easy greek - a myth

Here is what ever one else is quoting from David Alan Black

"One of the distressing developments in our superficial church culture is a cheap familiarity with New Testament Greek. It is fashionable to give the impression that we (and we alone) know what the Greek really says. I have sometimes referred to this as “evangelical Greek” or, in my less sanctified moments, “philological voodoo.” There is no place in evangelical biblical scholarship for the frivolous approach by which we claim for ourselves an inerrant understanding of Scripture. None of us who has labored in the task of Bible translation is ever worthy to claim perfection for our product. That includes me, and it includes you."

— David Alan Black

I might a few words of my own. There is a story going around about a monk who devoted all his time (+/-16 hours a day) to learning ancient greek for 18 years. After  which he confessed that he was still having problems reading Aeschylus. The main thing I notice is that every year it gets easier to forget what I knew last year. I had a much better command of old school text book grammar using the traditional meta-language in the year 2000 than I do now. When you quit using the traditional meta-language it goes away, fast.