Greek, chapter 15: the passive and voices
The second week back to Greek, and there’s already a sense of foreboding. It looks like the last half-dozen chapters of the textbook are going to be tough. I’ve had the vocab CD on fairly high rotation in the car, and still a [...]
Greek - semester two, week 1.
Participles.
I’m often asked why I’m learning Greek: after all, there are dozens - maybe even hundreds of English translations - why not stick to one of them instead of going to all this trouble? This week provided a bit of insight into where it [...]
Another subject this semester: Early Church History… pretty much 50AD - 451AD. Why would I want to learn this? Because this is where it was all happening - the church went from one guy walking around in a small part of the Middle East, to being all over the known world, in the space of [...]
My exam is over: the test itself wasn’t as bad as I was fearing; the split between memory work and translation was about 70/30. I don’t think I scored 100%, but I felt like I went pretty well.
The real nightmare was in the lead-up to the exam: we had a vocabulary of over 400 words, [...]
Simon, from my Greek class has put up a modified form of the end-of-chapter vocab exercises in random order and in normal order, if you’re looking for something to help you revise.
Update: it’s a reworking of the end of chapter exercises on Duff’s site, with one additional feature: if makes you start that chapter’s [...]
Greek chapter 13 - Handing out the evaluation forms
One last chapter of third declension nouns, a handful of subject evaluation forms, and we’re into stu-vac.
Pre-greek breakfast
What better way to prepare for a morning of greek lectures than by revising some greek? What way indeed?
A few things I’ve noticed this semester:
the first half of semester was much easier than the second
if you skip a concept, or don’t learn it thoroughly, there won’t be time [...]
Greek chapter twelve; the third declension, caffeine-free
Yes, you can see a photo here of the greek textbook with my mug of lemon tea. After two cups of lemon tea, I realised it was really just a reflex to be getting a hot drink, and I started drinking water instead.
This [...]
Greek chapter eleven - special verbs
Just when you start to think the verbs can’t get any more complicated, along comes the second aorist. You might remember that greek has two ways of talking about past activity: the imperfect and the aorist.
Imperfect refers to a past action that was [...]
Decaf long black with greek
Day four of drinking decaf coffee, and at least in the early part of the day the greek seems to be making sense. I’ve been persuaded to cut down on the caffeine for health purposes, but so far it seems to be having a negative [...]
Greek chapter ten - complex sentences
Chapter ten - halfway through the textbook! This week, we learn how to put two small sentences together to make bigger sentences using relative pronouns (who, which, to whom). As with everything else, there are 24 different ways of writing the relative pronoun, but [...]
Lunchtime greek - forehead slapping moment
Doing some translating exercises at lunch: getting used to the new vocab, while trying not to forget the old stuff. New word - genitive singular masculine “this” is toutou in greek. In this sentence, the next word is “tou”.
I’m staring at the word, trying [...]
Another week of biblical theology: my illusions of being completely across all the course content are shattered when we are called upon to apply the principles of biblical theology to this passage from Genesis 9. Ouch. We’re coming back to it again next week, having covered the (much easier) story of Naaman for the groups [...]
Greek chapter nine - 3×5 inch cards
This week’s class started with another "fun activity", where three sentences crammed with revision from the previous week’s class were on the board. I arrived in time to copy down the answers, but despite spending more time than usual on the content, chapter eight is still [...]
Missed most of this week’s lecture due to unavoidable commitments. Being so late for a lecture (catching the last 20 minutes out of 180) gives a different spin on things: everyone else is mentally exhausted, you’re alert, but rather lost. Now I have some catching up to do, and some more vocab words to learn.
The [...]
This week’s ministry formation class was again split in two: in the first part (one hour), we worked through some more of the history of biblical theology. This time, we looked at the three major epochs of the old testament: in this case, defined as Adam to Abraham, Abraham to Solomon, and beyond Solomon.
In the [...]
Greek chapter seven - moods
I was still anxious about the content of chapter seven - moods, and expecting to cover chapter eight this week, so it was a relief when we spent this week covering the old and the new of “moods” without venturing further into unknown territory.
In this [...]
In the first hour of the ministry formations class, we watched a DVD related to the Presbyterian church’s breaking the silence program. When something bad happens in the church, as far as inappropriate conduct goes, then the ways of dealing with it are covered by these guidelines.
It’s confronting stuff: the moral failure of people [...]
It’s a very strange sensation to go from working, to sitting an exam, to normal classes, to packing up house and moving.
Last week’s Greek class: the first hour was an exam - the first assessment task for the semester, and worth 40% of the marks for the first half of the year. It wasn’t as [...]