Who Wants to be Normal Anyway?: Biblical Greek and Interlingual Pedagogy

In the introduction to his commentary on 1 Maccabees, Jonathan Goldstein writes that the Greek of 1 Maccabees is an “extremely literal translates” making it anything but normal (1976:14). As the field of Classics continues to interrogate long held assumptions about cannon, Goldstein’s remark should encourage us to probe these atypical kinds of Greeks. The Greek of 1 Maccabees is anything but normal because it translates a now lost Hebrew Vorlage. The interaction between Hebrew and Greek that occurred in the eastern Mediterranean has left us with a corpus of minoritized Greek, that is Greek written by native Aramaic speakers following the style of Hebrew scriptures. A pedagogical shift away from Attic Greek toward Biblical Greek would expose students to diverse Greek idiolects that are often eschewed in the classical canon. In what follows, I discuss two core advantages of teaching Biblical Greek as opposed to Attic Greek. First and foremost, Biblical Greek indirectly exposes students to Semitic languages that were operative in the Roman Empire. Biblical Greek is the product of language contact and translation. The Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint along with the Septuagintalisms and Hebrew syntax of the New Testament require the instructor to frequently discuss biblical Hebrew grammar and vocabulary when teaching Biblical Greek. Since Biblical Greek is interlingual, Biblical Greek pedagogy must likewise be interlingual. This kind of pedagogy forces students to acknowledge the importance of Hebrew and Aramaic in minor forms of Greek. Although I teach at a Seminary where many students come to Greek with some background in Hebrew, it is my hope that teaching Biblical Greek will encourage students to study Hebrew and thereby more thoroughly integrate Classics with Near Eastern Studies, Religious Studies and Jewish Studies. In addition to the interlingual component of Biblical Greek, the texts which we read in class generally feature simple syntax and stories that are largely familiar to students (especially to those with religious backgrounds). By the second semester of the year long course, students are able to read “real” Greek from both the Septuagint and New Testament with some vocabulary help. Grammatical concepts are simply demonstrated in the paratactic prose of the Septuagint and New Testament. For example, when teaching third person imperatives, I have the students translate the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) and when teaching the articular infinitive, the students read the Septuagint of Ecclesiastes 3. Biblical Greek likewise eliminates some of the more challenging aspects of Greek grammar. Clayton Croy’s Primer to Biblical Greek does not include the optative mood and features only a small section on the pluperfect. Students wishing to pursue Greek for multiple years can learn the finer points of Greek grammar in intermediate level courses. In conclusion, this paper encourages leaning into the weirdness of Biblical Greek. The zany stories of the Gospels which are widely familiar, the interlingual component of the idiolect, and the simple prose of the New Testament and Septuagint make Biblical Greek an ideal dialect for beginners.