St. John.s College Greek

[Harry]

Does anyone know how St. John's teaches Greek? I know that they use only the Classics or Great Books. Do they use some standard textbook for Greek or do they use side by side translations and a Lexicon? It seems they would not just throw in some standard textbook considering their philosohy of original source materials. Harry

[mythopoeic]

http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/langtutorial.shtml

This outlines their method very generally, but doesn't mention which books they use. I think you can gather from this that they at least teach from a grammar and dictionary, but I assume they probably use a textbook.

I didn't study at St. John's but when I learned Greek, the textbook we used was Hansen and Quinn's Greek: An Intensive Course, a no frills grammar memorization marathon which covered all the grammar and vocab so that you'd be able to begin reading Plato.

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-Hardy-Hansen/dp/0823216632/ref=sr_1_1/188-6335137-7692823?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240412627&sr=8-1


The most essential Greek Grammar is by Herbert Weir Smyth:

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Grammar-Herbert-Weir-Smyth/dp/0674362500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240413144&sr=1-1

But it's too confusing for someone not yet at the intermediate level.

[MrsEmilyP]

When I attended a few years ago, the first year used a text by C. A. E. Luschnig, An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach. I can really recommend this book. After going through the book with a tutor who (luckily for us) was an expert in Ancient Greek, the second year my class translated Homer's Iliad, Book XXIV. We used the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics edition edited by C.W. MacLeod. This was followed by reading other Greek texts, such as Hesiod, and the New Testament. We translated readings for our homework, talked about new linguistics topics in class and then took turns reading and discussing our translations. Hope this helps!