Greek
A couple of people asked me how to go about getting up to speed on the ‘newer ways’ of talking about Ancient Greek that have become current in the last few years. In this and subsequent posts I will try my best to provide a relatively accessibly explanation of the
Academics
One of the difficulties of Patristics as a field is that there are not many journals, and it is not necessarily so easy to get a sense of what journals there are. Certainly, compared to say New Testament studies, it is difficult. In this post I have tried to compile
Uncategorized
I see that I haven't written one of these for awhile. Not too much to report just at present. PhD Is going along well, though it could be going moreso. July was a productive month, and the start of August was not bad either, though things became more
Academics
It's blindingly obvious that Academia runs as a microcosmic honour/shame society because the one thing that ranks just below actual scholarship in scholars' concern is prestige or honour as accorded them by their peers. This is what drives almost all academic endeavours (beyond the actual desire
Academics
I hope you don't mind these rambling conference dispatches: Day 3 at Oxford Patristics. I enjoyed some interesting papers on Gregory of Nyssa. It's always tricky at a conference to go to papers that are not directly tied to your interests, but are tied enough that
Updates
It's the morning of the 3rd day of the conference here. Firstly, one could play 'beard bingo' here. There are several different types to watch out for: 1. Hipster theologian, 2. American college professor, 3. 18th century gentleman, 4. Orthodox priest, 5. American college professor '
Academics
Well, today I'm off to Oxford. I'm attending the XVII. International Conference on Patristic Studies, where I'll be giving a paper on Tuesday morning about Basil's exegetical practice in Against Eunomius, very specifically on Acts 2:36 and how this interacts with
Academics
Recently I've enjoyed reading two unrelated but stimulating discussions taking place. The first example you can read here and here. I would summarise Skinner's concerns in the second post that in a democratised (and that's probably not the right word) sphere, everyone feels the
Pedagogy
Last week I got to some chatting about the difference composition exercises might make between classical Greek students and Koine/Seminary students' learning outcomes. Here I share some thoughts on composition exercises. If you look in most traditional textbooks for classical languages, exercises typically focus on translation. The bulk
Pedagogy
I don't really like to spend my time criticising pedagogical approaches, but last week a sponsored post by Dr. Kinneer appeared over at http://www.challies.com/sponsored/ancient-greek-for-the-digital-age Now, I am all for digital tools, and I think what Dr. Kinneer goes
Greek
I have taken courses in both disciplines, and taught students who have come out of both processes, and Classical students almost always have better Greek than NT students. There's a very simple set of reasons for this though, and it doesn't really have to do with
Greek
As I mentioned earlier, I spent the last week taking a small group through some selections of Josephus' Antiquities. In the course of doing so, it again struck me the great gap there is between training in Greek grammar and fundamentals, and reading actual texts. This was highlighted in