I don’t know if anyone enjoys these or not, but they are helpful for me to write.

PhD

Still waiting on examiners’ reports. It will be 3 months on Monday, so I really do expect to hear shortly.

#Jobsearch

Continues to be unsuccessful. 9 rejections and 1 job cancelled to date. Still have a few ‘out there’. I have picked up an array of casual positions (some adjunct work, some language tutoring, some marking, and some other things), so at least there will be some money coming in.

Articles

I sent off one article for a journal about a week ago. I have the core of a second article done but it needs another revision and strengthening. No shortage of other things to write on, but time is very short these days.

Translations

I’m almost finished a first pass through Gregory of Nyssa’s De Deitate. It’s not difficult, it’s quite enjoyable, but again time is short. The second pass will be much quicker, and I should be able to get a patristic reader text, a publishable (?) translation, and maybe some thoughts for an article or two.

Blogging plans

We got started on our textbook review series. I missed this week though. Still, good to be blogging a bit more, and hopefully more to come.

There was a great recent article on Eidolon, “What is the Best Way to Learn Latin?”, which is a conversation between Daniel Gallagher (student of Foster) and Eleanor Dickey, mediated by Michael Fontaine.

The article is great for a few reasons. Firstly, Dickey has done some great work on ancient pedagogy, both Latin and Greek. Lately I’ve been working through her Greek Composition Book as well. So ED is really ‘up there’ in a knowledge of (a) ancient pedagogy and rhetorical school practices, (b) her own Greek and Latin!, (c) teaching. Gallagher, on the other hand, ‘represents’ the Reginald Foster ‘school of thought’. Having been slowly reading through Ossa Latinitatis Sola myself and trying to understand that school, it was great to see him in dialogue here.

The early discussion of chreia type exercises – the systematic substitution of elements in a sample sentence and manipulation of those forms (case/number), is interesting because this type of exercise has become more popular in recent years in textbooks, but I’m yet to be convinced that it is truly pedagogically effective. I do think it’s a more effective way to force students to master morphological forms through active manipulation, but I’m yet to be convinced that this pushes us in the right direction overall.

Both Dickey and Foster emphasise “total philological mastery”, though they differ in how they think this should be achieved. Foster’s approach eschews reliance on rote memorisation of tables and charts, but it still appears to end up in an ability to take any form and manipulate it any which way. It remains hard to see how this is emphatically different than a rote mastery of those forms.

Dickey is on file elsewhere as not being a fan of communicative methods, and thinking that the “tried and true” ways of grammar remain the best. For that, I likewise remain sceptical.

There’s a great line from ED about halfway through:

There is definitely something that I do not understand about Reginald’s method, namely what the students are actually doing.

Yes, I have often wondered the same thing. Gallagher goes on to give a decent example of what Reginald would be doing in class.

Another great line comes later on, this time from Gallagher:

Although the ability to speak Latin used to be the goal, today it is literacy. Developing our students’ ability to understand and digest ancient texts is the reason most of us have dedicated our lives to teaching Latin.

I whole-heartedly agree. The goal for almost all our students is literacy – an ability to fluently read target texts in their target language. However, speaking Latin, or more precisely, an oral/aural communicative fluency developed of comprehensive input, is (I am convinced), the best, fastest, and most effective way to reach that literacy goal.

That’s where my pedagogy is headed – active communicative Latin/Greek/whatever is a primary outcome because it’s a better guarantor of reading fluency than merely aiming for reading, or worse yet, aiming for grammatical analysis + translation.

This little piece is me responding in my own way to Alison Innes’ post “Thoughts on Twitter Outreach” and it in turn bounces off Michael Fontaine’s “Promoting Classics to the Public – what worked, what didn’t what couldn’t”

Firstly, I find “Outreach” a funny thing in the Classics world. I certainly ‘get’ it – if the discipline is to survive it needs to connect with people outside its own little bubble, it needs to continue to demonstrate relevance, and it needs to attract new people to be involved in it (in the church we call this evangelism!). All interest-groups have this same imperative – to engage outsiders of the interest-group for the sake of the interest-group’s survival. Classics is just another version of this and it’s unclear to me why Classics thinks it has any more warrant on public attention than any other interest group.

Anyway, this is all besides the point. Outreach is primarily about (a) increasing visibility (remember how hard it was to find out things in the pre-internet age? Of course, you don’t), (b) leverage visibility to create engagement, (c) turn engagement into buy-in.

So, on to Fontaine’s article. I quite like Fontaine’s Latin-related pieces, but this was a bit bizarre. Basically, he says he just tried everything that he thought would work or even things that wouldn’t work. The weirdest part is this:

My experiment with Twitter proved to be a failure. I began by obeying the rules of etiquette, then breaking them deliberately to see what worked.”

Of course, it didn’t work. Twitter, like all social media, evolves its own set of social norms (well, really multiple sets of social norms because Twitter is not itself a monolithic culture, but a series of related sub-cultures. I understand the “exploratory” desire to break social norms on Twitter, but turning up to a party and breaking all the rules doesn’t work (unless, apparently, you are trying to become the US President.

Fontaine’s goal, and the SCS’s, was to reach non-classicists. Innes’ post goes on to interrogate Fontaine’s approach. It critiques the vague idea of ‘outreach’, and prefers “humanities communication” and engagement. Innes’ article is interesting on its own terms, and most interesting to me when she discusses Twitter.

Twitter, in my own social media engagement, has become a fabulous place. Every social media “place” has its own vibe, culture, demographics, and sub-groups. Also, how one chooses to use those platforms may change. I have very peculiar usage patterns for Facebook, for instance. Twitter, however, is a free-for-all.

What Twitter has done for me is to bring me into conversations with a wide range of people in my disciplines. And particularly, having the (un)fortunate circumstance of a single foot in several disciplines, it engages me in conversation with a range of people I would never have come across without Twitter. Twitter is the virtual equivalence of the conference, the coffee shop, and the seminar room. It doesn’t replace any of those particularly well, but it mediates global (and national) communities for me in patristics, classics, biblical studies, and classical languages/linguistics.

I don’t have a social media strategy, or at least a super-well-thought-out one. However, I do think social media is a great invention because it is essentially social – the conversation of people, and a medium – a means by which that conversation takes place. It’s ability to mediate that conversation (removing the necessity of unmediated access, i.e. in person relationship) is precisely what makes it invaluable.

The other day I mentioned Zuntz, and I realised later that many do not know about this wonderful text. So in this post I’m going to introduce/overview it for you.

Günther Zuntz (1902 – 1992) was a phenomenally gifted classical philologist and scholar. You can read about his life here in the Proceedings from the British Academy.

He also wrote a Greek primer, originally in German in 3 volumes. An English translation was done by Stanley Porter, and released as a two volume work, “Greek: A course in Classical and Post-Classical Greek Grammar from Original Texts”, and published by Sheffield Academic Press. It’s very difficult to track down, but you do find it in libraries. Online it will cost you an arm and a leg.

The text consists of four sections:

1. Greek Lessons: These are a series of texts, all taken from original texts covering a fairly full range of Greek literature. In the early stages, some texts are very, very minorly adapted. Zuntz is no fan of composed, non-original Greek, and thinks you should learn from original texts as much as possible. This makes part 1 a delectable smorgasbord of carefully selected Greek. It is followed by an Anthology of readings, and the Fasti Graeci, which gives dates and facts to grant historical contextualisation.

2. Exercises: As valuable as part 1 is, the exercises complement this well. Firstly, Zuntz writes, “Language is speaking” (20), and the first section of each lesson’s exercises consists of material for oral practice. The second, also, aims towards oral practice, but in questions and transformations based on the readings. Only section 3 turns to “conventional” exercises: parsing, paradigms, translation.

3. Vocabulary: a running list of vocabulary to help render each lesson intelligible.

4. Grammars. The grammar is divided into a running Appendix Grammatica, with grammar explanations for each lesson, and a Summa Grammatica at the end.

Now, what to say about this 1000-odd page “Primer” in Greek?

Firstly, it has peculiarities you will not find elsewhere and may not enjoy. Zuntz, for instance, prefers students to learn texts with iota adscript instead of subscript. (i.e. instead of θεῷ you will regularly find θεῶι). However, these are mostly excusable on the grounds that you will survive them. Secondly, Zuntz explains things no one else does. His grammatical explanations constantly compare with Latin, and then give reference to (Proto)-Indo-European, and you are just left with answers to questions you always wondered (or didn’t know to ask). For example, I have always simply accepted that α-stem feminine nouns always accent as -ῶν in the genitive plural, but it took Zuntz to explain that it is because the form was -άων and that contraction has occured, fixing the accent regardless of where it occurs in other cases.

So Zuntz leaves no stone unturned, which make for a “rigorous” course. However, it’s not for the faint-hearted. In the introduction he says you can get through the whole and still have time to read Plato’s Apology, in a year with six lessons a week. Provided that you also follow 2 hours private work for each hour of class. So that’s (assuming 1hr lessons?) 18 hours a week for 2 semesters.

One shouldn’t mistake Zuntz for a traditional grammar-translation textbook, that’s not how it works and not, I think, what he envisioned. But neither is it an inductive reader. It’s more a traditionally grammar-driven anthology of hand-picked texts to initiate you into the big, bad, wide world of Ancient Greek, with a second course of orally-drive exercises that ought to be done in a communicative fashion to make you a modern Demosthenes, and a third course of classical philology on steroids so that you’re not only well-versed in ancient Greek, but properly drenched in why Greek does what it does.

Don’t go rushing out to buy a copy, you’re looking at $200 minimum if you can even locate a real copy. But do check your library. It’s never likely to get another print run, and so sadly never likely to get much classroom use either. The best thing that could happen to this wonderful primer is to see an open-access high-quality pdf of it released to the Internet.

Yesterday I tweeted a quote from the preface to Günther Zuntz’s monstrous “A Course in Classical and Post-Classical Greek”. It’s only monstrous because of its size. Zuntz leaves no stone unturned, not even the tiny crushed ones that were what was left of your ego before you started Greek. Also, the two volumes in the English edition are enough to start weight-training as well as break the bank at current prices.

Anyway, Zuntz writes, “Rather than being for the spare hours of a novice, teaching Elementary Greek is a demanding task for a conscientious professor; as difficult as it is important.”

I think this is dead right. There’s a tendency to think of the introductory levels of language instruction as something that can be palmed-off to the less advanced. And, in one limited sense, that is true – you only need enough Latin/Greek/whatever to teach those knowing less than you do. However, this is short-sighted.

Assuming, as is most common these days, that your students arrive at a tertiary level without their requisite languages, their first language teacher has a vital role. They are responsible for introducing them to the language, and so their task involves two essential elements. Firstly, students must learn to love the language enough to learn it. Our whole appreciation and attitude towards a language is bound up tightly with the person who teaches it, their approach to teaching, the ambiance of the classroom. Introductory Latin, Elementary Greek, these are the gateways for Classics students. They will almost always have larger numbers than any intermediate or advanced courses, because you will only drop numbers from your beginning enrolment. Any hope of seeing good retention of students depends upon students actually enjoying their first-year language course.

Secondly, how well they learn language in that first year is critical to their success. Any deficiencies in their acquisition in the first year will be felt throughout the rest of the program. One simply cannot go on to the reading of texts without the language ability to handle those texts. This is the cause of Zuntz’s comment – he goes on to say that a one-off bad lecture on Paul or Plato won’t do that much harm, but failure to learn the language of Paul or Plato will do much harm.

This is why the choice of the first-year teacher is so important. It should not necessarily be the most junior person, because that person may well lack the depth of language to teach it effectively. Neither should it be the most lauded researcher, for language acquisition is not necessarily aided by research in fields that depend upon language. Indeed, even being a specialist in, say, Greek linguistics, is no guarantee of solid pedagogy for the beginners’ class.

No, I contend that the teacher of the elementary levels of a language ought to be someone passionate and committed to applying the best practices and latest research in second language acquisition, and bringing that to bear on the classroom experience. You want someone who wants to teach first year Latin, and who zealously pursues the best methods to do so. Whatever else is in their portfolio, archaic religion, Attic politics, post-Augustan poetry, they need to be someone who is hell-bent on seeing beginner students thrive and acquire the language as best as possible.

I have a vested interest in this topic, since I’ve just completed a PhD in the field and would like a job in it. So, I thought it would be interesting to look at the place of ECS/ECH (Early Christian Studies/History) in Australian tertiary institutions.

By ECS, I specifically mean post-biblical material, anything from the Apostolic Fathers through to the early middle ages. I exclude New Testament studies as a specific discipline for reasons that ought to be relatively apparent.

I divided my survey into three categories: Evangelical institutions, non-Evangelical religious institutions, and Universities (generally state, but not always).

1. Evangelical institutions.

I examined 12 different colleges across Australia, drawing my data from publically available Faculty profiles, and course descriptions. Of these 12, 11 are affiliated with the Australian College of Theology, a kind of umbrella accrediting organisation. This is important, as I will explain below. I defined ‘primary specialisation’ by examining the doctoral thesis of faculty, and considering listed research interests and publications where available.

Of these 12, only 4 staff have a primary specialisation in an ECS/ECH area. 2 of those faculty are at the same institution, so 3/12 colleges have a faculty member with an ECS/ECH specialisation.

I also considered what the primary specialisation was of the faculty responsible for teaching ECH. For members of the ACT, ECH is a single overview subject of “Church History to 1550” in the undergraduate and graduate programs. Of the 12, the 9 who did not have ECH specialists have the subject taught by someone whose specialty is either (a) systematic theology, or (b) reformation or denominational church history.

Furthermore, at 3, or possible 4, of these institutions, ECH is currently taught by someone without a doctoral degree (generally an MTh).

That’s the data of Evangelical Colleges. I would now like to speculate as to why. Firstly, ACT exerts a controlling influence on the course structures and units provided, so that ECH is, in a 24 unit 3-year degree, a single unit, which is either (a) The Church to 1550, or (b) Early Church History (30-451). There is no single unit that covers 451-1550, so all periods of medieval and byzantine theology are excluded.

The ACT also provides for these same 2 modules to be taught at varying levels (200, 300 representing undergraduate subjects, 500 being MDiv equivalents. Theology of Augustine may be taken as a higher level subject for an MA, 700 level.

Nonetheless, for most member institutions, ECH represents a single, undergraduate overview subject. It is difficult to put forward a specialist ECS hire for a teaching load of 1-0, and such a hire would have to teach outside their specialty. This in itself is not a problem, but I suggest that Evangelical institutions are far more likely to hire a reformation/denominational history specialist, or a systematic theologian, and ask them to teach ECH, than vice versa.

Of the 4 faculty with ECS specialisations, one is the principal and has a strong NT and Greek profile. One presents more as a systematic theologian whose primary doctoral research happens to be in ECS. One was in their faculty position prior to completion of their ECH doctorate, and the last is a focused ECH specialist.

I mean these observations primarily as observations, and my critique should be considered very mild at best.

2. Non-Evangelical Institutions

To survey these religious colleges, I examined member institutes of the Sydney College of Divinity, and the University of Divinity (formerly the Melbourne College of Divinity). These two do not represent all such colleges, but I believe they are a representative group. In each case I looked at who the primary faculty responsible for ECH studies/courses were. This approach is justifiable since these institutes are generally too small to field research-only faculty.

This generated 17 institutes, 4 of whom are Catholic in identity, 3 Eastern (one Eastern Orthodox, two Coptic), and the rest a mix of protestant denominations (including liberal and conservative groups).

Out of these 17, 3 faculty members have identifiable ECH specialisations, and they teach in the Orthodox/Coptic colleges. These colleges, likewise, have more than 2 ECH subjects as part of their standard curricula.

In all 14 other non-Orthodox and non-Coptic colleges, ECH is taught by a non-specialist, and typically occupies a single subject, or 2 at most (often ECH forms a single subject taught at multiple levels, or else is subsumed in a larger survey history subject). Even at Catholic institutes, where one might have expected more ECH expertise, ECH is taught by specialists in other periods.

3. Universities

To understand the place of ECH in Australian universities, one needs to understand how religion is differently situated in Australian higher education, compared to say the USA or Britain. The founding of the University of Sydney, in 1852, occurred at a time of significant religious conflict in that Oxbridge entry was restricted to Anglicans. Australian universities avoided sectarian conflict by pursuing a deliberate secularisation strategy, excluding theology from their purview and ordained clergy from faculty. ‘Religion’ was apportioned out to the ‘member’ colleges, which now primarily serve as residential colleges for the university rather than true colleges in the Oxbridge model.

This explains why, unlike the USA or Britain, almost no major university has a theology department in Australia. That has changed since the 60s and the Martin Report, and some universities such as Flinders (SA), Murdoch (WA), and Charles Sturt (NSW) do include theology, often in partnership with local religious colleges and faculty.

Religious studies has re-entered some institutions, such as U.Sydney, but not in a significant way. At U.Syd, for example, ECH occupies a single subject, taught by Iain Gardiner, whose specialty is ECH areas.

This leaves two universities where ECH is flourishing: Australian Catholic University, and Macquarie University.

ACU is the host of the Centre for Early Christian Studies, which includes such powerhouses as Pauline Allen, Wendy Mayer, Geoffrey Dunn, and many others. It is a research focused centre with considerable funding. It sits within the Theology and Philosophy Faculty of ACU, which lists at least 13 faculty staff with Patristics or ECH as specialist areas.

Macquarie University’s Ancient History department took on an ECH focus largely due to the pioneering influence of Edwin Judge. That work continues in the broader setting of a large Ancient History faculty, with at least 5 faculty/staff that I can identify working primarily in ECH or Late Antique patristics. Particular research has focused on papyri.

So, that’s a wrap. University wise, almost all ECH work is being done out of two places in Australia – ACU and Macquarie, and they have different foci. The larger of these is definitely ACU and that is unlikely to change. Reflecting back across the religious colleges, only the Orthodox and Coptic colleges can be said to have a major interest in ECH in their curricula and faculty, while the number of protestants, evangelical or otherwise, specialised in ECH is very low.

Well, if you didn’t hear by other media, I’ve completed the dissertation and submitted it for examination!

Now a few months of waiting semi-anxiously for external examiners to read, digest, and decide my fate.

In the meantime I’ve been applying for jobs, a depressing task. In the meantime-meantime, I’m revising one paper, working on Nyssen’s De Deitate, devising a third, continuing with a bit of tutoring, and enjoying the Australian summer.

Back at my former blog, I made a list of books for Latin and Greek, generally related to the Direct-Method, Rouse, etc., that it would be good to source. Some of them already exist on google books, or other places, but some of them are proving hard to track down. Since then I received a few new links which I’ve added to this one (thanks to that commenter!). Feel free to comment if you have located any others, and I’ll incorporate the link into this page.

WHD Rouse Demonstrations in Greek Iambic Verse (1899)

– , Demonstrations in Latin Elegiac Verse (1899)

– , A Greek reader (1907)

-, Latin Stories for Reading and Telling

Rouse and Appleton, Latin: on the direct method

E.H. Scott and Frank Jones, A first Latin course (1913)

WHS Jones, First Latin book (1919)

– , Via Nova; or, The application of the direct method to Latin and Greek (1915)

RB Appleton and WHS Jones Initium (1916)

– , Puer Romanus (1913)

– , Pons Tironum (1924)

– , Perse Latin Plays (1913); 2nd edition (?) RB Appleton, Ludi Persici

Edward Adolf Sonnenschein Ora Maritima (1914)

– , Pro Patria (1907)

WL Paine and CL Mainwaring, Primus Annus (1912)

Paine, Fabulae virginibus puerisque

TA Wye; WL Paine Primus Annus: Vocabula explicata

WL Paine, Decem fabulae pueris puellisque agendae (1927)

Frank Stephen Granger, Via Romana (1915)

A wealth of texts, out of copyright, enjoy and use!

Recently Charles Lee Irons posted on TGC a defence of the translation of μονογενής in the New Testament as “only-begotten”, instead of the modern consensus that it means “unique” or “one of a kind”. Why? I can only presume, and the article indicates as much, that it’s in response to the ongoing controversy in Evanglical circles over Grudem and Ware’s “Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission” (ERAS) and problems with Eternal Generation (EG). One should also look at Daniel Wallace’s musings in response.

Grudem, as I hear it, has affirmed EG at the recent ETS conference, but without retracting his position on ERAS. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what he has said most recently.

Nonetheless, if you go back to Grudem’s Systematic Theology, he makes a clear case *against* EG in Appendix 6. He basically states that μονογενής derives from μονός and γενός rather than μονός and γεννάω. He also states that it as misunderstood, to mean ‘only-begotten’, and that this is the erroneous usage found in the Nicene Creed.

Grudem also states, erroneously, that the Greek Fathers should have used μονογέννητος! (One should exercise more caution in telling Greek theologians how to use their own language)

Let me quote Grudem at length:

If the phrases “begotten of the Father before all worlds” and “begotten, not made” were not in the Nicene Creed, the phrase would only be of historical interest to us now, and there would be no need to talk of any doctrine of the “eternal begetting of the Son.” But since the phrase remains in a creed that is still commonly used, we perpetuate the unfortunate necessity of having to explain to every new generation of Christians that “begotten of the Father” has nothing to do with any other English sense of the word beget. It would seem more helpful if the language of “eternal begetting of the Son” (also called the “eternal generation of the Son”) were not retained in any modern theological formulations. Similarly, to refer to Jesus as God’s “only begotten” Son—language that derives from the King James translation—seems to be more confusing than helpful. What is needed is simply that we insist on eternal personal differences in the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that the Son eternally relates to the Father as a son does to his father.^[1]

The main problem with Grudem’s view is that the pro-Nicene articulation of the doctrine of Eternal Generation does not depend upon how they read μονογενής. And this is why Irons’ article is chasing a red herring – you don’t need to defend μονογενής as “only-begotten” to defend EG.

When Grudem says that ‘eternal begetting’ means we have to keep re-explaining what ‘beget’ means in this context, this is no different than the pro-Nicenes in the fourth century. They have to continually say that the relationship of ‘generation’, i.e. that the Father is father to the Son, and the Son is son to the Father, does mean that (a) they are of the same essence, and (b) that the Son’s origin is in the Father in a causal sense, but that it doesn’t mean there is any temporal beginning to the Son, change or diminishment in the Father, difference in essence of the Son, or materiality or even sexual intercourse involved in the Son’s coming into being.

That is, for the Father-Son language of the Scriptures, the pro-Nicenes articulate how the analogy works – what parts are actually analogous, and what parts are not analogous. All good analogies work by providing a comparison between two things, but two things that are alike in every respect are in fact the same thing! Saying that an apple is analogous to an apple is true, but unhelpful. Analogy works when something is alike in a pertinent respect, and unlike in other respects. That’s why a careful use of analogy distinguishes its points of analogy, and its points of disanalogy.

Does μονογενής mean ‘only-begotten’ in the New Testament in the sense the fourth century Fathers understand it? I don’t think so. I actually don’t want to go down that linguistic path today, but my point is that it doesn’t matter for Eternal Generation of the Son. It’s similar to, though perhaps more contentious than, the fact that Hebrews 1:3 uses the word ὑπόστασις in a way totally uninformed by late fourth century discussions of God existing in three ὑποστάσεις. The fourth-century pro-Nicenes are “free” to use μονογενής to mean only-begotten in the context of their debates, without having to either import that meaning back into the New Testament texts, or us thinking that their articulation of Nicene Trinitarianism depends upon such a reading being present in those texts.

It’s certainly true, I should say, that those same pro-Nicenes make arguments from those Johannine verses; it’s also true that the pro-Nicene arguments are exegetically propelled. But in this case, understanding μονογενής as “unique” does no harm to this position. Though thinking that understanding μονογενής as “unique” was an argument for rejecting Eternal Generation does great harm to orthodox trinitarianism (and is one reason Grudem was wrong).

^[1] Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; Zondervan Pub. House, 2004), 1234.

Recently I came across a project I hadn’t heard about before, the Bridge, and a new version of the same. It’s a site, and an interface, that lets you build customisable vocabulary lists based on Greek and Latin textbooks and texts.

In general, I don’t believe rote memorisation of vocab is the most effective or pedagogically sound method for expanding vocabulary, but it’s not without merits. This tool is incredibly useful for that purpose (and others). Especially it allows you to build a list from (a) the text your working on, excluding (b) texts/textbooks/lists you’ve already learnt. That allows you to stage your learning of vocab, or target what you don’t know. You can also design a list including words from another list only, so you could create a list of words, for example, you should already know.

If you wanted to brute force your way to a very solid Greek or Latin vocabulary, here’s how to do it.

Steps:

1. Download or otherwise install Anki.
2. Set up an Anki account online for syncing.
3. Create a single list at the Bridge, starting with the DCC Core vocabulary, or your textbook.
4. Export that list as a TSV (tab separated values) file.
5. Import that file into Anki (make sure you get the right entries to line up for the correct front/back fields).
6. Start learning these words rigorously using Anki.

There’s very good reasons to start with the DCC Core vocabulary lists. They (each) represent a curated and carefully composed list that draws upon corpus analyis and frequency of occurence to generate a core list that is ‘biggest bang for buck.’ The Greek list is probably not quite as useful if you’re purely a NT Greek student, but you shouldn’t be so fixated on the New Testament corpus anyway (but if you are, you will get best value by learning a frequency list of NT occurences only).

If/when you learnt/mastered/totally conquered the DCC list, then I’d create a new list – a particular text minus all the words from DCC. If you did DCC first, then I’d do your primary textbook second. Then repeat: new list, minus all the previous lists. If you want to read through a particular actual text, then same process – new list, minus all previous lists.

Voila, you are now on your way to brute forcing your vocabulary acquisition. Is it ideal? No, but if your disciplined it will work and it will pay off.

I’m not sure I’ve written about this before, but here’s how I prepare a text for a patristic reader (and if I plan to teach it closely).

Step 1: I obtain a clean, digitised version of the text. Depending on the text, that changes where and how I try to obtain it. Basically, I want a version without any copyright claims on it. Personally, I don’t think copyright inheres in edited or critical editions anyway, but I don’t have the legal resources to test that kind of claim in a court. So, open texts it is.

Step 2: If I can’t get a digital copy of an open text, I’ll use a text with claims on it, and re-edit it based of an open text. Texts are copyrightable, not origins, so conforming it to a rights-free edition removes any legal issues. Usually this means a PG or PL version. Thanks Migne, you were a hero in your own way.

Step 3: I alphabetise the base text. I then open up two files: the alphabetised base text, and a “Master Patristics Vocab file”. The latter has every word I’ve written a vocab entry for in previous texts. The current Greek file has 1911 entries. I then work through the base text file and (a) cut and paste entries for which I’ve already got data, (b) analyse any words that don’t have entries, (c) compile frequency numbers as I go, (d) note any words that are morphologically ambiguous. At the end of this, I revisit (d) words and look at them in context. Resolving (d) words is usually much easier for Greek than Latin.

Occasionally there are (e)-class words: words that aren’t easily analysed/parsed. For these I will find them in context in the text, look at a translation, run a parsing program, and then try every parsing-trick that I know. Usually I can resolve them, but some are tricky little suckers. Those are the cases where you need to undo some unusual vowel contractions/formations and run guess versions of a lexical form through a couple of dictionaries. Sometimes it’s a fairly unique or neologistic word that you need to backwards derive. That’s always fun.

Step 4: Once this is done I have a master vocab list for the individual text. I then open up the clean base text file again, as well as a template document for the reader’s edition. I work a page at a time, copy and paste 10 lines of text into the template, mark the cut-off point in the base text, and then work on that page.

Step 5: for an individual page, I work through these steps:

(a) alphabetise the vocab and cut and paste entries out of this document’s vocabulary file, thus producing a vocab list for this page. I eliminate high frequency vocab.
(b) I work through the text, producing a translation of my own. If a pre-existing translation exists, I’ll leverage that for speed of comprehension.
(c) make notes on any grammar I think is interesting or difficult
(d) tidy up the page and move on.

Step 6:
Each page is on average 90-100 words. It takes 20-30 mins to work through a page, depending on complexity and issues. So it’s not a fast process to produce a full text. But it does get me up close and personal with a text. At the end of all the pages, I go through and convert them all to pdf, and compile into a single file. I then add front material (introduction) and end material (vocab lists).

And that’s pretty much it. That’s how I produce a patristic reader text.

Well the big news is that I’m almost done with the PhD dissertation. I’m sitting on a fairly full draft, a proofreader is working through it, I’ve had a good friend read the whole thing, and my supervisor is working their way through this version. If all goes well, I’ll do some final edits, supervisor will sign off, copies will be printed and sent off to my three external examiners, they will read it and be convinced it’s up to scratch, and it will ‘Dr. Patrologist’ from here on in.

In January, as my last post mentioned, I’ll be teaching a 1-week course again at MALS, and I plan to work through Nyssen’s De deitate filii et Spiritus Sancti et in Abraham. This means that for the rest of November and December, I’ll be preparing that text, which also means I’ll be producing (a) a Patristic Readers edition of the text, (b) an English translation (there isn’t one), and (c) since this will be a third Nyssen text of suitable length, I plan to incorporate it with Ad Ablabium and Ad Simplicium to produce another print version. Sales of my first reader have been unsurprisingly miniscule, but I’m not bothered by this. My market is niche, and I derive a lot of benefit from the preparation of these texts.

My other plan for summer here going forward is to turn attention back to article writing and really get a few articles submitted over the next 4 months. I don’t lack for materials, but I do need to turn them into submissables.

I have no idea what I’ll be doing in 2017. I’m applying for jobs, obviously, but I have an unhealthy pessimism about employment in contrast to my otherwise general optimism. If I can find a few more online students, I’d be happy to take them on for the year ahead. We’ll see.

It’s a warm Saturday night and I’ve just polished off some delicious milo as I type this. In the morning the lords of time and date decree that we will lose an hour to make summer more bearable (they are wise, because I’ve been getting up at 5:30 this week, and without daylight savings time, it’ll be 4:30 by the middle of summer, which reminds me of Mongolian summer which was very productive).

This, if you haven’t realised, is me at my rambling best.

Very little to report on ‘the projects’. I did receive a lovely email a few weeks past asking about my shelved Greek Ørberg work. Happy to share that around, such as it is.

I, of course, am about waist-deep in trying to bring my thesis to completion by mid-November. This is stymied by the delightful distraction of only studying 3 days a week and looking after a beautiful 6 month old for 2 days a week (out of 5, if you’re confused by my maths).

That thesis is coming along well, but a metric tonne of work remains to be done. A lot of editing, revising, formatting, following up references, incorporating some material, and a bit of writing.

I’m also applying for jobs for which I have great anti-enthusiasm and a fair share of pessimism. I’m hyper-aware of the defects in my c.v. and my applications, which are generally fixable but I can’t fix them right now.

One of those is my lack of publications. I have just an odd assortment of ‘things’ I’ve published, but I am missing those stand out bejewelled peer-reviewed prestige journal articles. Partly, I believe, because my doctoral candidature never pushed me hard enough to publish.

I can literally count up about six articles worth of material that I have sitting in digital form. Some of these need more work than others. One has been rejected once so far. All need sustained attention to bring them to fruition. But time and the self-review has never been my friend here.

So right now, I have been carving out a minimal but important amount of time to diligently work through Wendy Laura Belcher’s  Writing Your Journal Article in 12 weeks. Though I’ve read a couple of really helpful books about article writing, this is a workbook designed to get you doing the process. So I’ve got a single article that parallels some thesis material that I’m working over for resubmission.

Once the thesis is done my secondary plan is to start working over those other article materials at a staggered schedule and just keep at it until I (a) fix the deficit in my c.v. (b) become habituated to a work flow that results in journal articles.

Of course, this is all future plans, which helps my current job applications not one whit. Hence, healthy pessimism.

Then, too, I have some good ‘projects’ lined up to resume – again, once that thesis is done and submitted. Until then, almost everything else must wait.

On the just passed Friday and Saturday I was delighted to attend the Seventh Saint Andrew’s Patristic Symposium at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College, Sydney. The topic was Chrysostom, and the keynote speakers were Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen. Top class speakers!

Anyway, I have uploaded a recording of my own presentation, “Chrysostom: Proof Texts and Problem Texts” which you may listen to at your leisure. I think with a bit more work it will turn into a nice article of its own.

This is my introductory paragraph and my written description of contents:

The following study compares the exegetical practices of two authors, Basil of Caesarea and Hilary of Poitiers, in two of their most significant works, Contra Eunomium and De Trinitate, in order to demonstrate that one of the features of fourth century theologians that are traditionally identified as ‘Orthodox’ or ‘Pro-Nicene’ is their common exegetical practice. It thereby explores the larger question, of whether pro-Nicene exegesis is a consistent phenomenon, in light of a small question, of the extent of similarity between Basil and Hilary writing in the early 360s.

The study proceeds in two sections. In the first, I survey recent revisionism around the concept of pro-Nicenism and the general historiography of the fourth century theological debates, examine the work of Hanson, Behr, Ayres, and Anatolios, and move towards a synthesis of this recent revisionism. This provides the basis for the construction of the idea of pro-Nicenism and the context in which pro-Nicene exegesis may be configured. In the following chapter, I provide a historical contextualisation of the fourth century debates leading up to the writing of the two focus texts, a survey of approaches to Basil and Hilary, in these two texts and in relation to exegetical practice and Trinitarian doctrine, and lastly a brief synopsis of the argument structures of the two texts.

In the second part, we turn to a series of analyses of primary themes, practices and texts in the two authors, placing their treatment of Scriptural passages in comparison to each other, as well as situating them in relation to other key authors of both pro-Nicene and non-Nicene theologies. These analyses focus on key texts and themes, including Partitive Exegesis (chapter three), the Johannine prologue (chapter four), the language of ‘made’ applied to the Son and its associated texts (chapters five and six), the relationship between power and nature and ‘equality’-texts (chapter seven), and John 14:28 as a problem text (chapter eight).