re-re-thinking online theological education (part 3: community)

In our previous two posts we reflected on what for and who for theological education exists, before discussing (albeit far far too briefly), what education is. In this post I turn to consider the question of ‘communities’ – which communities are in view when we talk about education as a formative experience.

If education is merely the transfer and acquisition of knowledge, then community is actually irrelevant. Who cares who sits next to me in the lecture hall or the dining table or the library, as long as I acquire data to store in my head? Yet, we are not such machines. Knowledge is a richer tapestry than mere pieces of fact. Human learning is always contextualised, and we are embodied beings who learn in relationship. We learn from people, alongside people, and in conversation with people.

Now, of course, we don’t have to do so, but the act of a sole person sitting along reading a book is also formative. It’s formative in two other senses: (1) reading books is a means of human relationship mediated by technology across space and time, in which one person speaks but never hears, and the reader hears but never speaks back (or, they may reply, but the writer [generally] will never hear them). It’s a one-way, slightly parasocial, relation. (2) The person is alone. They may exist in community in other contexts, but given enough time spent reading alone, they are making a deliberate choice towards the solitary life, and that deserves its own reflection. So too the person who acquires knowledge sitting at the screen, consuming videos and web pages.

Most of us, though, are wired for some forms of communities, and those communities are inevitably formative on us. We both shape other people by our relating to them, and are shaped by them, as we act and be together. The conversations in class, or at lunch, or walking across campus. But also activities – if we work together, play together, sing together, pray together, all these inculcate patterns of living into us and create us into the future person we will be.

In my imagined prior context, it is inevitable that the residential full-time campus is a primary locus of community for seminarians. They come to live together, and for those 3-4 years, are shaped by (i) their cohort, (ii) their instructors, (iii) the normative rule of life in that community. That’s part and parcel of what a seminary offered in terms of spiritual and personal formation – you come to us, live with us, and are shaped by who we are and what we do, and after a few years of that, you’ll come out changed in certain ways. Not a guaranteed cookie-cutter process, but the products of such education bear enough similar traits that people can say, “Oh, so-and-so went to X college, you can expect Y of them”. Certainly true (generally) of the theological college I trained in.

This is not the only pattern of community formation we can think about though. The other community that most theological students inhabit is likely to be that of their local congregation. Whether they be full-time students who participate in an outside congregational setting weekly, or whether they be students already in ecclesial communities who study part or full time but are resident instead in their congregational location. This kind of community can be as rich and a formative one, but two problems immediately arise. Firstly, it’s out of the control of the theological college. Let’s imagine a congregation, First Eastern Orthodox Mennonite of Nowheresville (no, there are no E.O mennonites). Whatever the quality and shape of community life at FEOMN, the seminary has no control – they can’t guarantee patterns of life (prayer, worship, service, etc) that will shape their student who lives and ministers there. So their control over the formative community patterns for our student X is limited, very limited, to actual engagement in classes, whether online or just part-time in person. Which also means that they have fair less guarantee that student X comes out bearing something like the “college brand” in terms of spiritual and character development.

Now, it may be that FEOMN is an amazing ecclesial community, with very deep practices, spiritual mentoring, rhythms of daily prayer and worship, etc., that do form student X well and deeply, and into the kind of person that both College Y and FEOMN want. But this is happening under the aegis of the local church community, and most colleges feel this is something that ought to be theirs. More pressing, I would say, is that theological colleges are semi-unique places, comparable in some ways to monasteries. They are somewhat secluded from ‘real life’. They are intentional communities. You don’t find a high volume of people in your local congregation who are devoted to a high level of ‘religious’ commitment in terms of studying theology, and living a spiritually oriented life. Sometimes you do, but not generally, because choosing to spend your life that way is often what lands seminarians at seminary in the first place.

This brings me explicitly to the second problem – theological colleges feel it’s their job to do that level of spiritual and character formation, in order to put a big ol’ “seal of college X” on a graduate. If students, both future vocational minister, but also the broader demographic of “anybody seeking higher theological education”, choose to remain in their ‘home’ communities, then the onus for that development goes back onto home communities, which means in turn we need to ask how do we equip churches to do robust spiritual formation of their own people. This requires a greater dialogue between colleges and churches.

I will say that there is one great advantage of someone remaining in the community of faith that they grew up in (whether from childhood, or in the faith) – people “going off to seminary” more often then go on to other things than return to serve those people. This is especially true when social and cultural dislocation occurs, I would hypothesise (I only have anecdata). That is, pull someone out of a minoritised culture and put them into a majority culture theological education, and majority culture communities, to learn “proper theology”, and they are going to find it harder to “go back”, for various reasons. Keep them in their home community and help them do contextualised theology, and they are more likely to flourish and to serve that community long term.

I have other thoughts to say about online especially in this question of community, but we’ll save that for our next post, on what happens when we go online.

re-re-thinking online theological education (part 2: What is education?)

In the previous post in this series, I began to reflect upon the nature of theological education, and online education in particular, through the lens of what for and who for. In this post I want to turn our attention to “what” education is. What exactly do we think we are doing when we are educating people. Let me offer a suggestive taxonomy:
  1. Content transfer
  2. Skill Development
  3. Character formation
If you open up most unit syllabi, really people think they are doing all three. They’ll talk about the content the unit is meant to impart, the skills students are meant to acquire, and the kinds of people they are also meant to become. But most course syllabi are 83.1235% educational jargon/fluff.

To wind back 70 years (again), most of what was happening in colleges was this: professor gets up and delivers lecture. Students furiously take notes. Repeat for the semester. Write a paper or two. Sit an exam. That model, by its praxis, is functioning primarily on the idea of content transfer – here is body of knowledge X which professor has, and you will acquire that body of knowledge by listening, reading, writing, and reproducing.

Education as a field has obviously shifted a great deal, and there is a considerable emphasis these days upon developing skills. Especially ‘transferable’ ones. In humanities education, this often looks like (theoretically), teaching students to think critically, evaluate arguments, research effectively, argue persuasively. It still involves content transfer, especially acquiring enough of a foundational basis in a discipline to do those other things effectively.

If we think about skill development though, I’d say that a lot of our education models have moved far away from fairly static “here is knowledge, now apply” models, even if that continues to persist in actual education. If we want future-ministers to develop a certain set of pastoral skills, isn’t that better done through a process of mentorship, practica, ongoing analysis and feedback, as they do they things they are meant to do, and then critical reflect and evaluate, and apply theory-informed knowledge back to those skills. It seems to me that most of that kind of work does not happen in a seminary context, even less so in an online context. Arguably you can train future-pastors in rhetoric as public speaking, but not in preaching as community-embedded pastoral application of Scripture unless they are in a relevant community (a question we’ll return to).

On the other hand, those who are accessing theological education precisely because they already are in extra-campus situations where they are involved in ministry or the application of theology, arguably are better situated to practice active models of skill development, precisely because they are practicing and applying relevant ministry skills in a ministry context. Then it becomes a question of how does an online course facilitate that process.

Let’s turn, though, to the third element of character formation, and specifically for seminaries this is spiritual formation. Character development is probably the most nebulous part of theological education. It’s so hard to quantify, so hard to program for, so hard to ‘guarantee’. Yet I would also say that colleges are staking their reputation on it. Congregations do want to know, “okay, so and so comes from seminary X, I can expect them to be this kind of person, with this set of beliefs, and this kind of character”. That happens in person when theological colleges are residential communities because in-person face-to-face time shapes who we are through the rhythms and practices of life together. It’s not perfect, it’s not fail-safe, but I think that’s how true character formation happens. Who we are is shaped by the people we are with and what we do together. It occurs in thick relationships and they really only flourish when we spend considerable time together. Quantity of time cannot be short-cut. Nor can it properly be replaced with quality time.

This is seminaries’ major concern with online – what happens to spiritual formation of students who only access theological education online and at distance? And this issue goes beyond the population of ‘future ministers’ to all students at theological educations – what sort of people are they, what sort of people will they become, and how does a college’s reputation play in to “this person is a graduate”?

It’s this kind of question that I think is most, most pressing, and it can’t be resolved until at least part 4, when we talk about what happens when we go online. But at this stage we need to be thinking about what education is, and to the extent that all three of the above things are distinct yet interconnected, we also need to be thinking about what best practice for in-person theological education ought to be.

re-re-thinking online theological education (part 1)

In this and a series of subsequent posts I’m going to think-out-loud my thoughts on theological colleges, seminaries, and online education. If you’re here usually for mostly classical language pedagogy, feel free to take a short break from reading! But otherwise, we’re going to be thinking about five core questions:

  1. What is theological education for?
  2. Who is theological education for?
  3. What is education?
  4. Who are our communities?
  5. What happens when we go online?

And in today’s post I’m discussing the first two of these questions: what is TE for, and who is it for?

If we rewind 70 years or so, and think about the nature of theological colleges as seminaries, that is as training places for preparing (almost entirely young men) people for a career-length vocation as ministers in denominational settings, I think we get a clearer sense of the earlier version of theological colleges. Those were places generally, where you could expect a man, often unmarried, to come and live for 3-4 years and be trained in how to be a pastor. They’d then go out, get a church, and be in (the) ministry for 30-60 years.
In that historical context, theological education exists for the purpose of producing trained vocational staff for the church. That is still very much part of the rationale for theological colleges – they train ministers. However, that is not all they do, and shifts in (i) ministry-patterns, (ii) education-patterns, (iii) broader demographic changes, all mean that:
  1. less and less people present as young unmarried persons ready to enter a lifetime of vocational ministry. They are often older, married, with children, and they are less likely to spend a whole ‘career’ in congregational ministry (because our patterns of work, career, vocation, etc., have also changed).
  2. who goes to theological college has also changed, as education more broadly has become more accessible, more piecemeal, and more ‘configurable’. Few colleges offer only a single “here’s the 3-year package, sign up and enlist” model. Much more common are multiple degree programs, wide selection of electives, modular, part-time, etc., etc., which increases the diversity of people entering theological college, and hence changes the intended outcome
That means that theological colleges are preparing a broader range of people for different outcomes. No longer is “you will go and be a minister” the sole outcome of a seminary’s training program. And so the what for has shifted.
I think recognising and wrestling with this shift is incredibly important, because theological colleges are essentially trying to do (at least) two main things. (1) continue to train and produce vocational ministers for congregational settings (e.g. your local pastor, your parish priest, etc).. and (2) provide access to tertiary-level education in theology for anyone who wants it, including a broad range of people training for other forms of Christian ministry that aren’t congregational-minister. What’s best for those two groups is interrelated, but the demands you may be prepared to put on group 1, don’t necessarily apply to group 2.
So, what theological education is for is actually tied up with who it’s for. And the shift to open the doors of theological colleges to a wide variety of people seeking deeper theological knowledge, either for their own growth, or very often for greater capacity for service, whether formal or informal, paid or unpaid, in the church, in parachurch organisations, outside the church – that shift is a good thing because it takes “theological education” out of an elite reserved only for a ministerial class, and opens it up to the people. I think it’s reasonable then to claim that theological education institutes exist to “instruct and form people in the knowledge of God for the works of God in the world”. I just made that up, and I might revise it in later posts.
All that said, what we expect of theological colleges still must concern group 1: what sort of theological training ought a college offer to produce “ministers”, full-time vocational congregational church workers. That I think is a question that ought not go away. And the what for, for them, is closely bound up in “what attributes should a graduate of this college take with them when they go from here, out to take up a position as (often) the pastoral leader of a church?” These questions of “what for” and “who for” and inevitable bound up with our next question, what is education?

Reflections on the practice of reading, GTM vs ComAp, mental translation, and other things

This post is a response to a twitter thread by David Schroder, responding to another twitter thread by biblingo, responding to another twitter thread by me. Twitter threads three-deep. Anyway, David is a current student of mine, and biblingo are friends-in-languages, so this is written in a spirit of dialogue and reflection.
For full disclosure, I first learnt Greek and Latin (and Hebrew) via GTM. I was a master of explicit grammar, and rote-memorised vocab relentlessly (down to about 2 or 3 occurrences for the New Testament). And let me say that GTM ‘works’. If you hear me regularly dunking on GTM, that might surprise you, but GTM works. But it doesn’t work well or efficiently.
See, I got to a point of reading the NT fairly well, because I poured hours and hours into it. I really doubt that many other people in my seminary cohort reached that point, not for years later. So, let’s just accept that I’m an outlier. This isn’t meant to be boasting, I don’t know that I’m “gifted” in languages, I’m just a smart person who put inordinate amounts of time into Greek. I would regularly leave Greek grammar exams after 15 mins with everything complete.
But let’s consider: (a) what does it mean for GTM to ‘work’, (b) why does GTM ‘work’, and (c) is that a good reason to uphold it as a general practice.
I take it that one of the main intended outcomes of GTM is that students can read ancient texts with comprehension. When I say, “read”, I mean “mentally process the words on the page, without resorting to translation in order to understand, in a process analogous if not quite identical to native-language reading”. I don’t mean “producing a translation”.
That’s not the only imagined-intended outcome of GTM, many would add in a lot of things like grammatical analysis, exegetical process, etc.. But I take it that many GTM practitioners believe that with enough translation-to-understand, the process becomes faster, more automated, and eventually becomes internalised, hence ‘reading’.
I don’t think GTM works like that, when it works. The field of SLA seems fairly unified in saying that acquisition comes (primarily) via input, and input is exposure to comprehensible messages in the target language. That’s not that controversial, even if certain elements of Krashen, VanPatten, etc., like to be pushed-back on by SLA researchers. You don’t need to join a Krashen bandwagon to back that input is the primary driver of acquisition.
So what GTM does do, is it makes a text comprehensible, which means that the Greek is functioning as input. The ratio of work to comprehensible input is incredibly high though, which means it’s a very inefficient way of getting input. Say you spend half an hour translating Eph 1:3-14, which is 217 words. As opposed to reading or listening to readily comprehensible material at your level, at a very very conservative 70 wpm (I’m basing this on a reasonable reading speed in an L2, and/or very slow and controlled speech). That’s a difference of input by a factor of 10.
One of the main “slowers” of reading texts (apart from the paucity of suitable material for learners) is just unknown vocab. This is why reader’s editions, student texts, etc., are incredibly useful. It is helpful to be able to glance to the bottom of the page or across to a facing text, get a quick L1 gloss, and then return to the text. You don’t need to have L1 immersion. Creating something like LLPSI is an incredibly difficult task. Whatever keeps learners reading in the L2 is worth doing, and you can sacrifice some ‘purity’ about keeping it in the L2 to do so.
I mentioned above that I brute-forced my way to a large NT Greek vocabulary. People like me who (now) suggest that flashcards aren’t that great, that needs some qualification. Spaced Repetition memory work does work. But again, we need to talk about what ‘working’ means. SRS works really well at memorising discrete chunks of information and holding them in your memory. For vocabulary work that is really quite limited to recognising an L2 word and being able to retrieve a couple of glosses in your L1. That does work, in the sense that you can learn a lot of words this way, but vocabulary knowledge is not a binary of know/don’t know, and it’s not as simple as “I know this word, it means X gloss in my L1”. Vocabulary knowledge is multifaceted, and its networked. It’s knowing, I dare say feeling the vibe of a word in the target language, as part of a web of meanings across the rest of the language-system. That comes via building up a long-term extensive mental representation of the language.
So, yes, ANKI or whatever is beneficial. And honestly, acquiring vocabulary from context in reading is better, but it’s also harder, because you generally have to be reading texts in which you understand 95% or more (98% is good) of the words already, which we simply don’t have enough texts designed like that.
I’m going to turn to the question of mental translation for a moment. I’ve written about most of the above in various posts here, but I’m not sure I’ve ever talked about this issue specifically. I want to say it’s okay if your brain can’t help translate on the fly while you’re reading. In fact, to some extent I think this is unavoidable. What I tell students is to neither encourage nor fight this. We want to encourage our brain to think in the target language. That is entirely doable, especially if we start by communicating in the language, building up prompt/response, q/a, dialogue in which L2 is given, and L2 is given back. For me it’s a bit like a ‘switch’, which I’ve written about here
So we want to encourage the brain to operate in the L2, but it’s probably going to keep on giving you some running translation in the background. That’s fine. Don’t fight it. Fighting it is actually encouraging it, like not thinking about purple elephants. I don’t have any particular theory or research for this point, this one’s entirely personal anecdata. But give it a go, don’t worry about it, don’t fight it, don’t encourage it, just keep bringing the mind back to operating in the language.
To return to whether GTM is worth it. My particular perspective is that a proper communicative approach can achieve genuine acquisition, in a shorter time period overall, with more fun, less toil, greater inclusion, and more people along for the ride. Nor do I think, if it’s thoughtfully done, do you need to ‘sacrifice’ what “Grammar” promises. Linguistic analysis, complex discussions, etc., can still be done. I would delay them, do them separately in English, or boldly train students to do them in the L2, but they can still have a place, and I think they would have a richer place among students who have developed an intuitive sense of, e.g., the feel of ἐφ’ ᾧ, not evaluating a list of options they’ve found in a commentary.

On forgetting languages

What’s it like to forget a language? or two? And what does that mean for acquired vs. ‘learned’ language? In this post I reflect upon my experience with two separate languages, and how different forgetting can be.

Learning

(Biblical) Hebrew

I studied Biblical Hebrew in Seminary, for three years way back in 2004-2007. It was all grammar translation (GTM), and I did quite well. I learnt my paradigms, used brute force rote-memorisation to get a lot of vocab in my head, and passed my exams, and took my Old Testament subjects on the Hebrew text rather than English. I didn’t do a fourth year though, and I didn’t really continue on with Hebrew in a significant way. I could use my grammatical knowledge to leverage commentaries, I’d occasionally employ it in sermons, but I didn’t have any ongoing regular use of the language. In 2014 while in Mongolia I ended up teaching a Hebrew exegesis course on Amos, which would not have been my choice! Anyway, I still had enough conceptual knowledge that I could work over a text and parse/analyse to figure out its meaning and how to teach it. This, though, is a long way from an active knowledge, let alone even a passive reading knowledge. These days I recognise that I actually don’t know Hebrew. I’ve begun again with more communicative-based approaches, because I believe only that will stick.

Mongolian

I learnt Mongolian in Mongolia. In 2012 I started, with one-on-one tuition for 4.5 hrs a day, 5x a week. Beyond that we were involved, though not heavily involved, in day to day life with Mongolian speakers, e.g. at our Mongolian church. After the first year I began teaching, while still doing some language specific work, but now I was working/operating in a Mongolian environment. I taught exegesis classes in New Testament, primarily in Mongolian, and then other content-based classes usually with a translator. By our third and final full year in Mongolia, I could happily participate in most conversations, teach in the language, and deliver sermons, but it was still stretching my abilities. Nevertheless, it was an acquired language that I was competently proficient in.

Forgetting

2015 is the last year I spent time in Mongolia. I’ve had a very few occasions to speak it since, but they are uncommon. I made the choice not to spend significant amounts of time maintaining the language, which I could have. That is, I could read/listen/watch and otherwise consume Mongolian content, but I don’t because I’ve chosen to invest my time elsewhere. And yet, the difference in my forgetting of these two languages is marked to me. I literally don’t know any Hebrew, beyond the little I’ve relearned in recent study. I couldn’t produce a paradigm, I read words that are basic and high frequency and don’t recognise them, I can’t get through anything more than a basic sentence. It’s like I never learnt it at all. That’s what it feels like to forget a GTM learned language – you have to start over. Sure, there are bits and pieces of knowledge in my head, which come out and re-activate, but it’s fragmented and it’s not a system. Mongolian is more like… dormant. If I try, I can switch my mind over and formulate complete fluent sentences with good idiomatic, even informal, language. I could probably hold a conversation, but it would be a little slow. I often can’t find a word that I know, but if I then hear it I recognise it with an, “aha, of course”. I’m sure it is becoming more dormant, like a dragon in a long slumber, but I also know that it could be reawakened. Because it’s a complete linguistic system in my mind, and I could functionally operate in Mongolian.

That, for me, is the difference in forgetting a ‘learned’ and an acquired language.

Why the study of the classics? Why humanities? Some thoughts in progress

“Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.”

~ Calvin, the Institutes 1.1.1

 

This may seem an odd place to start a discursive piece reflecting on the place of the classics, but here Calvin divides all knowledge into two parts : the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. Putting aside the question of the knowledge of the rest of creation that is not human, that which is not theology is the humanities. And the humanities are, I would argue, the study of what it is to be human. For those who do not share a belief in God, what else is there to study but what there is to be human? And for those who do, we are inescapably bound by our human condition, whether we reflect upon it or not.

 

It is because we are interested in the human, that we engage the classics. We read classics because human nature, arguably, does not change. Times and places do, but what is it to be human? We share far more with those of Rome and Greece, than the degree by which we differ from them. We are engaged in a movement from the particular to the common, and back again. So classics is a conversation across centuries. It is a multifaceted conversation. I read Vergil because I am interested in understanding Vergil, and because I am interested in what Vergil says about who we are as humans, yet at the same time I am listening for the differences, the vast gulf of culture and chaos between then and now, between them and me. I am listening for what is the same and what is different, and exploring the spaces in between. At the same time, the very fact that I read Vergil raises other questions – who is not in this conversation? who has been excluded from this conversation? who could I invite to this conversation? and are there times when Vergil should not be invited to the conversation?

 

We read classics, too, because we are storied creatures. We inhabit narratives. We are the product of time and causality, both real and fictious. Our world, whether we like it or not, is shaped by the histories of antiquity, and we do better to understand this world by understanding the worlds that went before. That, however, is also true of other histories, which also deserve our collective attention. The histories, cultures, and literatures of certain Mediterranean peoples are not intrinsically or inherently more worthy of our attention than others. The history of Europe, its colonialism, imperialism, and thus inordinately large influence on the rest of the world, has been a reason for a historical weight given to its cultures, etc.. That creates almost a paradox. On the one hand, to understand our own world, we are to some degree obliged to engage those histories; on the other, the way those histories are intertwined with the historical injustices that create our present moment, and have silenced other peoples and peoples’, warrants that we turn our attention to minoritised voices.

 

We also are creatures that tell stories, and the way we tell those stories, what we include and what we exclude, is as important, often more important, than the contents of those stories themselves. That the classics have positioned themselves as the basis of western civilisation is both a given and a contested. Indeed, we ought to wrestle with how and why it is a ‘given’, as well as how it ought to be contested. If we want to understand why the so-called western world has privileged the classics, esp. in a canonical sense, and how this shapes our present, things like contemporary and historical white supremacism, we need to understand how the classics has evolved to situate and tell that story, even at the same time that we can critique that narrative. The stories of European imperialism, colonialism, the emergence of the very concept of Western Civilisation, the construction of whiteness and race, the role of classics as a discipline in evolving an idea of classics that grafts the present onto the past as a legitimising tool of power and oppression – all these are stories that require our critical engagement and analysis, at the same time that we critically read the stories that are their content, and the stories currently being told about them. Stories shape who we are, but they can be reshaped. 

 

We read classics because we are humans are interpreters. We talk, and the only way forward is to talk more. In this sense all discourse is recourse, it builds and responds to what has been said before. Reading outside the canonical construct of the ‘canon’ does not necessarily mean rejecting the canon, but it can mean and should mean de-canonising the canon. Is Homer worth reading? Yes, but perhaps not for the reasons Homer was read before. And not because other things aren’t worth reading. By choosing to read other things, and not choosing to make it compulsory to read Homer, or assuming that everyone has or does, we broaden our conversation. That conversation goes on, because we are talking creatures, and the only alternative is silence. We engage in a conversation that involves the living and the dead, to understand ourselves and each other, and the more parties we bring to that conversation, the greater our learning.

 

We read classics because in studying the past, we retell the past, and in telling the past, we speak the now and shape the future. How we tell the past reveals who we think we are, and what we think we’ll do. 

 

To return to the start – I think we do humanities precisely because we are human and so we are subject to certain conditions – the finitude of our human existence, the longings of the heart, the capacities of our flesh, the finite certitude of death. And within those bounds we long to understand ourselves and each other, and the primary means of doing so is speech. We learn languages to communicate. Latin, and Greek, due to certain social and historical factors, their intertwined histories as languages of empire not least, open a door to millenia of texts across six continents, from a vast number of speakers. That is a particular reason to learn them and put them to use, but it is not an exclusive one. I do not think Latin or Greek is privileged in that sense, indeed I think there is incredible value in learning other languages and engaging other histories, cultures, literatures, and oral traditions, because we are the poorer when we don’t engage those voices.

 

At the same time, the very finitude of human existence means we, as individuals shall never learn all languages, engage all cultures, hear all voices, or read all texts. The choice of a particular individual to read particular texts is grounded in finitude. Which means that part of the value of humanities is not the objects, but the nature, of the study itself. Not in the trite and utilitarian sense of “develops cognitive skills, builds close analysis, logic” etc trotted out to convince students of the neo-liberalist pay-off of being better cogs in a capitalism machine. Rather, sustained, critical communication, whether interpretation or expression, makes us better dialogue partners, and thinkers, if the content of our communication drives us back to the central questions of what it means to be human. 

 

Classics as a discipline was born from an inherently privileged context: the notion of the liberal arts, the cultivation of humanitas as what pertains to noble, landed, freeborn, Roman male enslavers. We are not them, nor should we idealise them. And yet, the discipline itself taught us the tools of its own destruction – to closely read texts and ask questions, disturbing and critical questions. It is that questioning that leads us into new spaces, new ways of approaching texts, so that the texts of the past may be asked new questions, even as we ask age-old questions by listening to, and at times privileging, new voices, or neglected and marginalised old ones.

 

This is why I read classics.

Projects and Processes

I know, I am notorious for starting new projects, and not necessarily finishing them. Anyway, that’s a personal flaw I’m working on. In this post I’m going to talk about two newish projects I’m working on and a bit about how I’m tackling them.

Both of them are “Readers”, i.e. graded reading texts designed for introductory and intermediate students. In each case I’m specifically keying them to an existing resource, the Greek one μὲν to Athenaze, the Latin one δὲ to LLPSI.

Why key to an existing resource?

Simply, I teach with both these texts, and I quite like them, and don’t think I could currently improve on them (well, LGPSI is a different story, and I am still working on that). I don’t want to replace either of them, but I do want to create new resources that would work alongside those, and expand students’ options and reading material.

What are these readers?

The Greek one is designed to create a narrative that piggy-backs of Athenaze but moves the reader into the world, and the language, of the New Testament. It solves a problem that I have, which is that I prefer to teach NT and Koine students from Athenaze, but if you only read Athenaze you end up with a very atticising Greek, and you don’t have quite the exposure to New Testament vocabulary and idiom that I’d like. A supplementary reader can: (a) broader a students’ reading, (b) build of their Athenaze knowledge, (c) prepare and engage them for NT specific vocabulary, syntax, and content.

I’m calling it Γαλιλίᾱθεν for the moment.

The LLPSI one is designed to mirror and match LLPSI: Familia Romana. FR does an amazing job, despite its flaws, and I have no need nor desire to really replace it. But we could always do with “more reading”. Which, also, the Latin novella industry is doing a nice job of filling. But I want to tell new stories, and I want to tell non-ancient and non-Roman ones. That’s why this book is set in a dystopian cyberpunk future of 2122, with a female protagonist, and no Romans in sight. It exists in a shared universe with my (temporarily halted but not exactly dead) Elena story.

Processes

Given that I’m not terribly far along in either of these, this is what my process looks like: for each chapter/section, I look up what new vocabulary and “up to this point” vocabulary the touchstone text has used. I also look over the grammar covered. In the early chapters, some of the content is very similar, simply because the working material is limited. I also look at the length of each sections. For the Latin project, I do a word count on LLPSI and on Colloquia Personarum, and aim to be slightly longer than the CP reading. For Γαλιλίᾱθεν I aim to be around the same length, erring on the shorter side (the Italian edition readings are very long compared to the English edition ones). I try to introduce minimal new grammar, if possible; for vocabulary, my aims are divergent. In Γαλιλίᾱθεν  I’m consciously trying to substitute more common Koine words for Attic equivalents, as well as introduce some NT specific vocabulary. For the Latin, I’m trying to gently expand a reader’s vocabulary, to the point where I can tell a full-fledged story in the later half of the book.

Timeline and Release

The good news is that, at least for the present, I have some decent work processes in place that are keeping these (and other projects, including LGPSI!) moving forward at a reasonable pace. I plan to release some sections free to all. Others to my patreon, to moderately reward those backing me there, and once it’s done we’ll see about some kind of publishing. I would very much like to keep up a solid pace of a chapter a week, but that’s probably a little too ambitious.

 

 

Learn Ancient Greek from Athenaze with a Stand-Alone Video Course

The best way to learn Ancient Greek is with a live teacher, in person, with lots of contact time, speaking, talking, reading, writing. That’s not possible for everyone, and I don’t have a position that lets me teach like that anyway. It’s why SeumasU exists – to provide a way for people throughout the globe to learn Latin or Ancient Greek online, with live interaction, and to read a variety of texts that rarely get touched in traditional institutions. And if my courses don’t suit, I will happily point you to several other excellent online instructors in Latin and Greek.

And yet there are some people for whom live classes aren’t possible or viable. That’s one reason why I have been developing for quite some time now a stand-alone video course that takes you through Athenaze, with all the instruction you could expect from a teacher or professor. No, it doesn’t replicate live conversational classes. It does do everything else though.

The first part of this course is now complete. That is, all the core content is there and ready for someone to use and guide their own way through Athenaze, while still tackling it as a ‘live’ language. I’m now working to complete the core content for the second part, as well as create a considerable amount of bonus content for part one.

What’s in Part 1?

Part 1 of this course covers Athenaze chapters 1-8. After introductory material on the alphabet and orthography, we move into the main content.

Each module consists of 4 sets of videos.

Vocabulary Pre-Teaching: Introduces some of the key vocabulary for the chapter, with pictures, example sentences, links to English and Latin words. It’s a pre-step to get you ready for reading.

Text and Explanation: For each of the readings in Athenaze, I provide a teaching video where I guide you through the passage, giving English-language explanations of new elements as well as interesting features.

Greek Questions: For each reading I provide a subsequent video that demonstrates and exemplifies Greek questions and answers about the passage, section by section.

Grammar: The grammar videos cover, but do not replicate, the material in the textbook. Instead, you get my own take on the grammatical topics for each chapter, going above and beyond standard introductory explanations, and drawing upon contemporary approaches to Greek linguistics.

Bonus Videos: As the course expands, I’m adding bonus videos that dive into additional readings, as well as cover Greek grammar in Greek.

If you’re looking for an asynchronous online video course to guide you in your ancient Greek learning, this is it.

Ancient Greek 101

A short LGPSI update

I know that everyone is always excited to hear about LGPSI and what’s happening or not happening. I’m pleased to report that some things are happening. I try not to ever make promises about LGPSI progress, because I never want to disappoint you with expectations unfulfilled.

Firstly, I’m doing some revision work on the early chapters, primarily to put them into a more Ørbergised format, with margin notes, and with some ‘placeholder’ illustrations. These are generally stock images I’ve pulled to stick into the margins to give an idea of where I think illustrations should go. Chapters in this format are slowly being released to my handful of loyal patreon supporters.

Secondly, I’m doing some similar editing, marginalia, and proof-reading of chapters from about 10 onwards. Due to adjustments in chapter contents and storyline, some of the chapter-alignments are now out of date as well. As the text of these gets done, I’ll stick them into the repository, and I’ll release the draft Ørberg versions on patreon.

Thirdly, I’ve been running an “LGPSI+” class for several terms now, and we passed the previous point of written material some time ago (It was chapter 19). I have draft notes for new chapters from 17 up until 25, but they need to be written out from the draft material collaborated on in our classes and turned into full chapters. This is the third type of ‘work’ I’m doing. Those chapters will also see a text release on the repository and webpage, and a marginalia/image draft on patreon.

FAQ: When can you expect what? When it’s ready.

 

 

Mark Jeong’s Greek Reader: A Review

A Greek Reader: A companion to A Primer of Biblical Greek, by Mark Jeong. Eerdmans 2022

This review comes in two parts. Firstly, I’m going to give some general impressions and thoughts on the book as a whole. Following that, I have some specific notes on the Greek text throughout, combining things I found interesting, odd, or in a few cases that ought to be corrected.
Part 1: A Review
The spheres of language education in classics (here I specifically mean Greek and Latin), and biblical studies (primarily Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew) have lamentably not overlapped for a good while. While communicative approaches received a resurgence in Latin, Greek has sadly lagged behind. On the other hand, within biblical languages, it was probably Hebrew that received earlier attention. In both cases, Greek has been playing a catch-up game. The teaching of “New Testament” Greek in particular, in seminary settings, has been particularly recalcitrant, which is why I consider this book something of a landmark. Yes, there are excellent things going on in communicative Koine (I should know!), but very few have made their way to book form.
The first thing that strikes me, after opening this book, is that Jeong has definitely engaged with not just modern language education, but the current currents around communicative methods in ancient languages. This is marked by the references to CI, comprehensibility and compelling, and citations of Krashen, and Robert Patrick, in the  Introduction. At the same time, this volume ties itself to Croy’s A Primer of Biblical Greek, a fairly traditional grammar-based curriculum. It allows those bound with a more traditional textbook the opportunity to supplement, expand, or otherwise tweak the confines of their pedagogy, with a stand-alone resource that anyone could adapt to their own program (or private study).
There are 32 Lessons, mapped to Croy, with stories of increasing length. The Greek text of the stories is laid out on the left-hand page, with vocabulary and idiom notes on the right-hand pages, though these are not overwhelming. It’s always hard to know exactly how much help to provide, and I think Jeong strikes a good balance of assuming prior knowledge, presuming a student is also working with Croy or at least something similar. The text is laid out with generous margins and good spacing, so a student has plenty of space for annotating. The last section of the book contains English translations of all the stories, so a student can always check their understanding, particularly useful for someone studying without an instructor.
The stories generally follow a storyline imaginatively constructed around Paul, Onesimus, and Philemon. Interweaved with this main storyline are some shorter pieces drawing on Old Testament material, or stand-alone vignettes. The text evidences good repetition, creative reuse of vocabulary and structures (especially early on), a good grasp of biblical usage, and is a pleasure to read.
If you’re a professor of NT Greek, I’d commend this book for consideration as a useful auxiliary tool to whatever else you are already doing. If you’re a student of NT Greek, I’d also highly recommend this reader as a great source of graded, interesting, comprehensible Greek in a NT idiom. Even if you were a student of Attic or Classical Greek, this would make a good reading resource, unless you’re a person put off by reading anything Christian at all, in which case you should leave this book on the shelf.
As I state in my commentary below, writing original Greek is a challenging task, and Mark Jeong has done a sensational job here. May we see many more resources of this kind appear in the future!
My thanks to Eerdmans for a free copy of this book. This did not affect my thoughts in any way so far as I know. 
Part 2: Commentary and Errata
In the below notes I give the lesson (sometimes with a letter indicating which story), then page number, then line number (it’s a shame that line numbers don’t continue over page breaks!)
1.p2 The very first reading contains αὐτός and αὐτή used as default third person pronouns in the nominative, a feature of some Koine, but not universally. In my view, it’s better to treat this as a less-common feature of NT Koine, where I think our instinct should still be to read nominative forms αὐτός as at least mildly emphatic (setting aside their other uses).
Also, and this is by no means a criticism of Jeong alone, but could we acknowledge that there is a real historical oddity about saying that Ἰάκωβος means “James”?
2.p6.34 Δαυὶδ θέλει λυέιν τὸ βιβλίον. While it’s common knowledge that λύω is taught early in NT Greek grammars, and glossed  with “loosen, destroy”, I do wonder whether the most natural understanding of λύειν with a book as an object is “destroy”.
By lesson 3 we are getting more of a story going. Yet, and anyone who’s written original composition in Greek will know this, it’s *really* hard to write “natural sounding” Greek, especially when it’s grammatically or vocabulary sheltered. And this is struggling early on. That said, it’s understandable, and it’s grammatical, and that’s really all we should be judging it on. The reader improves as the book goes on.
3D.p14.26 a strict γραμματεύς might complain that ἀκούειν should take an accusative object when it’s the sound heard rather than the person.
4A.p18.3-4 τὸ τέκνον ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ δούλου ἐστίν. I personally feel this is a place where I would have dropped the article from the predicate complement. I actually took a dive into predicate complements in the New Testament where both Subject and Predicate are definite nouns, and I would argue that a bit more nuance is required about when and where the article is used on the predicate in these situations. See also Smyth 1150-52
5AS.p22. In chapter 5 we begin to get discourse about δοῦλος καλός and δοῦλος πονηρός. One thing I have critically reflected upon having worked with Lingua Latina PSI for so long, is the way in which almost all of these intro textbooks, by privileging enslaver/enslaved nouns and good/bad early on, is that good enslaved people work hard and obey their enslavers, bad enslaved people are ‘lazy’ and ‘don’t want to work’. So, while this represents historically accurate (for some periods and places) depiction of how enslavers think enslaved people should be morally evaluated, do we as authors of pedagogical materials want to simply reiterate that presentation in classroom materials.
7A.p32.24 Can Paul really be called a βάρβαρος, except as a rhetorical move?
7A.p32.29: ὀχλοί does often appear as plural in the NT, though I wonder at introducing it as a plural.
7B.p34.5 ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὁ ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ – I find this a surprising use of an attributive phrase, because its content seems like it should be adverbial.
7B.p34.16 οὐκ ἔστι αὐτός … This is a good example of how even in the NT, the nominative αὐτός probably shouldn’t be treated as a default 3rd person pronoun, as we see in the source text John 6:42, οὗτος
8A.p36 introduces demonstratives, especially as adjectives. The difficulty I encounter here is that it feels like “input flooding” – every 2 out of 3 noun phrases has a demonstrative tacked on, and this feels unnatural.
8B.p38 Philemon is baptised in the sea in Colossae. But Colossae is located inland in Phrygia, and there is no sea nor lake near it.
9A.p40 I suppose this whole ‘sea’ problem is created by following Croy’s vocabulary, because here again the Ethiopian eunuch is being baptised in a ‘sea’.
9B.p24.14 I think the second δέ is odd, following on from the question.
One of the nice features of Jeong’s reader is the way it moves back and forth between adapting Scripture passages, including from the Old Testament, and then reusing those words, phrases, and structures in continuing the main storyline of Philemon (and Onesimos)
10Β.p48.17 μένει μετ’ αὐτόν reads a little oddly to me. I suspect ὄπισθεν would have done better here.
10B.p48.31  ποτε reads a little oddly here, since the sense of ‘on one previous occasion’ is not in view. πρότερον seems more natural to me.
Also I wonder what social situation Jeong imagines where the mere presence of a stranger elicits mob intervention.
12A.p52.20 τοῦτο τὸ τέκνον ἐστίν reads as an odd word ordering to me.
Also, this narrative itself is a little odd!
14Α.p60.32    εἰ in a protasis should rarely be followed by οὐ. I believe this occurs twice in the NT, in Mt 26·42, Jn 10:37. Explanations for εἰ + οὐ can be found, e.g. Symth 2696, 2698, but the construction is rare enough that it probably shouldn’t be modelled.
Generally I find that composed writing for Greek conditionals runs the danger of choosing a simpler conditional option (especially general/open conditionals) rather than what seems a more correct/appropriate conditional, simply because a learner has yet to meet more complex forms. This seems to be the case in Lesson 14 throughout.
14A.p62.15 has a nice play on Ἰησοῦς as Joshua/Jesus.
Though, having now just encountered it, it’s a shame that line numbers do not run over pages, but reset for each page.
14B.p62.26 I think ἀπό φυλακῆς would be better as ἐκ φυλακῆς
14B.p64.21 is a good example of the kind of situation that Koine might be inclined to retain the accusative of thing heard, e.g. φωνὰς ἀνθρώπων rather than φωνῶν ἀνθρώπων
14.p66 here we see Koine ἦς for Attic ἦσθα
15A.p68 Here and later on in the work we often get ἕτερος where my preference is for ἄλλος. Now, partly this is because I’ve shifted to a more Atticising idiom in my own Greek, and my sense of ἕτερος tends to either (a) the other of two, (b) another that is different in kind, whereas both these distinctions have somewhat (not always) collapsed in Koine.
I also want to observe here that Jeong’s reader pervasively uses infinitives of purpose. Which is a very common construction in the New Testament, but partly it seems to be in use because the subjunctive is delayed in Duff. This is another besetting problem in graded readers shaped by a grammatical curriculum – you distort your usage based on what grammar you’ve introduced, not on what might be appropriate and/or common. Not that purpose infinitives are rare, but their use precludes other structures.
15B.p70.25 – θεέ is found in LXX, NT and Christian texts as a vocative, but students might like to know that elsewhere there is no distinct vocative.
16.p74 the opening paragraph appears to be a reprint of the last paragraph on p73, not for an intentional repetition, just the same text.
18.p80 – I always suspected that I’d have some qualms about how a Philemon/Onesimus story might deal with slavery. Part of my question at this point is whether an enslaver (Philemon) would conceive of his actions against his enslaved persons as ‘sin’? E.g. Does Philemon think, at this point, that he has wronged his enslaved persons by enslaving them? Or simply that he has mistreated them?
18.p82.1 I really think θεός should have been ὁ θεός here.
19 (p84) involves a retelling of the disagreement/breakdown between Syntyche and Euodia, and I think this is marvellously done – imaginative, constructive, drawing on good materials, weaving it together in a comprehensible and compelling way.
20A.p86.3
it’s here that we first meet a periphrastic verbal construction. Again my Atticising tendencies reveal themselves – I am not a fan of it except in perfect middle/passive constructions. However, Jeong uses it sparingly and in ways that map to NT Usage.
20A.p86.14    a bit of asyndeton here.
20A.p86.16 and following. Here’s another place where I wonder about the imagined historical context of our story. Onesimos talks about his former life as a small boat owner, and how the ‘ruler of another land’ came and attacked their kingdom. Does Onesimos come from some small kingdom on the further shores of the Black Sea or something?
20A.p86.16    I’d delete the comma after ὦ
21.p92.3 contains a good example of trusting your text over your intuition. I had some qualms about πολλάκις with συνήχθη, particularly because the verb is aorist. But the construction is modelled of Jn 18.2 which has precisely this combination.
22A.p94.6 and 18 The text has ὁ μὲν τέκνον and then later ὁ δὲ τέκνον. I would characterise these as mistakes, and correct the article in both cases to τό.
22B.p96.17 Another example of εἰ οὐ for a conditional. See above comment on 14A.
23.p100 I think the narrative portrays Lydia a little harshly here!
24.p102.10 I would suggest that because the infinitive here is indirect speech, or a content clause after a verb of knowing, that the negation would better be οὐ εἶναι rather than μὴ εἶναι.
24.p102.17 here’s another periphrastic verbal construction, τὸ παιδίον διδάσκων ἦν, but since the subject is neuter, one should probably correct to διδάσκον. I suppose one could argue for a construction ad sensum.
27B.p114.30 Along the lines of slavery issues, I have reservations about Philemon referring to τὸν δοῦλόν μου τὸν ἀγαπητόν
27B.p116.7 The name of Philemon’s daughter is a nice touch!
28.p118.2 Shouldn’t this vocative be μῆτερ, unless we’re deliberately trying to show nominative for vocative? Also l31.
29.p123. The note on double negatives is overly simplistic, since some double negations do negate (when the second negative is a simple negative, and also both negatives belong to the same predicate).
30.p126.37 I think that ἑαυτούς wants a ἡμᾶς in front of it.
31.p132 Here again the problem of tying yourself to a grammar-based curriculum appears, with a flood of counterfactual conditionals. This kind of material is fine input-flood, but when that occurs late in a text, there is not going to be the opportunity for sustained and repeated encounters. (This same flaw afflicts counterfactuals in Ørberg’s Lingua Latina)
32.p134 I have noticed too, what seems to me an overly common use of of ἕως + genitive for movement to a place. A lot of other structures could be used for spatial-movement.
32.p134.26 : ἕως τοῦ Ῥώμης should be corrected to ἕως τῆς Ῥώμης

Via Latina: A review

Via Latina: De Lingua et Vita Romanorum, by Maria Luisa Aguilar & Jorge Tarrega

This is a new, and much anticipated volume, put out by Cultura Clásica, a Spanish outfit responsible for a good deal of quality Latin and Greek materials, but about whom I confess to know very little.

The preface (written in Latin, like the rest of this entire volume), speaks of their plan, commencing seven years ago, to prepare a new volume for beginner students in Latin. They have three main concerns in mind: (1) That the method should centrally concern itself with the use of the language. That said, Latin is both the object and the means of study. (2) The contents should concern itself with the doings of the Romans, from which cause the bulk of the book follows an outline of Roman history from Larentia to the Gracchi. (3) A vast variety of exercises, which I can attest they have indeed supplied, which will engage learners in the language, with meaning.

The overall structure of the book is a division into 12 chapters, each with three readings. At the end of each chapter, there is a short grammatical explanation section, also done in Latin, and in every second chapter, a ‘culture/history’ essay, also delivered in Latin. By now you have fully realised that the whole book is in Latin, so I will stop saying so.

A reading is about 35 lines (7-ish words to a line, so 245 words or so per reading, 735 words per chapter). There’s margin notes, which give Ørberg style helps, often synonyms, explanations, derivatives, etc.. Sometimes these are to words that don’t appear to have been introduced yet, but which a student might guess/intuit based on cognates. The marginalia are not comprehensive, nor designed to be as they explain in the preface – an instructor is to fill in the gaps.

Illustrations also adorn the margins, as well as larger images which adorn the top third of many pages. These are indeed illustrative – showing the action of the story as it unfolds. That story is a history of Rome, familiar to any reader of Livy, from earliest times onwards.

The Latin reads well. It’s not overly complicated, nor does it feel un-Latinate. There are a few points which are, well, less straightforward. cap 5, l2-3 in oppidō Tarquiniā nātus is quite confusing if you don’t know that Tarquinia is the name of a town, and it is not introduced or noted in the margin. So your putative first reader is confronted with a feminine ablative, clearly related to the name Tarquinius, but with not enough context to figure out what’s going on.

Errors appear few and far between, which is always, always pleasing in a textbook (looking at you, revised editions of Athenaze that introduced more errors than previous editions!). This isn’t one of those reviews that gives you a list though, but there is a spelling error on p25, in margine quarere for quaerere.

A few points of criticism:

Firstly, there is the subject matter, which will please some and deter others. Certainly some teachers feel that a grounding in the Rebus Gestis Romanorum is a sine qua non of foundational Latin learning. My concern is not with that debate, though I long to see more resources that recognise and willingly decentre “Romans” as prototypical Latin speakers. Rather, there are several clear episodes in this history that are uncomfortable reading at any stage. Having to deal with the Rape of the Sabines (Abduction and Sexual Servitude), and the Rape of Lucretia (Sexual Assault), as key elements of the main narrative, is going to make this difficult to implement in some schools or with younger readers. There is also a degree of pro-Roman and pro-Imperialism cheerleading in the text, which derives in part from leaning so heavily on Livy as its source for a narrative through-line.

Inevitably at this point some of you who still read this blog say, “Yes, but we can’t just mollycoddle everyone and live in a fantasy world where these things didn’t happen, or hide them from students.” True, but how we speak about the abduction of women in order to force them into arranged marriages for child-rearing, and when, and to whom, are all questions to be asked and answered by educators. I would not treat that episode the same with a 12 year old, a 20 year old, and a 50 year old learner of Latin. For those thinking of using this text in a school classroom, this will be a real consideration.

Although much is made of starting with Larentia, who features prominently in chapter 1, women throughout the book are confined to their usual places in a Livian history, and it would be hard to maintain that this text does much to reverse the marginalisation (and sexualisation) of women in Roman history, Latin pedagogy, or classics more broadly.

Similarly, the illustrations will cause some to pause. Aesthetic tastes vary (and the style here will not be to everyone’s enjoyment), and there is nothing explicit, but there are certainly things that are going to be on the edge for some readers (or parents). This includes an almost entirely naked Lucretia being assailed by Tarquinius (p122), a small image of a naked man, front-on, on p90 (illustrating the word corpus), several scenes of the aftermath of battles (which most people will not find too gory, if only because people tend to be more upset at sex than violence), and blood seeping out of murdered Tarquinius Priscus (p84).

These two factors, I’m sad to say, are probably enough to stop its widespread use in schools.

I will say, in praise of the illustrations, that there is a considerable effort here to portray a range of skin tones, and so we are spared the whitening of Roman ethno-identity. This is a welcome change from other textbooks. 

 However, I want to turn now to the question that is inevitable : comparison to Ørberg.

Ørberg’s Lingua Latina per se Illustrata is (mea quidem sententia) not simply the best textbook that exists for Latin, but the best textbook by far. It is not the best textbook imaginable though. Now, Via Latina doesn’t claim to replace LLPSI, or to be doing what Ørberg did, or anything like that. However, in virtue of being a Latine tantum textbook, written in what people now think of as an Ørberg-style (illustrations, marginalia latine, etc), and with some specific Latin-use orientation, it is inevitable that the comparison will be made. Could this replace Ørberg?

I don’t think so. And before I turn to why, that’s neither here nor there – this book doesn’t have to replace Ørberg, doesn’t claim to, and you don’t have to think of it as an Ørberg alternative. The reasons I think so are, I believe, worth considering.

Firstly, there is not enough volume of continuous narrative Latin here. 735 per chapter-unit, over 12 chapters, is approximately 8820. I can tell you that Familia Romana, with 35 chapters, has a chapter length of 680 words in cap 1, up to 1479 in cap 34. That is simply far, far more words to encounter over the course of a text. Secondly, the rate of new information in LLPSI is slower, both structurally and vocabulary. You can see this in VL’s capitulum 1: it echoes LLPSI’s capitulum 1, but with far less repetition, and the introduction of pronouns (is, ea, id). The combination of less repetition, more new information, moves the learner at a more rapid pace with less reinforcement. Thirdly, the more you read Ørberg, the more you become aware of just how much he crafted this over a lifetime to make both macro and micro features “per se illustratae” – the many points at which things are understandable within the text, without recourse to external help. VL does not succeed very well at this, and I am not sure they were trying to (in which case they shouldn’t be faulted for it, but the comparison must be made). VL is not an Ørberg-slayer, and I am unconvinced we will see one for quite a long time. Yet, maybe we don’t need an Ørberg-slayer, maybe we just need more good Latin materials for students – and that is what VL is.

There is one thing that VL does better than Ørberg though, and it should be absolutely praised for this: the exercises. Ørberg has essentially 3 unvarying exercises: cloze endings, cloze words, and simple comprehension questions. VL has a considerable variety of exercises, aimed at facilitating comprehension, meaning-based connections, and familiarity with forms. I could see myself adapting these exercise types for other texts, and some of them would make excellent assessment-type questions as well.

In turning to VL’s positives, this is a very welcome addition to the world of Latin reading material for learners. I’d have no problems recommending this as a text worth adding to one’s collection, and using for various purposes, including as a supplement within a program built around other things. It’s well written, quality Latin, aimed at learners, and introduces a (version of) history of Rome up to the Grachii. The illustrations, with the above caveats, are well done and are more beneficial than not (e.g. plenty of other books have illustrations that either contribute nothing, or in fact detract).

Via Latina, then, is a new textbook worth your attention, even if you don’t end up using it to teach with. It has some significant positives, but some significant flaws as well. What I do hope is that many teachers will take a look at this book, make some use of it in their classrooms, but also consider how we all can create more and better resources in the future.

 

Why summative assessment is so problematic

(I confess, I wrote this in more of a twitter-thread style of composition, so it reads a bit scattered)
I take it that summation assessment is an attempt to assess to what extent a learner has met the overall final learning goals of a unit of instruction. I’m going to assume that we’re talking about something like a 12-14wk semester block, which is part of why it’s a problem. Let’s imagine we’re talking about a Latin 101 class for fun.
Summative Assessment is certainly possible. That is, we can design and deliver an assessment that accurately gauges whether a leaner can do the things we expect them to do. The question is, what is this information useful for? Formative assessment is clear in its goal, it ought to feed back directly into the learning/teaching process to adjust instruction to match learner’s competencies.
So let’s consider possible outcomes of summative assessment:
  1. Can this learner move on to the next module?
In a way this is a kind of “block” formative assessment. And that’s why it’s bad. Because if you judge that a leaner isn’t ready, e.g. for Latin 102, and your instructional blocks are always this large, you don’t have much choice but to send them back to do Latin  101 again. That’s disheartening and discouraging.
And, if your Latin 101 is exactly the same material, it’s also going to be boring. There’s a way to solve that – if your Latin 101 covers the same competencies but its content continually varies, then that’s solvable.
Ideally, you wouldn’t have to gatekeep learning in blocks this large. You’d find out a student can’t do x y z at the level you want, and you’d scale and individuate their instruction over a smaller block to accommodate this. On an individual level this is possible, but it’s more and more difficult on a group level.
  1. Summative assessment is used to make generalised conclusions about a student’s academic ability.
I’m kind of dubious about this, because (a) there are so many individuating factors for any given module, and (b) it’s not at all convincingly clear to me that marks on a language module accurately reflect broader academic skills anyway.
This is even worse if assessment is meant to encompass “student effort”.
  1. A terminal assessment of competency.
I actually think this is a legitimate outcome of summative assessment. That is, where a student is finishing a course of study  or else needs some kind of benchmarking for external purposes, you can do a summative assessment against can do competencies, and deliver a report that says “so and so can do X, y z with the language, to this level”. This would be ideally a kind of proficiency testing against clear standards like ACTFL or CEFR.
  1. Going nowhere
I want to suggest, though, that most end of unit assessment actually goes nowhere. Sure, it’s an assessment that gauges learner competencies against module outcomes, and presuming they pass minimally (45 or 50% or whatever your jurisdiction uses), they continue on. Nobody does any kind of pedagogical action on this information, except *maybe* the student, but let’s be honest – very very few students will look at corrections on a final exam (if they even get them), and then develop a useful action plan to address any missing gaps.
So that information, if it goes anywhere, just gets fed into the bureaucratic machinery of the institution to make mostly meaningless conclusions about teacher efficacy, program efficacy, or student populations. Most of which, I would submit, are undetermined by their available data.
In sum, Summative assessment is difficult to do well because it’s difficult to find its proper goal.

Catullus 1-9, translations

In my spare time I have been pottering away at some Catullus translations. You can find recordings of these on my soundcloud as well.

Warning: Catullus is fairly liberal in his use of expletives, so if profanity offends you, read no further. He’s also not a very nice person.

1

Who wants their name in big print, on the
cover of my shiny new book, hot off the press?
You! Cornelius, because you were always on
my case about how this was a waste of time,
when you were single-handedly producing the
world’s longest and most boring “academic”
history, so-fucking-tedious!

So take this little book, whatever it’s worth
and, Goddess of Viral Memes,
may it survive to a second printing

2

Sparrow. my little babe’s delight,
who she toys with, keeps in her lap,
teases with a fingertip
soliciting sharp bites
beaming with lust for me,
it pleases her to make some joke or other
(it settles down the aching,
as then fire subsides)
How I wish I could toy with her as she with it
and take a load off her mind!
… as pleasing to me as the golden apple
was to the fast girl,
which unzipped her long-fastened pants

 

3

Read it and weep – all you bitches and hoes,
and any man who has a heart,
dead. my baby’s sparrow is dead,
bird of my bird
who she loved more than her eyeballs;
it was as sweet as honey, and knew her
as well as any girl her mother
never left her lap, jumping
here there and everywhere
sole songbird sang for no other

 

now it walks the night road
and no one comes back that way
A curse on you, vile darkness
you gulp every good thing down
it’s you that stole my sweet sparrow
badly done, and bad way to go;
but it’s your fault, shadow’d sparrow
that my girl’s eyes bleed a swollen red

 

4

See that little slip, my friends?
She sounds off that she’s the fastest of the fleet,
that no ship on the sea can catch her,
not by scull not by sail
swift skimming the silver sea’s surface.
she calls to witness:
The Hadriatic’s all-huff no-puff shore,
the Cyclades, tricky to thread,
righteous Rhodes, hectic Marmara,
the bruising Black Sea, where once a tressed tree, and thereafter a boat.
– none will deny.

Up there on Gideros’ back, whispering wind
from luscious locks. Amasra and Gideros,
sea-shored and boxwood-bearing,
she says, ere and ever, she is known to you
best; that right from the start she stood
straight up on your peak, dipped dripping oars
in your sea, lord laden crossed countless
unrestrained straits, whether the wind
beckoned from port, starboard, or the Sky
Father slapped the ship square from behind:
she didn’t beg not once to seashore saints,
in all her journey from that so far sea to this
limpid lake.

but this was all long ago. she’s laid up now,
grown and growing old, dedicated
to the Dioscuri

 

5

Let’s live and love, my Lesbia;
I don’t give a rat’s ass about what
pensioners think.
suns can rise and suns can set
but, for us? yolo.
a moment in the limelight
and an endless darkness

kiss me. kiss me again.
kiss me again and again.
a hundred, a thousand times
a thousand.

and when we have kissed
a gazillion times, we’ll encrypt that number
no jealous hacker will know the code
and ransomware our love.

 

6

Flavi, bro, Flavi bro. you’d tell Catullus
all about your latest sidepiece, you couldn’t
keep your mouth shut, unless she’s ugly as
sin. but truly, i don’t know what little hottie
you’re hot for – you’re ashamed to say.
it’s a crying shame that your bed can’t talk,
because it shouts loudly enough, with its
essential oils and hints of perfume, you don’t
sleep alone. pillows askew, the faintest
impression of a rounder hip, not to mention
that bed creaks, groans, rattles and shakes.
nothing in the world could keep quiet your
dalliances. and why? you wouldn’t be
showing flanks flushed with fucking,
unless you were up to such tricks.
so just tell us, whether she’s hot or not.
And I will lay down a witty rhyme
to immortalise your loves, like mine.

7

hey Lesbia, you wanna know how many
kisses are enough for me? more than enough?
might as well count Libya’s sands
where once the spice flowed freely
between sweltering Jupiter’s oracle
and old Battus’ sacred tomb;
as countless as stars on a silent night,
that watch people’s furtive fondlings;
for your frenzied Catullus, to kiss you
that much will be enough and more,
so that curious cats will fail in the count
and envious eyes will zip their lips.

8

Catullus, you sad bro? Don’t be a fool –
can’t you see what’s gone is gone?
Bright days used to shine on you
when you’d go wherever she stringed you –
I’ll never love another lover like her –
There and then, fun times were had aplenty
you were keen and the girl wasn’t coy.
Bright days shined on you true.
Now she’s not so keen; you too, don’t be weak,
don’t chase, let her go, don’t wallow
but swallow your pride and take it on the chin.
cya, girl! Now Catullus is a hard man,
isn’t looking for you, isn’t asking for you
it’s you who’ll suffer, no one knocking down your door.
g-t-f-o you cheater: what life you got now?
who come running? who think you sexy?
who you gunna love? whose you gunna be?
who you gunna kiss? whose little lips you gunna bite so soft, so tender.
stay strong, Catullus my bro, stay strong.

9

Veranius – bestest of besties
worth more than a million other brothers from another mother
have you come home to your digs
to your brothers, to your old ma?
You have come! o sweet news!
to see you safe and sound
to hear you tell your travel tales
Spain’s people and places, sights and sounds,
as you always do, and I’ll lean over your neck
sweet savour kisses on eyes and mouth.
oh, of all men most happy on earth
who, who is happier than me?

The Road to Latin, Greekified

Recently the twitterverse was aptly reminded by Dr. Marchella Ward of the existence of “The Road to Latin“, a very fine Latin introductory textbook from 1932, not least because it was authored by a Black Woman, Helen Maria Chestnutt.

On the whole, it makes excellent reading material for any beginning (or advanced) Latin student, but I wondered if I couldn’t also adopt/adapt it to Greek. Here is a pdf with the first chapter rendered into Greek, for anyone interested, and I’ll make an effort to work on more chapters. If nothing else, it provides me with a pleasant diversion and you with a new source of easy, readable Greek.

The road to Latin Greekified

A google-docs version is here: you can leave comments on it freely. This will enable you to keep up to date with any progress I make (I’m not promising any though)

While I’m here, I might as well make a couple of observations. Even in the very first reading, you have to make translation choices. The Latin sticks to first declension nouns ending in -a entirely. To keep the same vocab in Greek, I had to introduce other endings. Similarly, to express ‘stand’, ‘open’, and ‘closed’, required a perfect verb and two perfect participles. Thirdly, to keep Greek style from the very beginning, I introduced a few particles. Fourthly, Greek necessitates introducing the article here. Finally, I made the choice to keep the names and context of the original. All of which make this considerably harder for a student starting from scratch. This is (one set of reasons) why Greek ab initio books can’t simply ape Latin ones, let alone translate them. That said, I mostly intend to keep on in the same vein – a close rendering of the Latin, with whatever Greek seems apt or best. I think that’s the best way to honour the original work here.

The Just City, Greekified

Look, I’m not saying I’m actually going to translate a whole novel into Ancient Greek, but here’s the first page of Jo Walton’s amazing speculative-fiction novel/classical reception, The Just City, rendered into Ancient Greek.

Ἡ πόλις ἡ Δικαίᾱ

 

 

Α’ · Ἀπόλλων

 

μεταβέβληται εἰς δένδρον, τοῦτ᾿ ἦν τὸ μυστήριον, ὃ ἀνάγκη γίγνεσθαι. οὐδὲν γάρ ἄλλο δυνατόν ἦν, μοῦ ἀποροῦντος. τὸ δὴ μὴ συνιέναι κακῶς φέρω. ταῦτα πάντα οὖν ὅσα ἔπαθον τοῦδε ἕνεκα · οὐκ ἔμαθον διὰ οὗ εἰς δένδρον μεταβέβληται, μᾶλλον εἱλάτο γε γίγνεσθαι δένδρον. ὄνομα μὲν οὖν Δάφνη αὐτῆς, οὕτως δὲ καὶ τοῦ δένδρου ὃν γέγονεν, ἐκ τούτου ἐγένετο τὸ δένδρον αὐτό, ἡ δάφνη, ἴδιόν μοι, αἷς στεφανοῦνται οἵ τε ποιηταὶ καὶ οἱ ἐν ἀγῶσιν νενικῶτες.

τὰ οὖν πρῶτα ἠρόμην τὴν ἀδελφήν μου, «τί» ἔφην, «εἰς δένδρον μετέβαλλες τὴν Δάφνην;» ἡ δὲ ὄμμασιν προσέβλεπεν με τῆς σελήνης πληρουμένοις. καίπερ δὲ ἀφελῆς οὔσης ἐκ τοῦ τε πατρός καὶ τῆς μητρός, πολλῷ διαφέρειν οὐ δυνατόν ἐστιν ἡμᾶς. ἡ δὲ ψῡχροτέρᾱ, ὀφρῡ́ος ἐπηρμένης μίᾱς, ἐπί γε τοποθεσίᾳ σεληνικῇ ἀνακλεῖται.

«ἐμὲ μὲν ἐδέησε δή, σπουδαίοτερον ἐπιθυμοῦσα, αὐτοθὶ δὲ σύ. τὰ οὖν ἐσχατὰ πράττειν ἐχρῆν.»

«ὅμως ἔσται ἥρως ἢ ἔτι θεὸς ὁ υἱος αὐτῆς.»

«τὴν οὖν παρθενίαν» ἔφην, «δήπου οὐ καταλαμβάνεις» πεταννῦσα τεινοῦσα τε σκέλος ψῡχρόν ὡς κρύσταλλος. μέγιστον γὰρ τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι ἡ παρθενία, οἷον καὶ τόξα, ἡ ἄγρα τε καὶ ἡ σελήνη.

«παρθένος μὲν μενεῖν ουκ ὀμώμοκε, οὐδὲ σοι ἀνακεῖται, οὐδὲ ἱέρεια. ἐγὼ δὲ οὐδέπωποτε…»

«ὅ τι μέγιστον ἔλαθέν σοι γε. εἴη Ἥρᾱ ἂν ᾗ πρέπει σε διαλέγεσθαι.» ἡ δὲ εἶπεν, ὑπὲρ τὸν ὦμον ἀντιβλέπουσα.

Discussing Ancient Greek Linguistics in Ancient Greek

In the last couple of days, occasioned at first by a tweet and corresponding discussions from Steven Runge, I’ve been teasing out in my head and a little bit of dialogue the difficulties of the “advanced discussion of Greek in Greek” question. It’s a question that any living language approach has to answer, one way or another. My position involves a few different angles, so let me lay them out again here.

Firstly, I don’t think you need to develop a meta-linguistic competence to talk about Greek grammar and linguistics in order to become a competent speaker/user of the language.

Secondly, I think it’s best to think of that meta-linguistic knowledge as a separate (but not entirely unrelated!) body of knowledge. Yes, meta-linguistic knowledge can help you become a more competent language user. However, the fact that one can be a highly competent speaker without a meta-linguistic knowledge, or vice versa a competent linguist of a language with very little communicative competence, suggests that these are separate.

Thirdly, meta-linguistic knowledge can be done in any language. It can be done in English, it can be done in Greek, it can be done in something else. There is a practical advantage to doing some of this, especially at the basic level, in Greek.

However, and this is point four, I think when we get to the point where we want to do complex, linguistic, exegetical, philological, discourse, literary, etc., type analyses, we have to reckon with some realities. Firstly, the language competence to, for example, read the New Testament, and the language competence to discuss these things about the New Testament, are fairly distant. The latter requires a level of competence, and domain specificity, and a body of academic knowledge, that are all additional to the former. Secondly, we should respect that not everyone looking for the former, wants to, can, or will, acquire the latter.

To demonstrate what I mean, below are three quotes from some linguisticky things I’ve read in the recent past. I chose things that I thought I’d have a shot at translating, and I’ve given you my (rough, ready, and likely problematic) Greek versions first – do yourself a favour and read the Greek before going down to the English. Can you read and process these sentences quickly, in Greek, with a reasonably clear understanding of what’s going on?

  1. τὸ ὑποθετικὸν κῶλον τὸ ἐν τῷ ἕκτῳ στίχῳ ἀρχόμενον διδάσκει τὸν ἀναγιγνώσκοντα ὅτι δεῖ τὰ ἑπόμενα κατὰ ταῦτα συνίεσθαι.
  2. πλεῖστον χρόνον, εἰ μὴ πάντοτε, ἀλλήλοις διαλεγόμεθα τῇ μὲν γλώσσῃ χρώμενοι τὴν δὲ ἐνεργεῖαν αὐτὴν, πολύπλοκον οὖσαν, μὴ περιορῶντες, ᾗπερ κῶλά τε καὶ λέξεις ποικίλας παρὰ λεπτόν παραπλασσόμεθα.
  3. μεταξύ τόπος· τὸ διαβαλλόμενον κεῖται μεταξὺ δυοῖν ἢ πλειόνων ὅρων. τὸ οὖν ὅρος κεῖται ὁποτέρωθεν τοῦ διαβαλλομένου. ἢ ἀθρόον ὃ διαμερίζεσθαι δύναται ἢ πληθυντικὰ ὄντα ἃ περιίστασθαι δύναται τὸ διαβαλλόμενον. λέγεται οὖν τὸ ὅρος ἐπὶ τῆς γενικῆς πτώσεως.

 

The English originals are below.

  1. The conditional clause that begins verse 6 instructs the reader that what follows must be processed in light of this.
  • Steven Runge, ‘Interpreting Constituent Order in Koine Greek’ in Linguistics and New Testament Greek: Key Issues in the Current Debate. eds. David Alan Black and Benjamin L. Merkle.

2. Most of the time, if not all of the time, we communicate with each other using language without considering the complex activity we are undertaking, forming complex words and sentences in a split second.

  • Emma L. Pavey. The Structure of Language: An Introduction to Grammatical Analysis (Kindle Locations 114-115). Kindle Edition.

3. μεταξύ : Location : A trajector is physically located in between two or more landmark The landmark is on either side of a trajector. The landmark is either a collective entity that can be split or multiple entities that can surround a trajector. The landmark is expressed in the genitive case.

 

Can this all be done in Ancient Greek? Yes. However let’s recognise that not everyone is interested in reading, or writing, complex linguistic content in Ancient Greek (I am, though!).

The Siblingless Son: μονογενής in Greek literature (6): the Johannine literature

Part 6 of our ongoing series (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

We turn now to consider the Johannine references, which are five: 1:14, 18, 3:16, 18, and 1 John 4:9. Throughout this section I content that the established meaning of ‘siblingless’ in contexts referring to persons continues to make best sense of these texts, without requiring any particular alteration for this context.

John 1:14, 18

Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας[1]

And the Word became flesh, and set up his tent in our midst, and we have seen his glory, the glory of an only-son from a father, full of grace and truth.

I contend that the primary question for us here, given that the immediate context of the word’s usage is παρὰ πατρός, is what reason would there be to not consider the sense of μονογενής to refer to a siblingless son? Every other attestation to this point, when in the context of persons, and familial relations, works with that meaning. If the author of the gospel wanted to indicate, “unique in kind”, or a philosophical “one and only one instance”, they appear to be writing in the wrong key. Similarly, if their intention were to indicate something about the generative process itself, “only begotten”, a more explicitly generative turn of not merely phrase, but context, appears required. Both, or rather either, of those meanings is possible, in a strict sense of possible. However, a reader of the gospel upon encountering μονογενής in close connection to πατρός, is most likely, most naturally, to understand it as a reference to a single and sole son who lacks siblings. The author establishes that this is how to understand the quality or kind of the δόξα that the λόγος possesses and which the author attests to have seen.

This in turn, establishes how to read the second occurrence of μονογενής a few verses later.

θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε·  μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.[2]

No-one has ever seen God: God-the-siblingless-son, who is in his father’s bosom, he has made him known.

Two important factors ought to guide our understanding of the term here. First, that the author has just prior used the term in a familial-type context to evoke the way in which an only son bears their father’s glory. Second, that within this same verse it is a familial relationship that is also invoked. This once more suggests that the “unique” reading is lacking in content.[3] Contra Ehrman, there is no need to suppose that the phrase is itself meaningless and therefore must be a later theological correction for μονογενὴς υἱός.[4] Ehrman’s case rests on two bases. The first of these is that external support for μονογενὴς υἱός is strong, beyond the Alexandrian tradition, at least strong enough to argue for its priority. Secondly, that the meaning of μονογενὴς θεός is not understandable within the conceptual world of the Fourth Gospel’s authorship, and only sensible in light of later theological contexts.

I leave aside the textual argument, though the reader should see Kristianto’s paper which walks through the evidence.[5] The theological argument is of more interest here, because Ehrman’s argument is an instance of “lectio difficilior except if it seems too difficult.” Is it not at least likely that a scribe would consider μονογενὴς υἱός a more natural collocation than μονογενὴς θεός and correct it in that direction? Similarly, while we do not need to import 4th century, or even 3rd or 2nd century, christologies into John, nor should we assume that the gospel’s author is incapable of using the term μονογενής to expresses the idea that God (the siblingless son) makes God (the father) known.[6]

John 3:16, 18

The second pair of instances in John occur in swift succession, again in connection to each other.

16 Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν, ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλʼ ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον.  17 οὐ γὰρ ἀπέστειλεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν υἱὸν εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἵνα κρίνῃ τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλʼ ἵνα σωθῇ ὁ κόσμος διʼ αὐτοῦ.  18 ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν οὐ κρίνεται· ὁ δὲ μὴ πιστεύων ἤδη κέκριται, ὅτι μὴ πεπίστευκεν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ μονογενοῦς υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ.[7]

For God loved the world so, that he gave his only son, that everyone believing in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world be saved through him. The one that believes in him is not condemned; condemned already, however, is the unbelieving person, because they have not believed in the name of God’s siblingless son.

Given the prior usage in John 1, the lack of any significant shift to a philosophical register here, and that both uses here modify υἱός, what reason is there to overturn the significant weight of common usage, and instead find a peculiarly Johannine theological meaning of “uniquely begotten”, except on the supposed basis of John 1? Which basis we have already addressed.

1 John 4:9

 

ἐν τούτῳ ἐφανερώθη ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἡμῖν,
ὅτι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἀπέσταλκεν ὁ θεὸς
εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἵνα ζήσωμεν διʼ αὐτοῦ. [8]

By this the love of God is made manifest in us,
that God has sent his only son,
into the world, so that we may live through him.

The author of 1 John uses μονογενής in a very Johannine manner, echoing the language of John 3 above. Insofar as there is no significant alteration from the usage in the gospel, neither is there a change in signification here. For this author, Jesus is the μονογενὴς υἱός because there are no other υἱοί of the same kind. For this same reason they reserve the term υἱός for Jesus, employing τέκνα instead to refer to believers.

[1] Eberhard Nestle et al., The Greek New Testament, 27th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993), Jn 1:14.

[2] Eberhard Nestle et al., The Greek New Testament, 27th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993), Jn 1:18.

[3] To take pains to make this obvious, when the word is taken to indicate “one of a kind” or “unique”, there must be some sense in which the referent is one of a kind. That sense is, for μονογενής, the lack of siblings. Which gives the word more content than the simple “unique” does.

[4] Ehrman, Bart D. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 78-82.

[5] Kristianto, S. ‘E valuating Bart Ehrman’s Textual Reconstruction: A Test Case on John 1:18’ Asia Journal of Theology, (31)1, (2017): 23-35.

[6] Without necessarily resolving or pre-empting how the author understands those relations to work.

[7] Eberhard Nestle et al., The Greek New Testament, 27th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993), Jn 3:15–18.

[8] Eberhard Nestle et al., The Greek New Testament, 27th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993), 1 Jn 4:9.

πυροβόλος ψυχόπτερος

Here, for your ancient Greek pleasure, I present Smashing Pumpkin’s Bullet with Butterfly Wings.

Audio:

 

(I sing quite badly. If anyone wants to re-record with a more delightful voice, I’m very happy to assist them to do so)

Lyrics:

 

λαμίᾱ ὁ κόσμος

ὡς ἐκπιουμένη

κρυπτοὶ καθαιρέται

σὲ πρὸς φλογοῖσι προῦχουσιν

 

τί μοι τοὔφελος

ὑπὲρ ὀδυνῶν μου;

πόθοι μέν παραδεδόμενοι

ἀγῶνος δὲ μέρος τι

 

ταῦτα μὴν εἰδώς

οἶμαι δεικνύναι

τὴν ψῡχὴν ἥσυχον

ὡς πάλαι Ἰώβ

 

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι δὴ μῦς

 

εἴποι ἄν τις, ἅ ἀπολλύται ἄσωστα

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς

 

νῦν γε γυμνός εἰμι

οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ θηρίον

δύνασαι προσποιεῖσθαι

μίᾳ ἔτι καὶ θέᾳ

τί γ’ οὖν βούλει σύ

μεταβάλλεσθαι δὴ θέλω

τί σοι κέρδος ἔσται

τὰ αὐτὰ ἔτι ἕξεις;

 

ταῦτα μὴν εἰδώς

οἶμαι δεικνύναι

τὴν ψῡχὴν ἥσυχον

ὡς πάλαι Ἰώβ

 

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι δὴ μῦς

 

εἴποι ἄν τις, ἅ ἀπολλύται ἄσωστα

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς

 

εἰπέ με μοῦνον εἶναι

εἰπέ μοι οὐδενὰ ἄλλον

μουνογενὴς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἦν, ἦ!

εἰπέ μοι τὸν ἐκλεκτὸν ἐμέ

μουνογενὴς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἦν, ὑπὲρ σοῦ

 

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι δὴ μῦς

 

εἴποι ἄν τις, ἅ ἀπολλύται ἄσωστα

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς

 

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι δή …

 

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι δή

μαινόμενος καίπερ

ἐν οἰκίσκῳ ἔτι γε μῦς

 

εἰπέ με μοῦνον εἶναι

εἰπέ μοι οὐδενὰ ἄλλον

μουνογενὴς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἦν, ὑπὲρ σοῦ

 

ἔγωγε καὶ νῦν μὴ σωθῆναι πιστεύω

ἔγωγε καὶ νῦν μὴ σωθῆναι πιστεύω

ἔγωγε καὶ νῦν μὴ σωθῆναι πιστεύω

ἔγωγε καὶ νῦν μὴ σωθῆναι πιστεύω

 

Video

 

Duolingo, a love/hate story

I have a long and complicated relationship with Duolingo . The hate side, in short, is that I think the way Duolingo models language and thinks/treats language is fundamentally atomistic and inimical to good principles of second language acquisition. The love side is that I actually enjoy and continue to use Duolingo daily, and gain a measurable benefit from it. In this post I want to explore and reflect on these two things in light of recent and long-term experience.

Background

According to my account, I first joined Duo in March 2012, so that’s a long time on the app. For very long periods I have been inactive. I currently have a 636 day streak, which is in large part thanks to the Scottish Gaelic course. It’s the only tree I’ve finished, and it’s where I’ve spent the bulk of my actual time.

Recently I was taken by a desire to get “all the achievements”, including probably the most difficult, “Finish #1 in the Diamond League”. Leagues, if you don’t know are randomly assigned groupings of 50 or so users, and the top 10 get promoted. So I had to reactivate leagues, work my way back up to Diamond. And Diamond can get very competitive. For the week I was committed to winning, I activated a trial of Duolingo Plus, and liberally used a few competitive tricks: (i) when you complete a level on the mobile app, you typically get a 15mins double XP boost, (ii) some lesson options give you more XP than others. So I would organise my time to complete a level, and then go flat out on maximal XP options for 15min blocks.

So, the last month and the last week in particular has seen me spend way too much time on Duolingo, and I’ll be scaling back to more normal levels from now on.

What’s bad in Duolingo?

  • Despite all the little features here and there, the fundamental building block of Duolingo courses is paired sentences. The core activity is “translate sentence X from L1 to L2 or L2 to L1”. There are tons of variations on this, on how this is accomplished : selecting the words in order, selecting missing words (cloze exercises), selecting correct endings only for targeted grammar, supplying A/B answers in L2 to an L2 prompt, reading into the microphone for a pronunciation check, etc etc.. Some of these, I admit, are not predicated on a paired sentence idea, but lying in the background is that building block. And, also to be fair, well-supported languages will accept a good variation of ‘correct’ translations in either direction for each sentence. It’s not “you must translate sentence A1 with corresponding sentence B1 only”.
  • Because this is the fundamental building block though, Duolingo is mainly training you to rapidly translate sentence to sentence. This isn’t really how language works, and it’s not how good language instruction ought to work – there’s no genuine communication here, there’s no context beyond the app, there’s no meaning exchange here. Let’s not lose sight that this is basically drills forever. The best Duolingo gets to a meaningful communication activity are the Stories feature, which presents a short L2 narrative and asks some L2 questions for comprehension as you go. That actually *is* a great feature, for the major languages supported with it.
  • The nature of the exercises, especially when they are “chose and rearrange the words”, actually narrows the options so much that it can often be too easy to figure out the meaning of a sentence without processing the L2 information at all, just because of the options you have in the L1.
  • Some courses are actually terrible. I’m often asked about the Latin course, or worse yet told by people that that’s what they’re mainly using, and I think the Latin course is dreadful. The audio is poorly executed, the course hasn’t been well-supported enough to demonstrate the syntactical variations Latin allows, and the brevity and simplicity of the course leaves a lot to be desired. For a Latin learner, I would almost certainly say don’t spend time on Duolingo , it’s drawbacks far outweigh the time you’re wasting on it.
  • The XP feature, and the league tables, are actually bad for you. As soon as you gamify and numerify something like this, the natural brain reaction is to want to earn more XP. This is even more so if you’re in the leagues. The best way to earn XP is the worst way to use Duolingo – switch off listening and recording exercises, select exercises to active double-XPs, and then do the legendary crowns, presuming you know all that content.

Re: Courses

My most completed trees, if you’re wondering, are Gaelic, and French (oddly enough, I have no particular reason to learn much French but I find it easy and appealing). That should help place the following in perspective

  • Majority European Languages are among the best supported and developed in Duolingo , not surprisingly as they are incredibly popular and Duolingo has a vested interest in making them better and better. French is a good example, it has (I believe) 210 separate skills making up 10 levels, as well as the stories feature, and more and varied exercise types.
  • Scottish Gaelic is, of all the minority languages that I’ve tried, an excellent example of what’s possible. Firstly, the initial core course was put together by a small band of volunteers in an extremely short time, and it was then expanded to a relatively robust course. It has 5 levels, just over 3500 words, and it’s got (a) good idiomatic Gaelic, (b) a thoughtful grammatical sequencing, (c) interesting, culturally appropriate content, (d) an excellent sense of humour, (e) quality native-speaker recordings that are clear.
  • Others? I’ve dabbled in the Irish course (has a few problems, from all accounts, and these have never been addressed. A bit of a worry that despite being significantly older that the Scottish Gaelic course, it has not been expanded), German, Italian, Chinese (generally good but has some odd things in it here and there in terms of sequencing), Hebrew, Greek, Japanese, Russian, Navajo, High Valyrian, and Klingon. The off-beat conlangs are undersupported courses, really. So, often the quality of the course just depends on who is putting time into improving them.

So what does Duolingo do well?

In my opinion and experience, Gaelic Duolingo did not teach me much ‘new’ in the way of grammar. Nor, probably, has it done much to improve my speaking ability. What it has done, though, is (a) introduce me to some new vocabulary that I hadn’t encountered before, (b) given me some explicit grammar practice on structures that I don’t normally use actively, (c) helped my spelling when I force myself to write in Gaelic words, (d) provided more than a few laughs.

That’s personally, and it’s because my Gaelic is beyond the Duolingo level, really. How about French? It’s harder to say, I have dabbled a little in reading French before, I have very strong Latin, and I don’t use French in my life at all. Is my knowledge of French growing? Yes, slowly. Will Duolingo “get me there”? If “there” is conversational fluency, I severely doubt it. But if “there” is “having a reservoir of useful knowledge about French that could be tapped if I wanted to actually learn French”, then I think the answer is yes.

Another good thing about Duolingo , I would put, is that because it’s a low-threshhold entry activity, which has attempted to gamify language learning and build in reward structures (for better or worse), it does “get people in”. Gaelic Duolingo has done that quite well – a large number of people signed up for the course, and while the number who continue is obviously much smaller, and the number still who go on to other learning options smaller yet, that’s all still language awareness and learner growth. Given that Duolingo Gaelic was an unfunded volunteer effort, that is a huge positive for the language.

 

Should you use Duolingo?

If you think Duolingo is going to get you to some kind of conversational proficiency, then you’re wrong. If you think Duolingo is going to be a bit of fun that you can sandwich into the odd spare moment here and there and get a quick 1-1.5 minute language fix, then yes. Provided you understand the caveats, and granted that some courses are far superior to others. I wouldn’t waste any time on Duolingo Latin, for instance. I would happily pass some time on quite a few languages though. And then I would take that knowledge and go leverage it into something more communicative and ultimately more useful.

How should you use it then?

Having said a qualified, “go for it if you want to”, here’s how I think Duolingo could be best used. Preferably, use it on the desktop. Switch on keyboard-input only so that you’re typing out words and learning to type and spell in the L2. Split your session over just a couple of skills : something old, something new, something in between. Don’t chase XP, and don’t think Duo is the end game, it’s a tool that will get your foot in the door of language learning.