You know Angela I like that you can read and understand greek, if I could I would do the same. I actually made a post the other day in the misc. section how the word of God goes into an entirely new level if you read it in it's original languages. I cannot read and understand a whole lot of Hebrew or greek but what words I am able to look up I noticed how the words have a completely different aspect. The hebrew language especially intrigues me because their words are not simply words they have a very deep profound meaning to them even down to the sound one makes when speaking a certain word.
But as for greek that is not a language I have delved into much I want to figure out some way to teach my mind to be able to read and understand those languages but learning new languages has always been my greatest weakness, I can learn complicated math easier than I can learn a new language and I am horrible at math lol maybe I should get some kind of book called learning hebrew for the mentally handicapped lol
You may just have a learning block. I was really good at languages in high school. I took both French and German, and became fluent in French, eventally, and taught it in school for a few years. German has waited till this year to really learn it. And I am so happy I took the course and stuck with it.
But, when I read the course requirements for an MDiv included Greek and Hebrew, I decided I would just do the rest of the courses, and not take the Biblical languages. I mean, all those squiggles?? I could never learn Russian either, although I tried 3 times, because the alphabet is so different. So, first year seminary was Hebrew. I just skipped it, because how could I learn it?
But when Greek came around about 4 years later, I bought the text book, and spent the whole summer working on the alphabet. Then I started making word cards and studying vocabulary. I think I got up to about chapter 6 before the semester started. Now, I have a good background in English and French grammar, but also in German, although I really couldn’t speak or read it before this year. Grammar in German is always drilled into your head, first thing.
So nouns was the first chapters, and WOW! It was exactly the same as German noun cases. Well, except Greek was more complex in the plural, because it had both masculine, feminine and neuter in plural, and even German only has one plural that covers all the genders, although variations for the cases.
We got to articles. There are 24 positions for the word “the” in Greek, although only something like 17 forms. Yep, the is a whole different ball of wax in Greek, as it was in German. About 1/2 the class dropped out when we got to the definite article. Especially all those poor Koreans, because their language doesn’t have the definite article, “THE” at all! Can’t blame them!
It was my turn to want to drop out when we got to participles. Now, I had been using my third year French university grammar text as a review for each form of speech. It was totally in French, but I understand French, so I just used what applied, and didn’t worry about the rest. But, there was NO participles in that book. They aren’t important in French, or maybe they don’t exist. Even in German, they are not as important as Greek. But in Greek they are vital! Yikes, I was done, out of there. Two chapters on participles with a giant block around my head.
So, I watched the first video, and Bill Mounce says, “Participles are the hardest part of Greek and a stumbling block to almost all Greek students. But just hang in there, only 2 chapters and we will be out of here.” Well, not true, because we used them all the time, but the learning block fell down, and it wasn’t so hard after all.
Come spring, I loved Greek, wanted to take second year, which wasn’t offered on-line, but kept studying, and won the award for outstanding Greek student. Amazing how many years the Greek award went to a woman, although we represented about 5% of the MDiv population. Goes to show you, a woman has to work a lot harder to prove she deserves to be in the program. Or, we are smarter! (LOL probably a bit of both, but lots of sweat, for sure!)
Hebrew was my last year and I again studied the alphabet to be prepared, it is quite different with all the dots for vowels, but probably easier than Greek. Apparently surveys show that about 1/2 the students prefer Greek over Hebrew and half prefer Hebrew over Greek. So, an even mix to go on and become OT versus NT scholars.
Anyway, this long draw out story just to say, languages have structure and are a lot like math. I got an A in Calculus in University and an A+ in Stats. And an offer for a math scholarship if I wanted to make it my major. Sorry, not today!
So, if you get math, you could learn languages. Just don’t let fear overwhelm you.
Sorry for this off topic post, it seems like we have deviated pretty far from the topic, although I am certain we have not exhausted the topic of greeting false prophets, yet!
