Year after year, students take Greek, pass Greek, and forget Greek. Maybe you were one of those students. Maybe you're the one teaching them. How can we make the most of the tools available to us in Bible software, the most of our students' time, and actually teach them to comprehend the basics? Danny Zacharias, associate professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College, wrote Biblical Greek Made Simple (Lexham Press) to answer those very questions. Zacharias has taught Greek for years and has worked hard to help students understand it, partly through his apps FlashGreek and ParseGreek. Travis and Danny talk Greek, this new grammar, the potential benefits of a one-semester elementary Greek, and YouTube videos.
Check out Danny's creations at dannyzacharias.net, and as always, view this episode on exegeticaltools.com for links to features resources.
Year after year, students take Greek, pass Greek, and forget Greek. Maybe you were one of those students. Maybe you're the one teaching them. How can we make the most of the tools available to us in Bible software, the most of our students' time, and actually teach them to comprehend the basics? Danny Zacharias, associate professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College, wrote Biblical Greek Made Simple (Lexham Press) to answer those very questions. Zacharias has taught Greek for years and has worked hard to help students understand it, partly through his apps FlashGreek and ParseGreek. Travis and Danny talk Greek, this new grammar, the potential benefits of a one-semester elementary Greek, and YouTube videos.
Check out Danny's creations at dannyzacharias.net, and as always, view this episode on exegeticaltools.com for links to features resources.
Welcome to Tool Talk from Exegetical Tools, where we discuss nerdy practices and new resources to help you rightly divide the Word of truth. Really glad today to be here with Danny Zacharias. Danny, how are you this morning?
Danny:Doing great!
Travis:Hey, thanks for working with me on this. We got a little bit of a time zone change; you're in Nova Scotia, right?
Danny:Yeah that's right. Atlantic Standard Time.
Travis:All right. Man it was we were setting this up before the time changed too. So I was I was working to make very sure that I knew what time we were talking here in Old Central Standard Time in the Midwest.
Speaker 3:Most people don't know there's an Atlantic Standard Time they just assume we're on Eastern.
Travis:But you know really glad to reverse. To be honest that's people kind of ask. What's the difference between you know United States and Canada. Well now I've pinpointed this exact you know Atlantic Standard Time. Well just I want our audience to know Danny that you are the Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Acadia divinity college. How long have you been there.
Speaker 3:Yes I'm in my 11th year teaching now but I've been here since 2003. I actually moved here from Winnipeg Manitoba right in the middle of Canada and moved over here to do a master of divinity and then a Master of Arts and then after that they had asked me to start teaching part time as an adjunct and I started doing my Ph.D. part time in the midst of that. And so we've been here for quite a while.
Speaker 4:That's great. Man it's cool that you've kind of dug roots somewhere I know that that can be that can be tough in academia. So I'm glad to hear that you're want to hear a little bit more.
Speaker 5:Go ahead and just said it's been a blessing to to find a good community and we've definitely become a small town folk of this small town that we're in and laid roots in our church and schools and things like that with four kids so that's awesome.
Speaker 4:I'm serious. I think that normal life is not. It's not excluded from those who want to be in academics who want to teach them old life rhythms. Right. I want to hear a little bit about Greek for you. I want to hear a little bit more about you know. So obviously a lot of your education there at Acadia. Why the biblical Greek it seems like that's been a pretty major focus of your work and I want to talk about some some of your various works here. One in particular but first why Greek at all why does that matter.
Speaker 3:Yeah so after high school as I was I was a pretty poor high school student and didn't really have much ambition.
Speaker 5:And there's several reasons behind that but I became a Christian when I was 15 and became a voracious reader of the Bible and I did like every bible study that I could get to. I was sitting down both with the teen bible study. But that wasn't enough and so I would hang out with the senior ministry when they're doing Bible study and I couldn't.
Speaker 6:So I was just kind of eating it up and I had decided after high school to do a one year Bible school program and so I went to a place that some of my aunts had gone to Mount Carmel Bible school in Edmonton Alberta.
Speaker 3:And it was there that I really fell in love with the study and the scripture even more and felt that this is where I wanted to go in life and they came back to Winnipeg and started studying at Providence College and Seminary so I took my B.A. in Biblical Studies there. And of course that was the place where I was first entering into Greek studies and I was building on not a lot of foundation as far as you know knowing my grammar well and all that stuff. So it was an uphill battle like it is for a lot of students when I'm very sympathetic to students who have difficulty and are learning English as the same English grammar at the same time they're learning Greek grammar and so it really started there but I fell in love with it because of of course the insights that you have into the scripture and I so often tell students that one of the biggest benefits is not necessarily that you're going to find these magical insights but that you are going to slow down and really observe God's Word as you're going through because you can't just breeze through it like you always breeze through your English translation when you're working in the original language.
Speaker 6:And so I continue to work on Greek through semesters and obviously as I came to my master's divinity and my master of arts because I had my intro ear down I was able to go into advanced levels. When when it comes around to why I created started creating particular tools and eventually kind of culminating in a textbook now is as I was wrestling with what to do going forward where was I going to work on my Ph.D. like I had mentioned before we were we were feeling pretty settled in this little town here. We'll fill we'll fill Nova Scotia where Acadia University is Katie definity college. And so as we are wrestling with what to do the school actually asked me if I would be willing to be an adjunct professor. The following year and teach Introduction to Greek and we felt that that was a good thing. We felt that it was the Lord's leading and there was a program to do a Ph.D. via Highland theological college in Scotland affiliated with Aberdeen University. And so I started working on my Ph.D. part time and started working here part time and it was it was a stretch obviously there was some things that were great about it. I think there are some things that I missed that other people would get more in a Ph.D. You know the camaraderie in coffee around table with like minded people and those types of things and I've tried to reinforce that in other ways like through conferences and things like that. But it meant that I got to be in the classroom right away which was awesome. And it obviously worked out for me in the end because now I'm here as an assistant an associate professor of New Testament studies. But in that first year I only had Greek. I was only teaching intro Greek and so all of my all of my energy it was in the job it was all just on Greek and so I was really working hard as that first year nervous professor who you know just a year ago was rubbing shoulders with the same students was working really hard to try and make Greek an exciting learning experience for the students. And so it really leads to what became the kind of the first major contribution for me in Greek was what's called the singing or Merrian. So I have 18 songs and videos that you can find on YouTube. And it's for learning Greek grammar and that started that very first year where I was thinking how can I help students just learn these paradigms a little better because I remember just going over and over and over on paper and making you know my little box of six squares first first second third person singular plural. And I said let me put this to songs songs are really memorable. You know I can still sing songs from all of us can you know from the 80s and sound just music sticks in our head in a great way. And so I said well letter I put these to familiar tunes and so I just I did these awful recordings. Yeah I would just download these mini files of you know Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and things like that. And I would I would figure out how to sing the paradigms over these popular tunes. And you know the first recordings sounded awful but I would pass them out to the students. I'm like man these are awesome I'm learning the paradigm so much easier. I said OK I'm on to something here. And so I just kept working at it and I kept refining them I got to 18 of them and then I hired a student who is really good in Garage Band and he made them sound so much better than they were. He added Some of his own vocals as background sometimes and we ended up producing these songs in a really good quality. And I made videos to go along with them animated videos just hidden in keynote and pretty. 18 of them and now they're still used regularly they're on my YouTube channel. People can watch them for free there or they can purchase them for five bucks and have them on their computer and iPod and everything so still the numbers on YouTube continues to go up every every year especially the me the the capstone or the top the cream of the crop as the Greek alphabet song.
Speaker 7:I find people as we go to SBO next week for a r whichever society you're you're in. If they see my last name they often know me because of Greek alphabet talk which is kind of funny. So yeah the singing Omarion really came out of that just that desire of how can I just help the students to retain this information and learn it better.
Speaker 2:So that's the scene Samarian came about because that's how. Yeah that's how my kind of my love of trying to make Greek both exciting and accessible in new ways. And do you mind if I just mention the next thing. Kind of the next iteration of that project. I would love to do that.
Speaker 6:Yeah okay so the other I tackled so I felt like I really tackled the paradigms really well and the songs and the next thing I wanted to do was as best I could to try and help the students to really retain vocabulary better. And so I started creating mnemonics and that's a typical way that people learn language and so I so I just said Well is there a way that I can help them to learn the mnemonics and perhaps I can also try and engage the visual learners by creating not only you know a helpful rhyme or saying remember the word but perhaps like an associate an image with it. So that kind of in the midst of both hearing it and seeing mnemonic and seeing a visual that it really kind of stick in their brain. And so I started with the help of another student again creating mnemonics and then creating an image to go along with that mnemonic. And I was just printing them out on pieces of paper kind of like you know you can print on business cards and handing them out to students and again they are saying and these are really helpful like it's really helpful that I don't need to do the work of thinking of the mnemonic and the image is really helping me to clue into what the word meant and it wasn't for absolutely everyone but a large number of students were really liking it. And so like I said I think I'm onto something here. And so I just kept doing it. I created for the textbook I was using at the time I made sure I had visual mnemonic for every single word and then someone said Well why don't you if you could put this into app form you'd be able to yet at another multimedia element. And that would be audio. And I said Oh man that's brilliant. So again I found another student who was formerly a coder and he helped me create what became flash Creek which is a multimedia flashcard app. And in the midst of that I added yet another component which was a scripture example. So when they look at a card now they see the word they can see an image mnemonic they can see for example where for instance you have Godsall of the world. And I would just replace the one word God. So the soul of the world and they would also hear the audio at the same time and then as they flipped the card it would show the meaning the image mnemonic would change a little bit in the Scripture example would move to that English word back before thoughts on the world. And then the audio of the English side so that became flash Greek which is available on iOS and Android and I'm just on the finishing touches of hopefully by the end of er by mid December I'll be able to release a totally refreshed interface of that kind of rate on my desktop right now and right in the midst of working on it. So that will be putting the finishing touches on it so I'm really excited about a refreshed version on iOS and Android will be coming. Another month or month or two and the other app that I created at the same time was a parsing app. And so there wasn't really a lot of a lot of apps or software out there to just test and drill students on the work of parsing. And so I created an app called parse Greek. And what it does is again it will it works alongside compatible with all the top end programmers in the same way. Flash Greek is and you can choose for instance if you're studying with cambium or Kroy or MT's or mine you can see this is the chapter that I'm studying and the concepts from this chapters. So if you just take a chapter and you've learned about the nominative you can say I've just learned this chapter and I want to take the words from that chapter or the words from the previous chapter. And please drill me on those and it'll present you with those words and you need to answer correctly you say as singular as it whirls it Maskin was it feminine as well as verbs in nouns verbs adjectives. So that's part Greek. And hopefully by the end of 2019 I'll have updated that for the both iOS and Android. It's starting to look a little dated. So I've been saving up for a long time to to update those because it's not cheap to to develop mobile software now.
Speaker 4:No not at all and that's that's the uphill battle as the looks thing but I have a feeling that students will find it helpful enough. I'm glad to hear that it's getting up to them and I hope I hope people jump on these things. I'm going to link to all these to see if you're listening please please check this out on the web because you're going to find links to all these things. So I hear a couple of things here. I hear a passion for scripture and also your compassion for students. It sounds like you are really striving to make this something that they can do and do well and actually enjoy. Which kind of brings us to one of the things we want to really focus on and this this episode is that you have now produced an entire Greek grammar yourself right biblical Greek made simple.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah I'm really excited i'm holding my hand while I'm talking to you.
Travis:OK. Stroking playing glorying over it. Now that's great. That releases while we're recording this the week before. But I mean we're going to release this the week that the book releases so it ought to be available now for people to get them shirts available for preorder if somehow they sneak in unreleased episode of this podcast this as thousands of hackers try to do every week.
Speaker 8:Yeah I'm glad to call sarcasm man.
Travis:But but so this is not a fly by night thing for you is what I'm trying to get at. You clearly hear about students. But that said you've used a lot of resources. Clearly you've had to assign textbooks. Why a new one.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's a great question. Because that's so often the question you know when a new grammar or a textbook comes out as Why do we need another one. So what happened.
Speaker 6:It's actually a story that really derives from the situation that I'm in and had I been at another college it would have you know potentially never have come about. But what happened is that we went through a curriculum review at the Divinity college and this is when I was still just an assistant or actually I was only a lecturer at the time and through the process of that curriculum review the committee determined that they wanted to make some changes and it has to do with the increasing skillset that pastors need today that the recognition that they need to both be able to be competent communicators but also leaders of teams they need to be able to have competency and counseling. There's so many things. I mean it's such a it's such a massive tool that the pastors and the night so appreciate and commend those students that are committed to the call of God. And so within those curriculum changes they said we still need for them to understand and prioritize the languages but we we don't feel that we can commit as much credit time to those. And so the decision was made that there would be a single semester of Greek in a single semester of Hebrew. And in the master divinity track what would happen after that is that students would then go on to their advanced the Bible electives and there would be a more concerted effort on our part to make sure that in those courses they were making use of what they had learned in the first semester. And so continuing to build off of that. And so I was the Greek professor at the time I was a lecturer. And so it really fell upon me to to tackle this project. How do you teach Greek in one semester and do it justice. Because I think we have all had experiences of pastors knowing just a little bit of Greek and it makes them dangerous rather than competent. And I was very aware of that and the difficulty too was that we would have students in the class who would would never take a concentrated Greek course again after that single semester. But also those students who wanted to continue on and go into a second semester and then go into intermediate Greek and then go into advanced courses. So this course really had to do a bit of double duty and it was a high was a it was a lot of work to think through. So what I did was I bought every Greek grammar and I had them all on my shelves and I started evaluating them and saying Will any of these work for me. And none of them would. As much as I wanted them to because I kind of felt I felt a big mountain looming that I was about to have to climb that which was you're going to have to create something on your own here. But I took the time and I value them all. And if you look at all of the Greek grammars that are out there they all they all range into the upper 20s sometimes even to the 40s as far as chapter count and for for a Canadian semester which is 12 weeks long there's just no way to fit. There wasn't any way to fit those in. They're all designed for a full year program. And that's that's great. That's well and good but I I needed something that could could do in one semester but also prepare those students who wanted to keep going. So and so I talked to my boss here the academic dean and I said I have done my due diligence I said there really is no way that I can take any existing textbook and I said I'm going to have to devote my entire summer and do a first draft of this what became now made simple. And they released me some from some other obligations and I pumped the first draft out in the first in a in a summer and in the following years after that kept on refining it because the students were helping me and saying you know this doesn't make sense. You made an error here. All those types of things. And in that first year I was a week to week creating what has become the learning exercises. And again those have been refined over the years. And so part of the strategy in the change to the curriculum here was saying we recognize that when students are using the primary languages that are so often utilizing Bible software and I said this is true it was certainly true at the time that I was working on this that so often the feeling was in an introductory gry classes for Greek teachers that we would tell the students we don't want you to go there we don't want you to use the Bible software because you need to learn how to recognize these things on your own. You need to parse from memory and learn to work to read to sight read. So don't use that as a crutch. That's when the head tended to be the perspective and I understand that perspective and I was of that perspective when I was doing a full year. But this was very different. Now I had a single semester with them. And so what I needed to do was not cut any corners. I couldn't say Well I'm not going to bother introducing the imperative to them or the subjunct of they needed to be introduced to all of that and understand all those were the importance of those when it came to translation and interpretation. But at the same time I can't in a single semester reasonably think that they will be able to reproduce the old paradigm in every mode. It's just not going to work. And that's it will work if you're doing a full semester or three semesters but in a single semester there's no way that that's reasonable. And I needed to be able to teach them some vocabulary still because obviously that's important and it's especially important for the students that we're going to go on to a second semester and third and fourth into Ph.D. studies and things like that. So all of that to say that the result was the textbook that's now published with like them is that the rather than saying look at this word and parse it for me the question is rather look at this word in your Bible software. And what does log us tell you that the parsing of this word is so they would tell me. And then I say OK now what does that mean to you. What's the importance. What does that mean for it to be unnominated in the sentence. What's its functions going to be what does it mean to be an indicative verb here what is what does that mean. Is that generally what does that mean in translation. So the the questions became different. Whereas the traditional full year grammar was what is the parsing. That's the kind of the meat and you know of what so much of a first year grammar as my questions were just let Lagash tell you the parsing but what's the significance of those components of the parsing. So that would the change and kind of approach for my grammar and it meant to that I had the freedom to say I want you to have log on I even want you and have been in class at times that we worked through and I can teach you how do you access the information and how do you access the tools within Lagos to learn further about these components of these words and syntax and all of that. So I was able to tap into the wonderful world of Lagos Bible software and introduce them to that. And that's been that's been a fantastic offshoot of this single semester approaches that I've taught them. I've been able to while teaching Greek start to teach them how to make use of a Lagasse effectively both in the primary language work but also beyond that you know to just research and sermon creation and all that kind of stuff that we haven't logoff. So it's been really good. So as you go through the textbook there are both there are both less learning activities that will drill in some obviously meaning to learn some core paradigms vocabulary obviously but also some actual work and saying OK open log on us and let's do some Lacoste work as you work through this learning activity. So it's hands on in that way as well.
Speaker 4:Sure. And this is the I think that tension between what we do when we teach biblical Greek to Bible college or seminary students is that on one hand we are teaching a language but on the other hand we are teaching people who want to interpret a particular corpus of texts. And so we obviously you know we ride that line between we are somewhat pragmatic in our study of the Greek language and so many people would have gasped. Right. Because there are those who just love language in their gift to the church because their love of language propels them to see things in this corpus of texts that we may not have otherwise seen. But at the end of the day why we include biblical Greek is not so that everyone will know the intricacies of the Greek language for itself but so that they can interpret the new testament. And so.
Travis:That's the balance as I would see it and that would be kind of a tossup between a four year one semester. It sounds it sounds like to me than it was. So I kind of assumed you had some other other reason for you know this is the gap I see in textbooks and hey let's make it one semester. It sounds like it's the other way around it was we're moving in one semester on a textbook for this. I mean that's that's right. The very very simple version.
Speaker 8:Yeah it was pragmatic in the same way as it was.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's right. And one of the great offshoots of it I realized because of course as a as a lover of the primary languages I was a little bit distraught as you can imagine.
Speaker 5:I think you probably would have been to when it kind of came down to me that we're moving to a one semester and you need to figure out how to do it essentially.
Speaker 3:You know part of my part of me felt distraught but I found it in the subsequent years when we moved to the model that actually I started to enjoy teaching it even more because the first semester those first semester class as opposed to the previous years where you always have some some students for whom this is just terribly difficult and you feel like you're dragging them through the course. There was a lot there was a lot less of that feel there was more for some reason this more can do spirit. And I think it's because of their recognition that I'm not being asked to reproduce all of this stuff anymore. I'm being asked different things now of how to interact with the Greek. So for some reason there was just this shift within the students that I felt that this didn't seem like as laborious for them anymore.
Speaker 2:At the same time you know I still got complaints when I was a workhorse that kind of thing. But it wasn't the same it wasn't the same type of frustration in the student.
Speaker 6:And then the second thing that I realized which it hadn't occurred to me before. But the students who decided to go on to a second semester. It was certainly it was less of them. But those ones were really committed. They were going on because they wanted to into a second semester not because they had to. And those students were really excelling. So it was kind of like the cream of the crop who really loved the language were going on and it became really a delight in that second semester because you're working with a really committed student at that point who are doing it because they want to. So that was that was a great offshoot. And what I what I think too is again that one semester approach will be a lot more viable for self learners certainly. So there's there's a lot of I think benefits again to to yet another grammar I'm amongst the many that has taken a very different type of approach.
Speaker 4:Yeah that's one of the things I want to ask you you know a self learner. We we did a very early episode of this podcast on being an autodidact because you can't just say self-learning right. You've got to know you've got to show off your chops a little bit so how can a self learner pick this up some if they just they just pick up this book they order it and it shows up in the mail. Are they someone they need to go download your apps and go look at your YouTube videos right. Why would they not seek out more help. But to why would you tell that person or you know I guess I shouldn't assume. Would you tell that person hey if you can get lost and if you would how is that going to how's that going to propel them over just the textbook.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I would say I do say kind of at the outset of the textbook it would be really highly advantageous to get along. Because again the learning activities from every chapter includes working longer hours. And so it's advantageous from that point and I kind of make suggestions both in the textbook and on my Web site.
Speaker 6:If you can afford the full blown longus here's kind of the minimal components that would be really good but you could still then work with the textbook and work at understanding how to get the information from logs that you want. So that certainly is one. I'm also in the midst of completing the answer key for the textbook so that that will be available as well on the book on my website I have a page devoted to the book and so that will be available there soon. I also have a yeah I also have an old video course on my website that follows this textbook the textbook chapters and they're a little bit dated. I'm actually in the midst of actually redoing those as well. Given that we've kind of now launched it with Lexx I'm here so I want to make those better. But those are available two for four cell learners if they kind of if they want to hear the textbook you know spoken to them as well as it were so. So there are various tools but I do think it's it's advantageous I think potentially for those for those self learners or autodidacts because first off it's just a little less intimidating than a textbook with 50 chapters. This is a textbook with 11 chapters and it's not asking them to memorize paradigm upon paradigm. It's different in that way. The other thing I'm kind of going back to my what you mention of my focus on students and trying to really present in a nice visual way. One thing that I when I talked a lot Lexan press I said I said I know this might be annoying to you guys but it's really important to me that we keep the color and so they were happy to do that which I was so thrilled.
Speaker 3:So as you go through and you look at my textbook the paradigms all have colored fonts and so my eye color different components for instance of the verbs or eye color different components within the within the noun paradigms and so that you're able to see what are the tags at the end of those words or what are the arguments on these verbs cetera. So I was really really happy that that was able to make it into this textbook and again it's one of those.
Speaker 6:It's one of those things that makes this particular textbook stand out amongst other pretexts. What I'm trying to go through my brain quickly of all of those many inter-group grammars I've surveyed. I don't think that there's any of them that have colored fonts. Sure if I'm remembering correctly. So. So that was that's another component that I think makes us stand out. Luxon Lexcen has created a beautiful textbook. It's better than I thought it would look. So that's always good.
Speaker 4:Yeah no yeah you know I've been encouraged by especially in textbook it's using as much as possible web resources to supplement. Yes. But I mean just something as simple as color print. I mean you've got you've got apps here and you've got videos here and you've got La Crosse Byrle software here. But just let's let's do everything we can to position students well to learn. I think that's right. And I'm I'm sure that's on the forefront of other publishers minds but just the more ways we can find to do that the better right. Yes absolutely. So I'm wondering here professors who are you me seeking to change things up a little bit or maybe on the fence about that. Obviously those who are teaching elementary Greek in a semester are going to be considering this. I mean I would I would commend it to them that makes sense. That's sort of the low hanging fruit right now. Yeah but those who have traditionally been doing a year know may be one they're hearing you and they're agreeing and they want to make a push to a semester or maybe that's really not within their power. What would you what would you tell professor who's listening to this podcast. I think there are a couple who are really thinking about how they can best equip students especially in light of all these things we're talking about those who are going to go on and do biblical studies are going to take a lot more Greek. They're going to they're going to go do a Ph.D. eventually but many are going to be pastors are not going to take into their Greek classrooms take many more classes and we want them to engender in them this sense of confidence enjoy in the study of Greek so that they actually use what they do have. So.
Travis:I'm hopefully maybe I'm making a case for you a little bit but I'm sorry I just I'm just doing this thing I do processing here. But seriously I mean what would you say to them if there are one. So what will happen to one if they are on the fence about a one semester ailments class what would you say to you if they're not really in a place to do that. Can they still use your book and how.
Speaker 3:Yeah so that's a great question. And I was hoping I was hoping you'd ask something like that. So the look title is a little Greek made simple. All the basics in one semester. And that's you know that really is like you said the low hanging fruit that's a first for professors that are in that in that mode in their class. This is going to be hopefully ideal for them. However it is actually usable in two semesters in a traditional way. And remember that I said I had to do that I had to be thinking right from the beginning how could I actually build upon this into a second semester to be a full year. Traditional grammar at the end. So how could I. How could I make sure that this textbook can be used in a second semester so that at the end of those two semesters my student will have the same competency as a student who has gone through a full year using Kamble or MT's or or black or whatever other introductory grammar. And so in the textbook as you go through there are learning activities at the end of every textbook end of every chapter. And then there is a section that's called the second time around. And the second time around is additional learning activities. And what I've done is I've designed it so that in a second semester you would essentially go through the majority of the textbook again and you would be focusing at that point on increased memorization of some paradigms. You would be focusing a little bit less on Lagasse's at that point and you would be working more on parsing from sight and translation from sight. So it is actually created to work in a second in a two semester situation as well. But like you said obviously the the low hanging fruit is that one semester approach which is why it's in the title. So so I would say for those professors up there who are still in a traditional two semester model this book may be one that you want to take a look at especially if you have felt that I would like to somehow integrate log OSS software integrator way that I haven't been able to integrate in because of the textbook that we're using.
Speaker 6:This is that this is the textbook that does that. So I would say that that would be the possibility of a way that it could work in a you know traditional curriculum that has a full year of Greek because again I do it I don't cut corners anywhere. So that's what's important. I think people perhaps would think that because it's one semester there are things that I don't cover and that's not the case. So you can go here and and find that discussion on the opposite and see the opposite paradigm and what that means. And so I don't I don't cut any corners in that way. So it is all still there.
Speaker 4:It's just approached and it's presented differently now OK so I'm one of the I'm one of those on the fence people. But here's a here's something as you're saying that that really sounds like it'd be an advantage to me. I mean that seriously genuinely sincerely not just because we're having this conversation on a podcast and talking about the book. But one of the things that I know students struggle with an elementary Greek is that you are your name and the paradigm in doing the quiz. And hopefully that sticks with you but it's siloed off and you're going to move into the next section the next section the next session hopefully you remembered it all. Come final time and the next minute you've got how many more paradigms and unless you go on to further Greek studies. Those aren't going to drill drill and that's that's my that's why I would encourage students to do an intermediate Greek year or semester is because you're not only getting in a syntax and that's incredibly important but you're also just being. These things are being put before you again and again and refreshing your memory if you have covered them all in a semester become somewhat familiar and then you can come back just a couple months later and do it again and at a greater depth then to be honest I would like to see a bit of a longitudinal study here with one semester students and one those who don't go on to studies. Do they use more of what they do have over the long term and a pass rate or whatever kind of ministry context those who do want to do go on a greater Greek studies. Did that that shortened time give them more margin. I mean it would give them more margin to take deeper classes more X Jesus more advanced Greek grammar kind of things. And how does that go for them over the long haul I'm not sure you can always quantify all that. Student Eve owls are one of those great examples of how you can always quantify pedagogy but this this makes sense to me. I mean that honestly they any end to be in those who are in the position where it doesn't really matter what what they want they're going to be teaching a one semester elementary Greek class. I'm glad that they have a resource a thoughtful resource resource from someone who has been doing it a while and cares about students. I really I really am excited for this to be out by the time of the release of this podcast. I do have one other question. I know I promise you I would ask you this question and I told you that it's OK to say no one but who shouldn't use this book who shouldn't.
Speaker 8:Yeah if you say no one yeah yeah you did mention that I was trying to think of who shouldn't use it.
Speaker 3:I guess the only I guess the people that I could see maybe saying a different grammar is the one that I should use or are those who are are saying I want to get to the point or I want to get to the point immediately of being able to sight read absolutely everything. In other words maybe someone and there are those people who are just aren't and aren't aren't at all interested in in long spying software or Bible software. So there are those out there and they that's their preference and that's okay. We're all different people right. So this is really this is tailored to that person who when they interact with the primary language it's going to be in Bible software. Right. And rather than ignoring that or saying hold that off I just did braced it and said look this is going to be the reality that I want to equip them to do in a greater way. Sure. And so you know going back to what you said I agreed with everything you said there and I can only give kind of anecdotal from previous students.
Speaker 6:But again those people who appreciated my approach are now and in pastoral ministry in and around the Maritimes and Canada here.
Speaker 3:The reason that they continue to use Greek is because in part I taught them also how to make use of log us in general. And so I equipped them with that and that became valuable in ministry and they had already had with them then that that understanding of the Greek language and I had taught them how to make use of it. Right. So Lagares became the thing that as they went on into the ministry as professors need to realize they're not popping open those textbooks that they read as often as they're propping up Ligas Bible software.
Speaker 6:And so I just wanted to equip them and work alongside that and help them to be able to utilize language tools there. And so that's I've seen the fruit of that in the pastors that I've had the fortunate work of training into ministry. And that's that's the way that they have continued to use what I taught them and in that one semester is because I at the same time equipped them to make use of logoff software in their study.
Speaker 4:You know and I think that that is invaluable honestly for where we are and you know I go back and forth when I'm thinking about what book to buy or what format to buy books and just to be honest. And you know as much as I love I love good design. I want to see nice cover and I want the cover design to look good and to make me feel like I'm doing something August and I want it to sell my shelf and I want it to be a perpetual reminder of this thing that I know or will someday when I actually read the book. But when I'm doing research I want to be able to search a resource so if I can buy the book on longus or Kindle I just do it and I have yet to regret that you know. And so man I'm I'm not gushing over Lagos here but I am commending approaches to studying biblical Greek Biblical Hebrew that incorporate Bible software. Just because it's not it's not going anywhere. That's right. If we need to train this generation of ministers disciples pastors scholars and this generation barring you know something sub pop apocalyptic will or anything actually apocalyptic will. In which case you know we won't teach Greek anymore probably. Maybe we'll desperate but probably not so many. I'm encouraged by this dynamic courage by your passion for students passion for the scriptures. I definitely want to connect people to some of these resources. I think that there are going to be a huge help to those who have any interest in biblical Greek which ought to be just about everybody listening. But I really hope that check out the textbook and see what it's all about. Danny thank you so much.
Speaker 5:Thank you very much. Thank you very much to you. Thanks. This is a great interview.