and the structure of the text they are reading in the original. At this level double translations serve as the composition tool to help give students a feel for the author’s style.