Announcing a New Experiment: Greek Geek Weekly

Ever wish you could read the Greek New Testament alongside a distinguished professor of NT? Well too bad, they’re not available. But I’ll do it!

The Premise

There are a number of great podcasts and educational channels out there that do an amazing job of explaining Greek. They are well researched and put together, and they do an excellent job of helping you understand how the Greek works. But one thing (imo) that they don’t do is capture the experience and process of reading Greek.

Process is important. I fear that many of us get “stuck” in the original languages because, when we sit down to read it ourselves, it all feels like a bit of a jumble and we don’t know how to unjumble it. Now somebody might come along and tell us what it all means, but how did they arrive at those conclusions? Do they just know Greek better than I do? Should I go back to my vocab cards and grammar notes and do more memorization? No! Maybe they know Greek better than you, but they got to that point by struggling with the Greek, asking the right questions, and knowing where to go to get the answers.

This series will capture that process: the process of coming to understand how the Greek works. I know a lot about Greek, but I also don’t know a lot about Greek; in other words, I’m just like everyone who reads the GNT. I begin with what I know and then I have to puzzle through and research what I don’t. I hit a stumbling block; I get confused; I make mistakes; I double-down on those mistakes; I get corrected; I do research and (hopefully) reach a resolution.

This channel is about that. It’s more about the questions than the answers, the research rather than the result, the way we get there and the puzzles that remain rather than the conclusions and the knowledge that we gained.

The Method

How will I achieve this goal of focusing on the process rather than the results? Easy! I won’t prepare ahead of time. No notes, no prior research, on-the-fly, unplugged and without autotune. Karaoke. but Greek. I’ll come to the text just like everyone else does: with some knowledge about Greek, but not all the knowledge I need to figure it out. And then what? Then I’ll look things up, think it through, make a few mistakes (and hopefully corrections), pose further questions, and document the journey.

In other words, I hope that this will be as much about how to learn as it is about what we learned, and I hope to achieve that goal by actually learning myself.

The Experiment

Truth be told, I’m terrified of doing this. I’ve long wanted to do it, and I think it might be useful, and it synergizes with things I’m already up to, but I’m worried about the time commitment, the possibility of failure, and the constant humiliation of being wrong on the internet. Also I recently butchered my beard, so I won’t even look the part. However, despite those fears, I’m going to commit to doing this for two months and we’ll see how it goes. If it goes well (or if I’m just enjoying myself), then like all things the show will evolve. Maybe I can invite some guests? Should there be some intro music? How do thumbnails work? I hope I can find out, but in the meantime: like, subscribe, and leave a comment, as they say on YouTube

So, without further preamble: the first episode.