Saturday, February 03, 2007

Greek English Interlinear New Testament

I ordered "The New Greek English Interlinear New Testament" editor J.D. Douglas published by Tyndale from Viva Books here in San Antonio. And I was able to pick it up today - so I'm pretty excited. I ordered a lexicon too, through another vendor but it is hopefully on its way here soon. And in case you're wondering a lexicon is a dictionary - it had me confused at first, because some people would say dictionary and others lexicon, and I was like what's the difference - now I know.

I'm now learning the nominative and accusative and definite articles. So I've got some rote memorization to do, and I was thinking I need to do what my son has to do every week...make sentences with his sight words...and I need some old school write this word until you are blue in the face. Otherwise, I may be on chapter 6 far longer than I need to be.

I'm soooo glad I'm doing this at my own pace. I love languages but I've no natural knack for learning them. Shoot my own knowledge of english syntax is wretched, which is one of the reasons I like learning other langauges (at one point my Spanish wasn't too shabby, but it is long buried in the recesses of my brain now). I was joking with my spouse that my next language to tackle might be Hebrew, but Sanskrit may just oust Hebrew. She laughed at me, "What so you can read the Dead Sea Scrolls?" Actually, there's alot I would be able to read in Sanskrit.

But, in all honesty another language is way down the totem pole. Shoot I've still got 29 more chapters of Greek to go. But, it's fun to imagine.

2 comments:

Lee said...

Hi JSD! I'm thrilled that you are making progress in your Greek studies. From what I am reading in Genesis Meditations there is a significant difference in the way of looking at the world and scripture between Greek and Aramaic. In fact some of the Aramaic stuff ties in with what you were talking about in an earlier poem, Theos. So....I'm wondering if you have thought about looking into that language too?

jsd said...

lee: thank you for the encouragement and thank you for bringing the book to church - it's amazing how much understanding how things got/get translated means.

I have thought about learning Aramaic, but not until after Greek.