Any of you come across Randall Buth's Biblical Language Centre? he sells some Koine Greek Books and Products and I was most curious about the "Living Koine Greek" material. Any of you used this or found it useful / problematic?
posted by Chris Tilling @ 12:55 PM
7 comments
I am New Testament Tutor for St Mellitus College and St Paul's Theological Centre, London. Less well known is that I am also the original writer of the now famous song “Beans, beans, good for your heart…”, and inventor of the “you must have fallen out of the stupid/ugly tree” repertoire of insults. I am the main proponent of the Human Faecal Matter for Brains Opening in chess (actually not what I wanted to call my brilliant and original opening Knight manoeuvre 1.Na3, 2.Nc1), and I also claim to have independently discovered the haiku™ poetry form (© Copyright Chris Tilling 2007) without any help from the Japs. My blog, Chrisendom, is primarily occupied with biblical and theological themes – especially those Apostle Paul shaped, but I try as best as I can to squeeze in a decent amount of inappropriate baloney on the way.
7 Comments:
I haven't used it but I have read some stuff that Buth has written on the development of the language and I found it useful. I also appreciate his reconstructed historical pronunciation. It's soooo much better than that Erasmian nonsense and he gives even native Greek speakers like Caragounis a run for their money.
Nick, that is very helpful. Thanks.
I used it. Found it helpful when used in conjunction with a standard Greek workbook (such as Duffs).
Thanks, Erlend. Do you think it would not be possible to run an introduction to Greek course using just Buth's materials?
He has a unique pedagogical approach, but one that I find reasonably attractive, although my interest was in cementing and extending existing knowledge rather than learning from scratch. A while back his website promised some Aramaic materials, but sadly I got a very rude response when I emailed the Biblical Language Centre to ask about them, and this put me off buying anything from them.
My undergraduate Greek professor had us all learn and use Buth's pronunciation. It gave the language a more natural feel. However it becomes rather superfluous when my second institution only uses Erasmian. If an entire faculty were to adopt it I could see how it may be beneficial to students, but switching between the two is chaotic and causes confusion.
Chris,
I think that his approach is good for learning the basics of the basics but we want to learn to read koine Greek in all its complexity. I find it hard to believe that anyone reaches this level with his course. About his pronunciation I am not sure, he has many good examples from Papyri and Inscriptions. I had a professor from Greece and he read the texts with the Erasmian diction, which was a little weird but it helped the understanding in the classroom. I would love to think more about it but I think Attic Greek is still the best way to approach NT and Koine Greek.
LUKE
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