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
Language
As I mature as both a reader of ancient texts and a teacher, I find myself saying a lot more, "It depends...", as well as "You could translate it that way", "That's one way to render it", and a lot of "
Updates
As promised, I have a new short pdf text up at Patristic Readers, it's Gregory of Nyssa's Ad Simplicium, De Fide. I decided to tackle this short text after finishing up Ad Ablabium, partly because the latter is too short for a print volume by itself,
Latin
No true Scotsman is a form of (informal) logical fallacy, of the type where having set up definition X of something, e.g. “A scotsman is blah, blah, blah”, and faced with a particular example, “Well then, so-and-so is a scotsman, based on your definition”, the interlocutor moves
Pedagogy
Here are some ideas I was tossing around with some students last week. Let me list the exercises first. 1. Read a passage, 10 or so verses or more, at a measured pace. No analysis, just ask yourself, “what percentage of that did I understand?" 2. Read a passage
Language
One way to look at language as a phenomenon is to realise that it solves problems. That 'problem' is communication, and so language solves a set of problems that range from the most simplistic (I want you to give me a rock), to the incredibly complex (I want
Updates
Not entirely, but I am writing here a lot less, and it's probably (at least partially) a good thing? This isn't (entirely) a 'sorry for not blogging more' post, it's 'here's how I raised my own productivity' post.
Greek
Just now I've posted up and released a pdf version of my Patristic Readers edition of Gregory of Nyssa's Ad Ablabium. Altogether, the number of hours for this volume is not staggering, but it has taken quite some time. I've refined my process for
Updates
I spent a considerable amount of time in April writing up material on Ephesians, and then 2 weeks in Mongolia teaching Ephesians. That was useful, productive, but not very PhD related. Patristic Readers As I write this update I am quite seriously about an hour's worth of work
Updates
No, not state of the Projects. That would be in a few days. Today I'm just going to write about what's been happening, what's coming up, etc.. On the weekend I flew back home from Mongolia, where I taught Greek exegesis of Ephesians over