Author: Micheal Palmer

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Michael W Halcomb's Koine Greek Videos

I discovered Michael W Halcomb’s series of videos on Koine Greek today and would like to recommend them to anyone beginning the process of learning to speak biblical Greek. I’ve only watch a few of the videos so far, but can tell that Michael’s method is well founded in language acquisition theory.

The videos should work very well for creating fluency. Each one is only a few minutes long and is focussed clearly on a single lesson objective.

Here’s the link: Michael W Halcomb’s Koine Greek Videos

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Reading the Future Middle and Passive

Today I finished reading all of the instances in the New Testament of what has traditionally been called the future passive (296 instances) and started reading the 485 instances of the future middle. I hope to have something insightful to say about them when I finish, but it’s a daunting task.

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Καλὰ Χριστούγεννα

The title of this post, Καλὰ Χριστούγεννα, means “Merry Christmas” in Greek. I wish all of you a very joyous holiday. To hear the pronunciation of Καλὰ Χριστούγεννα, click the triangle below.

New audio added November 25, 2016

The original audio for this post was provided by Omniglot.com. That audio file ran here on this post from 2011 to 2015 and was played thousands of times. The new version is my own recording.

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Shain, Rachel M., The Preverb Eis- and Koine Greek Aktionsart (Again)

Over a year ago I mentioned Rachel M. Shain’s thesis on the preverb εἰς, but I did not at that time mention that it can be downloaded for free. To get a copy, go to the OhioLINK ETD Center. Thanks to Mike Aubrey (ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ) for pointing out this link back in 2010. I’m not sure why I didn’t include it at that time.

For my earlier comment about adding this thesis to the Special Topics page at Greek-Language.com, click here.

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The Dirty Truth About Most New Testament Greek Classes

I just read a very honest assessment by Daniel R. Streett of the state of Ancient Greek instruction at very many institutions in the U.S. If you’ve studied Greek, take a look at his post and see if it matches your experience. I matches mine. It took me many years of hard work to overcome the drawbacks of this method!

You can read his discussion here: The Dirty Truth About Most New Testament Greek Classes

Thanks to Mike Aubrey for pointing this out over at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ.

 

 

 

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Mike Aubrey's review of 2 recent works on Greek Prepositions

Mike Aubrey has now completed his three-part review of two significant works on Greek Prepositions:

  • Luraghi, Silvia. On the meaning of prepositions and cases: Semantic roles in Ancient Greek. Studies in language companion series 67. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003.
  • Bortone, Pietro. Greek prepositions from antiquity to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

You can read his review here:

Enjoy!

 

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Updates to lessons 22 and 23

I have updated lessons 22 and 23 (Present and Imperfect Middle/Passive). The changes to lesson 22 are very minor—just a few wording changes. The main change to lesson 23, though, is the deletion of the discussion on transitivity. I will introduce that topic in a later lesson with much better examples. This change helps unnecessary complication, tightening the focus on the issue of voice.

I also made a few changes to the course lexicon (cumulative vocabulary list) to improve entries for some of the verbs presented in these lessons.

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New look for the blog

I changed the theme of the blog today to match more closely with the look of my online grammar. While a few things are in a different place on the screen now, I hope you will enjoy the new look and not find the changes frustrating.

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B-Greek Forum

This is a very late notice of an important change to the most used discussion list related to the Greek text of the New Testament. I thought I had mentioned it before, but it appears I have not.

On May 30, 2011 the B-Greek email list became the B-Greek Forum. (Actually, the change just became public on that day. It had been in the works for some time.) If you are not familiar with B-Greek, I suggest you take a look at http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/. The email list began in 1992 and has for the last 18 years been a very active place for discussion of the Greek texts of the New Testament. I was quite active on that list in the late 1990s, but dropped off the list because of the huge volume of email it produced.

The new forum format avoids that problem, allowing you to read what you want, and easily ignore the topics that don’t interest you.

I help moderate the Greek Language and Linguistics topic in the new forum.