Don't learn biblical Greek without grammar!

Follow me:

[donpotter]

Years ago, I had a English speaking student in my high school Spanish class. She was head and shoulders above all the other students. I asked her why she thought she was able to learn Spanish better than all the other students. She smiled and said, "I know my English grammar." Later I taught first and second year Spanish to middle school students. When I introduced the direct object, I was surprised that NONE of my students in regular and advanced placement classes had ever heard of a direct object. I then drew an English sentence diagram (Reed-Kellogg base modifier) illustrating a direct object. Upon seeing the sentence diagram, the students exclaimed, "What's that?" Later I told the head of the English department at that school that the kids had never seen a sentence diagram and did not know what a direct object (objective complement) was. She replied, "We don't teach that anymore." At an elementary school where I taught, the principal told the teacher to skip the sentence diagrams in the student's language books. When I questioned her about it, she frowned and said, "Why, Mr. Potter, sentence diagrams have not been a part of "the curriculum" for a long time." This video needs to go viral far beyond your audience of Greek students.

[KevinOsborne]

I come from a background of seeing my classmates studying Greek at seminary struggling with learning Greek grammar. They stressed over how they would do on exams. It didn't inspire me to learn Greek. Yet, over the many years since then my desire to learn Greek has grown. I agree with you that knowing Greek grammar and Biblical Greek in general opens our spirits to learning what the Scripture says. We need to be careful in the analysis of Scripture because this is God's Word we are teaching, preaching, and more importantly living out. -The Lord bless your teaching ministry and life richly!

[someperson]

Grammar is important. If one misunderstands the grammar of a text, then they could misinterpret the text.

[brianponikvar]

As one who has tried to learn several languages using traditional methods (eg., learning grammar rules and vocabulary lists and then putting them together to make sentences), I don't think its the most efficient method. It's not how we learned our native languages. There's actually a pretty active community of polyglots on YouTube who have 'cracked the nut' on language acquisition to learn 5, 10, 15+ languages in a relatively short period of time (eg., Olly Richards, Benny Lewis, Luca Lampariello, Lýdia Machová, etc.). They all use slightly different methods but nearly all of them reference the work of Stephen Krashen and his Natural Language Acquisition method which focuses on large amounts of Comprehensible Input (input that is slightly beyond your comprehension level) to replicate the way we learned our first language. For many of these polyglots, grammar should only be studied as needed to understand specific content you may be struggling with. Only after you've gained proficiency in the language does one return to the grammar books to reinforce everything one's learned. That being said, what most polyglots will also tell you is that there's not one method for everyone. If one enjoys grammar. Great. Incorporate it into your studies. The main point is to find a method you enjoy and gives you the results you're looking for. Language learning is a long journey and I think you need to find ways to stay engaged and excited. I myself am a bit of a grammar geek, so I do enjoy cracking open my greek grammars but I don't make it a focus of my studies.

[paulakahn]

Not knowing koine grammar limits one's comprehension of the Scripture itself, not just of the scholarly discussion.

[lesliecrismon]

You’re encouraging me to press on. I’m halfway through Beginning with New Testament Greek and my brain is ready to explode. But I won’t stop til I can understand those scholarly resources AND read the Bible devotionally!

[rinkevichjm]

The cases often have special uses with regard to time and place.

[richardlee]

I still remember grammatical functions from my NT Greek course at Fuller Seminary in 1998. The NT is easier to understand if you know what grammar is and how grammatical functions work.

[oswaldumeh]

Trying to learn Greek has exposed my lack of knowledge of English grammar which is very key to understanding Greek grammar which in itself is super important for an inductive, methodical study of the scriptures.
I agree with you 100%!!! I placed an order for the book "English Grammar to Ace Biblical Greek" to solve this inadequacy and get the best out of my Greek lessons.

Thanks for this. I am encouraged. May the Lord bless and encourage you. May also continue to guide you and give you more understanding so you can help others even more embrace, learn and continue to enjoy His word.

[pierreabbat]

Beth and Angela teach in a way completely unlike the grammar-translation method, but both of them teach grammar, in their respective languages. Not just the binyanim Beth calls by their Hebrew names, but the imperative (tsiwuy).

[patienceboyd]

This is critical info. How did you summarize so much good stuff in 6 minutes? Everyone considering learning Greek should hear this perspective.

[edperez]

You are going good stuff, there Darryl. Blessings<><

[noelsteele]

Grammar gives language context and meaning, baby! Without it, it's just a floppy fish on land!

[ZBO]

I’ve had a variety of experiences with different Greek textbooks from Classical Greek texts like Athenaze to Biblical Greek textbooks like Mounce, Black, and Dobson. I have found that the grammar is best taught inductively with reading exercises early on, after which the grammatical approach should fall into the background, and the texts themselves should be pulled to the forefront. Otherwise, it becomes something akin to mathematics and you never really learn how to read with a fast pace. Granted there are a small number of people who can learn to read a language just from a grammatical approach, mainly those with mathematics backgrounds. In fact, I know of a classicist/mathematics professor who can read Homer, Hesiod, Thucydides, etc., but with a terrible pronunciation, though excellent parsing out of texts. It also seems that a textual focus was and is being followed by Muslims and Jews in traditional madrassas and rabbinical centers of learning in the study of Quranic Arabic and the Hebrew Tanakh. For Hebrew, I worked half way through Dobson, then started listening and reading alongside with some online recordings of Genesis, and without much grammatical instruction, I have worked my way through 30 chapters since December 2020. So, it does work!

[thangkhaihatzaw]

As a Greek student, could you provide me some materials, such as a website or anything to study. Coz' I want to improve my Greek grammar.

[ZadenZane]

Greek without grammar sounds fine, provided you don't care who did what to whom how when and why!!

[sorenpx]

This is a strange video to me. How does one "learn Greek" without learning the grammar?