Greek Coins

March 17th, 2010

Friends just returned from a trip to Greece and brought me some Greek coins. Here’s a photo.

GreekCoinsSm.jpg

You can find a much larger photo here. They are actually silver in color, but the lighting in which I took the photo makes them appear golden. For size perspective, the top left coin is very close to the size of an American quarter—just a smidgen larger. (No, I didn’t get out a micrometer to be more exact than that! :) )

This is an unofficial quiz for my Greek students. Can you identify the denomination of these coins? It is printed on each and there are two different ones shown. Both are words which occur in the NT (which means you can find them in your lexicon). Being written in caps is good exercise for you since we don’t read them nearly as much in the NT. Perhaps you can figure out the other wording on these also.

Moulton on translation

March 12th, 2010

I ran across this interesting statement in Moulton this afternoon:

The Greek translator, endeavouring to be as literal as he could, nevertheless took care to use Greek that was possible, however unidiomatic—a description well suiting the kind of language used in every age by translators who have gained the conscientious accuracy, but not the sure-footed freedom, of the mature scholar.

I found this while thinking about Mark 10:8, ἔσονται οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν, in which an εἰς phrase is used as a predicate nominative. Mark (or Jesus?!) cites it from the LXX (= Gen 2:24) which could be judged an “overly formal” translation of the Hebrew text at this point.


J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of NT Greek, vol. 1, Prolegomena (T&T Clark, 1908), 76.

An odd error in BDAG? πέραν

March 12th, 2010

BDAG, s.v. πέραν, 796–97.b.β:

πέραν w. gen. can also be used w. the art. as a subst. (X., An. 3, 5, 2 εἰς τὸ πέραν τοῦ ποταμοῦ; Jos., Ant. 7, 198) ἦλθον εἰς τὸ πέραν τῆς θαλάσσης they came to the (land on the) other side of the lake Mk 5:1.

πέραν is technically an adverb, but it can be used as a preposition with the genitive (e.g., Mark 3:8; 10:1). In the portion of BDAG cited above, however, it is listed under “πέραν w. gen.” as a substantive with the article. But in the three examples cited (Xenophon, Josephus, Mark) it is an accusative article—the genitive is a word which modifies the accusative object of the preposition εἰς, not a genitive object of πέραν.

εἰς τὸ πέραν τοῦ ποταμοῦ (X., An. 3, 5, 2)

εἰς τὰ πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου (Jos., Ant. 7, 198) [ref. only, text not cited in BDAG]

εἰς τὸ πέραν τῆς θαλάσσης (Mark 5:1)

I would think that this should be listed as “πέραν w. acc.” and the refs. given here should have been under sect. a, not b.β.

Or am I not awake yet this morning? :)

(πέραν also occurs with a dative object in LXX; e.g., Josh 22:11.)




Be sure to see Carl Conrad’s comment below which explains the construction nicely; this is not an error.

Hebrews lecture series audio

March 10th, 2010

The audio (mp3) of my lectures series on the book of Hebrews at Central Baptist Seminary (Minneapolis) from last month has now been posted on Central’s web site.

2010 Pastors’ Day: Crucial Issues in the Book of Hebrews

Preaching the Warning Passages in Hebrews

MacDonald Lectures

(The voice of the moderator is Dr. Kevin Bauder, president of Central Seminary.)

ABS 40% sale on Gk/Heb texts and tools

March 6th, 2010

I received a flyer today advertising a 40% sale on the “top 20 academic resources” from ABS. From Greek NTs (UBS4 and NA27) to BHS and lexicons, etc., this is probably as good a price as you will find on these items. For details and prices go to www.Bibles.com/students where the 20 sale items are listed along with the promotion code for the discount (SCHOL40).

You may need to experiment with different browsers since the page doesn’t display well in Firefox; Safari is better. (I did not boot Win7 on my Mac to test it with IE.) The prices shown on the main page are list prices; click through on any individual item and the detail page has the discount price listed.

Condition or subject clause? Mk 9:42

March 5th, 2010

I’m puzzling over Mark 9:42.

καλόν ἐστιν αὐτῷ μᾶλλον εἰ περίκειται μύλος ὀνικὸς περὶ τὸν τράχηλον αὐτοῦ….

Is it better to explain this as a conditional statement, thus:

Protasis: if a large millstone were hung around his neck …

Apodosis: It would be better for him … [taking εἰμι as expressing an impersonal subject, "it"]

Or should εἰ be taken to introduce a subject clause (as ὁτι might do)? Thus:

For a large millstone to be hung around his neck would be better…

.

In Memorium: E. Earle Ellis, 1926–2010

March 4th, 2010

NT scholar E. Earle Ellis died Wed., March 3, 2010.

See an interesting biographical sketch of Ellis by Gerald Hawthorne in History and exegesis: New Testament essays in honor of Dr. E. Earle Ellis for his 80th birthday (Continuum, 2006), which you can access via Google Books; see pp. 2-14.

Echoes in Scripture (Intertexuality)

March 2nd, 2010

Some introductory thoughts re. Hays’ treatment of “echoes”

The best-known attempt to provide warrant for echoes (i.e., informal allusions to the OT in the NT in distinction from quotations or more formal allusions) is Hays’ Echoes of Scripture,* though his work is couched in a non-conservative framework with presuppositions that make use of his system problematic at some points. He has proposed seven criteria for identifying an OT echo. They are certainly worth considering, though most of them are quite subjective in actual usage. His seven are: availability, volume, recurrence, thematic coherence, historical plausibility, history of interpretation, and satisfaction.

The most serious problem with the use of these criteria as Hays presents them is that he works from a reader-response, anti-authorial intent perspective. This can be seen by simply browsing the first chapter and noting the terminology that Hay uses to describe what NT writers are doing in various situations:

  • “Paul as … misreader of Scripture” (1)
  • “Paul takes possession of Moses’ exhortation and transforms its sense” (1)
  • “[Paul’s] revisionary reading of Deuteronomy 30” (1)
  • “theologically generative reappropriation of Israel’s Scriptures” (2)
  • “Texts will always demand and generate new interpretation” (4)
  • “[Paul’s] audacious rereading of Deuteronomy 30” (4)
  • Paul’s statements in Rom 10:5–10 represent “misreadings … of Scripture, extending its meaning in new directions” (5)
  • “Paul is engaged in the act of reinterpreting Scripture” (9)

This cavalier attitude toward the meaning of Scripture fits well with the modern literary ethos and certainly reflects the way in which many literature classes are taught. This is summarized well in Hays’ concluding paragraphs of his first chapter.
[Here you really ought to read Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 33]

I do not doubt but what texts can be used in this way and that they often do have these effects on readers. The question, however, is not what is possible, but what God intended and what carries his authority.

If Scripture is a revelatory deposit of truth conveyed from God through human writers who were superintended by the Holy Spirit with the result that the product is θεόπνευστος, then our goal must be to determine the meaning intended rather than creatively attempt to see how we can use the text.

Hays is into creative literary criticism and not into validity in the interpretation of divine revelation. He states this very bluntly:

The ideal of a perspicuous authoritative text that contains an unchangeable meaning is untenable because it denies the necessary contribution of the reader and the reader’s community in the act of interpretation. No longer can we think of meaning as something contained by a text; texts have meaning only as they are read and used by communities of readers (189).

Scripture is not a text with a plain meaning. Rather meaning is concealed in the text requiring the eschatological, intertextual ingenuity of the reader to unlock their mysteries since Scripture is “allusive rather than overt in its communication strategies” (155). New meaning is created when the reader draws together two texts, even if that association was not intended by the author: “the most significant elements of intertextual correspondence between old context and new [i.e., the new context created by the reader] can be implicit rather than voiced, perceptible only within the silent space framed by the juncture of two texts” (155). The text itself is silent, the reader creates the meaning which is found, figuratively speaking, in the white space between the two sentences. Meaning is not objective, “not so much like a relic excavated from an ancient text as it is like a spark struck by the shovel hitting rock” (155).

This “living” text “causes words spoken to characters in biblical narratives to miss their original addressees and to fly into the faces of bystanders previously uninvolved in the action” (165). Were that creative description used to portray the Spirit’s use of a legitimate textual meaning in the lives of people who have suddenly realized the significance of the text’s meaning in their own lives, all well and good. But that is not Hay’s intended meaning (pun intended!); it is rather his description of a reader-response hermeneutic in which the reader “plays” with various textual collocations and suddenly finds that he has just tromped in a puddle hard enough to get a face full of textual water. That the text does not mean what the reader thinks it does is of little significance; it is still wet!

Paul’s “helter-skelter intuitive readings” of the OT which are “unpredictable, ungeneralizable” (160), model proper hermeneutics in which “original intention is not a primary hermeneutical concern.” Indeed, such interpretations

can far exceed the conscious design of the author. The scriptural text as metaphor speaks through the author; whether such speaking occurs with or without the author’s knowledge is a matter of little consequence, for Paul’s readings of Scripture are not constrained by a historical scrupulousness about the original meaning of the text (156).


*Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (Yale Univ. Press, 1989).

Greek 23 :)

February 28th, 2010

Here’s a neat little nugget from David Alan Black. He professes it to be silly, but I like it. Since he does not operate a regular blog, you’ll have to manually find entries for Feb 27, 2010 if you want to see the original; that’s why I’m just inserting the whole thing here instead of linking it. (The “David” in “A Psalm of David” is certainly Dr. Black! :) )

Greek 23

A Psalm of David

My textbook is my guide, I am never in need.

It makes me learn the conjugations,

It leads me beside the declensions.

It restores my confidence in grammar,

It guides me along the paths of exegesis

For its publisher’s sake.

Even though I face the scourge of participles

I will fear no evil,

For you are with me.

Your appendices and charts,

They comfort me.

You prepare an answer for me in the presence of my teachers,

You anoint my mind with wisdom,

My soul bursts with pleasure!

Surely my textbook will follow me

All the days of my life,

And I will remain a Greek student forever.

Late Feb snowstorm, pt 2 pix

February 27th, 2010

Less than an inch of new snow last night and little wind. Only took an hour and a half this morning to tidy things up. Sun is shining and it’s a gorgeous day. It’s already 44 degrees outside (& only 77 inside by the woodstove! :) ), so the snow is going to start settling quickly. Here are some more snow pictures, mostly of the piles we created yesterday. If you see a bright orange stick in any of them, it’s a standard 36″ yardstick (a bit shorter than a meter stick for those of you who are not “State-side”).

Let’s start at my house. That’s the start of next winter’s wood pile that you see behind the pile.

FebStorm2010-4.jpg

And at the top of my driveway…

FebStorm2010-5.jpg

Looking down the driveway (my son’s house is across the road)…

FebStorm2010-6.jpg

Sure looks different than it does in the fall doesn’t it?! :)

ViewFall09.jpg

Now let’s go left out of the driveway and drive about a quarter mile around the shoulder of the mountain to my parents’ home; this is where the wind really blows!

FebStorm2010-7.jpg

Here’s the house I grew up in (at least what you can see of it!); this is across the road from the previous picture.

FebStorm2010-8.jpg

And the other side of the driveway…

FebStorm2010-9.jpg

Late Feb snow storm in NE Pa

February 26th, 2010

You can guess what my day was like today…

FebStorm2010-1.jpg

This is on my deck (looking back toward where the first photo was taken):

FebStorm2010-2.jpg

(If the pix is too small, the yardstick reads not quite 20″.)

And the winds were blowing… Here’s the road near the house just after the plows went through. There was a caravan of plows on the first pass, led by a big grader with a plow on the front, followed by three more plows. Once they got the road open, a single plow has made multiple trips to keep it open.

FebStorm2010-3.jpg

All in all I spent about 8 hours today (after two 3-hour stints yesterday trying to keep ahead of snow) on the “business end” of several pieces of snow removal equipment: my small tractor (an 18 hp diesel with a back blade), a snow blower, and, of course, a shovel! :)

Boomer.png

(You’ll have to mentally add tire chains, front weights, and hang a back blade on the 3-point hitch; sorry I don’t have a picture of my snow machine setup!)

My son and I have 4 houses to handle when it snows (his, mine, my parents, and my aunt)—but of course this storm came on two of the three days that he works 12 hour shifts… :( When he got home tonight (after dark), we got out the big tractor and loader to dig my folks out. They live on the north side of our mountain and the wind really howls there. It scrapes a 40 acre field clean and dumps in all in their driveway. Of course the snow plows don’t help on the driveway—4–5 feet of packed, plowed snow at the end of the drive (that’s deep, not wide!)—more than my little tractor can handle. (That’s one reason why we built our house around the corner on the south side where it is more sheltered.)

Maybe I can post some pictures of out big snow piles tomorrow.

I had planned to spend the day writing, but I guess my Lord knew I needed the exercise! :) I did manage to squeeze in a couple hours of writing. Hopefully if the winds don’t undo all today’s work during the night, I’ll get more writing time tomorrow. My legs and back will be stiff and sore, but hopefully my fingers (and brain!) will still work. :)

Interesting interview with Dan Wallace

February 20th, 2010

There is an interview with Dan Wallace posted on the BROADCAST DEPTH blog. There are also other NT interviews on that site.

MA thesis on Aktionsart of εἰσ/ἐρχομαι

February 10th, 2010

Just ran across an MA thesis from Ohio State that sounds interesting:

Title:
The Preverb Eis- and Koine Greek Aktionsart
Author:
Shain, Rachel M.
Degree:
Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Linguistics, 2009.

OSU listing with pdf download link

HT: Mike Aubrey

Wounded Greeklings

February 7th, 2010

While killing time waiting on hold this morning (an hour the first time, now up to 45 min with the 2d airline and still holding…!) trying to get my flights sorted out (flights cancelled due to the east coast storm wreck havoc when you need to be someplace by a certain time!), I ran into this blog post:

Come On In, You Wounded Greeklings

Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (New York: The Free Press, 1998), p. 166:

After the first three weeks of the beginning Greek class, 20 percent of the students are unfortunately conked, casualties of the masculine nouns of the first declension. Others are DOA thanks to the pronoun autos. The find that the autos monster can mean three altogether different things (“him/her/it/them,” “-self,” or “same”), depending on both its case and its position in a sentence. Students do withdraw from an introductory Greek class before they taste Plato or the Gospels, these bored, annoyed, and exhausted ninteen-year-olds, those very prospects who you once hoped would go on to Thucydides—and perhaps be one of the 600 each year in America who still major in Classics. They slide now across the hall to squeeze into the university’s over-enrolled Theory of Walking, Rope Climbing, and Star Trek and the Humanities, which will assuage and assure them that they are, all in all, pretty nice kids, classes that will offer the veneer of self-esteem but will guarantee that they will probably lose what little sense of real accomplishment they had carried within to begin with. You can nearly hear those doctors of therapy, those professors of recuperation at the lecture-hall door: “Come on in, you wounded Greeklings. It’s not your fault. They had no business subjecting you to all that rote; we do things a lot differently here. Relax, sit back, breathe deeply, and tell us how you feel.”

Posted on the laudator temporis acti blog by Michael Gilleland

HT: Dave Black

If you want to see more snow pictures from this storm, see Dan Fabricatore’s blog—28″ on his street in Maryland.

Verb Reference Chart, Omega Conjugation

February 4th, 2010

Here is a summary chart that I give my first year Greek students for reference after they have learned all the finite forms listed. It doesn’t include everything, but by far the most common forms in koine fit the patterns here. This covers only the omega conjugation, not the μι verbs. Perhaps you’ll find it useful as well.

VerbRefChart_LKG.pdf