21st Century Classical Greek -- a breather

You never realized there was so much information in just over 100 words.

But remember, a lot of what I said relied on external context:

1.                  The political makeup of the Greeks.

2.                  Lexicons and grammar books.

3.                  Personal experience.

I am putting you through some complicated gymnastics.

1.                  Rewriting the grammar that you may have thought you knew if you studied Greek before, or introducing you to some cutting-edge grammar if this is your first experience with Greek.

2.                  Making it impossible for you to take existing grammar books at face value, not just because of changing all the labels, but also because I am pointing out where those books are incorrect about the data, or incomplete. This includes eliminating the concept of verb categories that demand objects in specific cases.

3.                  Making you study lexicon entries instead of just grabbing the explanation at the top. You have to know the verb.

And I’m not letting you pick a meaning for a word and then go on to the next word. I’ve seen this kind of word-for-word substitution, and it’s partly responsible for the horrible Septuagint. You will never appreciate just how horrible the Septuagint is until you learn Biblical Hebrew, although you can get the Reader’s Digest version on another thread of this blog.

I’m also making you memorize things. I will post subject-matter reviews from time to time and do a roundup, but I won’t link from those back to the original lesson. They are reminders of what you should have memorized, not indices to the lessons. I know that I’m a bad person for making you memorize, but you will see in upcoming lessons that it could be worse, and some 21^st century scholars of koine Greek are publishing that it’s time to stop doing things worse.

Keep in mind that I have already eliminated some memorization. You’ll never have to worry about the “future perfect”; there’s no “imperfect tense”; you won’t have to watch  out for the “genitive absolute”; your brain won’t go “sproinnnng” over the concept of a “[tense] infinitive” or the use of a “present tense” in a past situation.

To this point, I’m getting as many as 35 pageviews per post, 20 when the post first goes up and the rest later. Somebody is sticking with me in the hope that I will eventually fall flat on my face. Somebody is probably also sticking with me cos they like new stuff or cos they can torment professors with questions they can’t answer. I’m a born troublemaker and have been for 60 years. Take that for what it’s worth.