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Machen New Testament Greek for Beginners Group beginning Aug

Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 12:23 am
by christophershelt
To One And All--
A friend of mine and myself are starting a new beginners' Greek group that will follow J. Gresham Machen's, New Testament Greek for Beginners. I have the second edition of this work but my colleague, Kat Doe, has both the first and second editions. There is a photostatic copy of this book available online, which would prove useful, as this old edition I have cost me $50. Kat or myself might be able, temporarily, to scan our editions and send copies of the first few lessons to any who might need them. Since Machen is still under copyright protection, you will be required to obtain a copy: either edition. Kat says she knows of somewhere where a photostatic copy is available. Ask her.
There are some preparations that have to be made first. You have to download Yahoo Messenger and then email me your username. You have to join the Machen Yahoo Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Machen/. You have to download SPIonic font and keyboard layout (this is at the Yahoo Group Site with the other Links), as well as download the Arial Unicode MS font (this is a 15 MB download from the Unbound Bible site). I will temporarily post PDFs of the first 3 lessons of Machen, 2nd edition, until everyone has obtained a copy of the text.
Read the 1st and 2nd chapter and do the exercises at the end of the 2nd chapter, using Arial Unicode MS for the Greek. (Any word processing program should be sufficient.) I have MS WORD, but whatever you have should work fine for cutting and pasting.
You will have to register with Keyman, but it costs nothing to do so. Be sure to download the Free Home edition, 6.2, then download the Greek Classical keyboard from the keyboard page. After you have downloaded them and installed them you will have to go to START>CONTROL PANEL>REGIONAL AND LANGUAGE OPTIONS> LANGUAGES >DETAILS>
ADD then, in the drop down menu, choose GREEK for INPUT LANGUAGE and GREEK CLASSICAL for INPUT KEYBOARD, then OK and OK and you should be set. You might have to reboot the computer to get everything installed correctly. If you don't know how to install this on your computer get back to me and I'll walk you through it. All of this is freeware.
The format of the group will be as follows: we will each of us read a chapter a week (the lessons are short, but we might make it a chapter every 2 weeks if you would like). After each chapter there are usually 2 sets of exercises: one asking for the translation of words from the Greek to English; and the other one asking for compositions from English to Greek. Kat has an answer key for the first edition. We will settle on which edition to use once we have some response from all of the interested parties.
Once we have prepared our lessons we will meet for an online conference on Yahoo Messenger once a week or every two weeks.
We will then go over each question, one by one: first pasting the question on the screen then, one person at a time, seeing everyone's answers. All questions will be addressed at this time. The session shouldn't take more than an hour or two.
Kat and myself have used this method for learning Greek while we studied a free, online Greek course offered by University of Houston professor emerita, Dora C. Pozzi. It works very well and helps us get help and encouragement while learning a new language.
Kat and myself also know of a number of freeware programs that we have downloaded over the years and which we will be glad to share with all who want them. Anyone who is interested can contact myself, Christopher Shelton, or Kat Doe at the following addresses:

christophershelt@bellsouth.net

TuNeCedeMalis67@aol.com

The Unbound Bible site for downloading the Arial Unicode MS font:
http://www.unboundbible.com/index.cfm?m ... wnloadMain
The Keyman Site is:
http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/
The SPIonic font and keyboard layout are at Machen Yahoo Group Links site.