Posts

Showing posts from May, 2020

GREEKS AND JEWS SHOULD NOT ABANDON THEIR MOTHER TONGUES

Image
I was chatting with a university mate of mine who told me that some of her younger Greek friends in Australia are now unable to speak or understand the Greek language and culture.        While this is not unusual as they have grown up in the big cities in Australia, what a waste it is for them to abandon their mother tongue, when Christians around the world are learning Greek in order to understand the New Testament.        The fact that the New Testament was originally written in the koine Greek means that a lot of the nuances in the original text could be understood when one has acquired some working knowledge of Greek.          Hence, this is my encouragement to our Greek brothers and sisters, who have already assimilated to the local culture. It's time for you to pick up your mother tongue and, and start reading the New Testament in your own language.         Likewise, if you are a Messianic Jews reading this short blogpost, allow me to encourage you to return to your m

UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHE AND MINDSET OF MATURE STUDENTS

Image
A young lecturer for my Biblical Greek class prohibited students from setting up Whatsapp chat groups. No reason was given, but in my opinion, there was every reason why such support group has been helpful to learning the biblical languages. Ignoring the instruction, a few mature students decided and agreed to proceed by setting up a chat group to learn Greek together. We shared the good resources. That was, in fact, how I was introduced to a series of online lectures by Dr Mark Schuler, a lecturer of Biblical Greek at Concordia University. Most of us followed through his online series and found Dr Schuler's videos to be a very good source of teaching. It is systematic and we were able to follow. On this point, allow me to put some thoughts together about who we are: mature students . This is especially important to lecturers who have never worked in the marketplace. Put it crudely, they just parachuted into the seminary positions after their graduation. Because of that,