Classes

1. Required Texts

Moises Silva, Interpreting Galatians, Baker Academic, 2001

Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, Zondervan, 1996, (cited below as Wallace)

A Greek New Testament

Steven Baugh, An Introduction to Greek Verbal Aspect in the Non-Indicative Moods, Not published but on reserve in the Library (with permission from the author).

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)

Books

Max Zerwick, Analysis of the Greek New Testament, Unabridged, Loyola Press

Richard Longenecker, Galatians, Word Biblical Commentary, Thomas Nelson A Grammatical

F.F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, Eerdmans

William Hendriksen, Galations, Ehpesians, Phlippians, Colossians, Philemon, Baker Book House

James Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians, Hendrickson, 1993

JDG Dunn, The Theology of Paul's Letter to the Galatians (Cambridge, 1993): fairly brief (less than 150 pages); addresses the main theological questions of the letter (esp focusing on the role of Abraham and the law), but not a verse-by-verse commentary

J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (Anchor Bible; Doubleday, 1997): nearly 600 pages, and uneven as far as its reliability; but a rather stimulating commentary; as an example of both the questionable reliability and the stimulation, Martyn consistently translates DIKAIOO as "rectify" in the sense of "making things right"

3. Course Requirements

I. Class Attendance and Participation (10%)

1. Students are required to attend every class. Unexcused absences will always negatively affect final grades. Students are responsible for all missed class notes and materials.
   
2. 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. Repeated tardiness, non-participation, inappropriate conduct, or disruptions to class will negatively affect this part of the grade.
   
3. Students are required to participate actively in class discussion with appropriate Christian humility, charity, and respect. There will be a number of assigned reading and research for informed recitation discussions. Students who are not prepared for these discussions will be graded down.
   

II. Silva Recitation Presentation (15%)

1. Although every student will be required to prepare for every recitation, a particular student will make a brief presentation and lead the discussion each week.
   
2. Each student will present a brief (15 minute) critical summary of an assigned reading of Silva's text for recitation.
   
3. The presentation to evoke questions and the student should have thought about the issue sufficiently to engage each question in with relevant discussion.
   

III. Reading Assignments (10%)

1. Students will be graded upon their completion of required readings and translations by specific dates as recorded on the reading checkoff sheet.
   

IV. Reading Notes (25%)

1. Students must submit detailed reading notes when each translation is due.
   

Minimum content for notes:

1. The Greek text (each chapter may be downloaded from the forum or from other Bible sites)
   
2. An English translation which that can really be called yours (no group work or primary assistance from other translations). The translation must reflect comments contained within the student’s grammatical notes.
   
3. Grammatical notes must fully parse and identify (construction and/or use) of at least ten non indicatives. These notes should be keyed primarily to the Greek text (rather than the English translation) through some means (e.g. footnotes, highlighting). These notes must also analyze the verbal aspect of the non indicative.
   
4. Students must also parse and identify the use of at least five genitives in for each reading note submission. Students should refer to Wallace’s text and scripture index for assistance in this area.
   
5. In addition to the grammatical notes, students should also include several points of exegetical interest. These notes are especially impressive if they refer to concepts covered in Silva’s text or interact with other commentaries.
   

V. Major Term Exam (25%)

1. The major term exam will be given to evaluate students’ study and skill without access to resources.
   
2. It will be translation exam that will also ask questions about grammar and the content of the gospel.
   
3. The exam may also include some vocabulary or principal part review.
   

VI. National Biblical Greek Exam (5%)

1. Students may take this Exam as often as they wish.
   
2. Student must find someone to register as a proctor and watch them during the one hour exam.
   
3. It may be taken no later than the Friday of week six
   

VII. Written Final Examination (10%)

1. There will be a translation passage from any of the chapters translated in depth.
   
2. There will be a few grammatical and literary questions.
   
3. There will be verses read in English so the student may identify the correct chapter.
   

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.

ATTENDANCE

This class meets three times each week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. The first section meets and 8:00 a.m. and the second section meets at 9:00 a.m. You are expected to always attend the correct section. See the student handbook for the policy on missing examinations. This policy also applies to quizzes and class participation. If a student misses a class and fails to notify the college prior to the class the student will receive a zero on a missed quiz. If a student is ill and notifies the instructor prior to class the quiz will not be factored into his or her grade. Missing several classes be they excused or not will adversely affect the student class participation grade.

4. Recitation Groups (Fridays)

5. Schedule

6. 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.