This might be one of my craziest ideas to date, but I am very excited about it! I have lots of friends who are bible majors and they have to take two years of biblical Greek. I have watched them stress and struggle and worry and study like crazy. sometimes it seemed like Greek was the only class they were taking because that's all they would ever seem to be studying. I have always been relieved I never had to go through that since I stopped being a bible major(simply because I was double majoring in education and bible at the time and it would have taken me an extra 2 years to graduate)after one semester, but I did always wonder what it would be like to learn biblical Greek. However, a part of me also never really saw the need, but lately I have really begun to see that sometimes the original Greek words and how they were translated makes a huge difference on what the text says and what it was meant to say. so a few days ago I made the very impromptu decision to teach myself Greek. I don't want to have to pay $10,000 for two years of Greek, and there is also no time for that since I'm graduating in May(yay!). Also, I am currently taking Mandarin so I doubt that any language can be more difficult to learn than Mandarin(except maybe Russian) so Greek doesn't intimidate me(not yet anyways). I also have noticed while studying Mandarin that when I have plenty of time to study, to study at a slower pace, I do learn it really well. So I think that if I learn biblical Greek on my own time, by myself, I will be able to learn it better because I can take my time, work at a slower pace, my pace,and not be rushed to learn a ton of it at once. I think that's what bible majors freak out over the most, what makes the class so hard, that they are learning so much of it in so short a time, it's all packed in together. the background for this blog, though you can't see all of it, is of a hand dropping in one coin into a piggy bank.this picture really captures how I am approaching this: one coin at a time. bible majors can do their $100 bills at a time into their Greek piggy bank and that's fine, but I'm going to do it one coin at a time. will be MUCH slower but no hurry and I'll learn best this way.
Brent Bailey does have something to do with this. I always believe that there is nothing I can do that he can't do just as well,most likely better than me and more easily than me. I don't resent him or anything for it, but that is what I believe. I want to change that. I want and need to prove to myself and to him, that I can do something he can do just as well as he can. it's not that he agrees with, he actually doesn't, not even close. but I need him to see me doing something that he's good at, and doing it just as good as he. and he's really good at Greek. I'm not about to start jogging/running to prove this to him. Greek is a much more preferred choice by me.
I am excited about this quest. it'll probably take my a year just to learn the alphabet,but it's on my time so that's okay. there are so many resources for biblical Greek, and a lot of those are made with the idea that not everyone that is learning biblical Greek is going to be in a classroom but that some are also going to self-learners. I'll write a separate post on the resources I have already, because I think that'll be good to write about separately. am VERY excited about this, and maybe someday, I'll be able to read the New Testament a bit in Greek :)
