Jun 292008
Continuing with the theme of my previous post–that the best way to learn Greek is to read Greek–let me recommend UBS’s Greek New Testament: Reader’s Edition.
The most difficult aspect of keeping up with Greek is limited time, especially if you are a busy pastor or student juggling multiple projects. A Reader’s Greek NT helps tremendously in this regard, as it will define words that occur infrequently in footnotes, keeping you in the text and not out and about searching through other books. Zondervan published one of these years back, but their version utilizes an awkward font, has hard to read footnotes, and most importantly does not make use of the of the “standard” UBS text (it uses a modified version, the basis of their NIV translation). The UBS edition makes up for all these deficiencies and additionally includes more words (occurrences up to 22 times or less, if I remember correctly), provides a comprehensive dictionary in the back (which you should never admit to using, since I’m sure you already know all the words that occur 22 times or more), and even parses out words that misbehave (a prize to the first person that provides the parsing and lexical form of ἐνέγκας).
All in all, I have found it incredibly helpful. They are available at the Westminster Bookstore, which offers great deals on shipping.
Next up in the summer Greek series: how to write ἐνέγκας in such a way that it does not look like evne,gkaj to half of your audience.
Jun 272008
One question I get a lot is “how do I keep up with my Greek?” At the risk of over-simplification, my answer is… wait for it… read Greek!
Lee Irons has a variety of resources on his site to make such reading less intimidating for the beginner to intermediate Greekling. To get started, check out his introduction to his reading program. You will also want to download his more detailed Greek Reading Calendar. Most importantly, pick up a copy of his Greek Syntax Notes, which he promises to distribute in installments throughout the year.
Also, I highly recommend Young’s Intermediate NT Greek, which is concise. comprehensive, linguistically-aware, and easy to use. All together, it is an excellent reference that should be on everyone’s bookshelf, and will be enormously helpful in those tough-to-read sections.
Finally, I am making some of my beginner Form and Function guides available here. They are still a work in progress, and only cover the basics of Greek syntax, but they can serve as a good resource for reminding you of what you already know. These are highly indebted to Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek, Machen/McCartney’s NT Greek for Beginners and Young’s aforementioned Greek grammar (many of the terms of several of the guides have been directly lifted from the last two of these, since they are both used in my Greek class).
- Rules for Verb Forms
- Form and Function Guide
- Moods Function Guide
- Adjective Function Cheat Sheet
- Use of Autos Cheat Sheet
Stay tuned! I plan on posting a variety of Greek resources in the near future, including a guide to typing in Greek and an introduction to diagramming with Bibleworks. So if you haven’t subscribed to the site, do so!
May 282008
If you’re anything like me you have a compulsive need to take notes on anything you read combined with a compulsive fear of writing in books. This has been a problem for me. Pencils are no good since the graphite eventually smudges and gets all over the place; colored pencils are better but are not completely erasable. 
Well, 3M just might have a solution, as noted here for a slightly different purpose. Underline away! And without fear that someday your notes will appear out-dated and silly! …. Someday I might actually post something about theology…
May 212008
May 212008
May 212008
If you have not already downloaded Zotero, the free, open source bibliographical reference manager for Firefox, now would be a good time. It now supports the cutting edge Firefox 3, and, for all those interested in writing papers in biblical studies, there is now an extension that produces SBL-compliant citations and bibliographies.
Installation is easy enough. You will need to have Firefox installed (either link above will guide you, but I recommend Firefox 3 RC1, as it is pretty stable and supports a lot of great features). Once you have firefox up and running, follow this link and click of “Download.” Firefox should do the rest. You will need to restart firefox to get started–you should see the Zotero icon in the bottom right corner. Click on it to play around!
To install SBL support, Click Here in Firefox and let Zotero do the rest. You will need to restart your browser for the changes to take affect.
Zotero takes a little practice. You can manually type in entries or download them by clicking on the little book icon in your browser’s address bar on cites such as Amazon.com or The Westminster Library. Once you have some entries, try creating a citation or bibliography. First, go to “Preferences” (an option under the gear icon in the main bar). Click on the “Export” tab and select SBL as your “Default Output Format.”
To create a citation, click on the entries you want to cite. Use the keyboard shortcut a to create a citation in your Clipboard, which you can then “Paste” into any document editor. To create a bibliography, select the desired entries, right click on one of them, and choose “Create Bibliography from Selected Items.” Follow the instructions. Paste wherever you see fit.
There is also a plugin for Microsoft Word that integrates the Zotero interface into your document editor. Usage instructions are provided in the previous link. For those more dedicated to open-source software, there is also an openoffice.org version available.
I hope to publish a full guide to using Zotero in a week or so–complete with Screencasts.
