It's Christmas Eve. Pam felt good enough to go to work this morning, against her husband's better judgment, so I've been home alone all day. I've done my chores, gone over and over the things for tomorrow and worked in the garage. It's warmer out there. Even with the sun shining through the windows the house never got warmer than 65 degrees today, a single degree increase over the morning's reading. We'll drop down to the the mid-30's again each of the next several nights so I'm afraid we'll lose a degree or two inside each day. How long can we go without turning on the heat?
The NBA starts tomorrow and I do not care. They might just as well have stayed out all season. I'm not much of a pro basketball fan to begin with but the strike dissolved what little interest I had.
It certainly looks like Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee just by virtue of outlasting everyone else. I read an article this morning about President Reagan that included a description of how, after a period of decline, he inspired Americans to renewed optimism, using expressions like "the dawn ahead." Nobody has used the word inspired in connection with Romney. Boring? yeah, that one.
Greek is a much more powerful language than English. It has a pretty expansive verb system allowing it to express actions with much greater specificity. Compared to Hebrew, which has a relatively small verb system and a ton of nouns, Greek is all about the verb. Understanding the New Testament in all it's richness can only happen with an understanding of that verb system. Not every verse requires it but in a high percentage of NT passages knowing what's going on with the verbs opens things up in a way that makes the text come alive and often uncovers powerful truth.
When I took NT Greek in college we were required to memorize the system so that we could (in theory) look at any NT verb and parse it in all its elements: number (singular or plural), person (first, second, or third), voice (active, middle, or passive), tense (present, aorist, future, perfect, imperfect, or pluperfect), and mood (indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative, infinitive, or participle). All of these facets are indicated by the unique addition or subtraction of specific combinations of letters on the front and end of the root verb. The permutations seem endless, which describes the hours we spent memorizing all those forms. Hundreds of them. And then there were the irregular verbs that don't follow the standard forms.
Memorize, memorize, memorize.
You could tell the students taking Greek because they always had a glazed look in their eyes and flash cards in their hand.
One result of this was that only someone who had the time, money and stubbornness to take two or more years of Greek can access those wonderful truths. Everyone else depends on their pastor, and that can be an uneven thing. Let's face it, too many pastors don't have the exposition of biblical truth as a ministry priority.
Enter the internet!
Now anyone can mine the truths of the Greek NT. No need to memorize forms; every NT verb is parsed for you. By coordinating the information on two or three different sites (sites I use!) anyone can identify the root verb and its meaning(s), and all the facets listed above.
All that's required - and I don't mean to minimize this - is to learn the significance of those facets. What does it mean if the verb is an aorist? an optative? a middle? But this is very doable with a few simple mnemonic devices and, if necessary, a self-made chart that lays it all out.
A friend on Facebook asked me last week what an aorist verb was. A few weeks ago someone at church said, "This makes me want to learn Greek." I realize that most Christians don't have the time or inclination to do this, but for those who do, the prospects have never been better.
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