The Joy of Teaching

         

          In today's class I had the joy of seeing the light bulb go on for several students as we continued to practice translating Greek sentences into English.
          Marty is teaching the same students.  They are learning about the apostle Paul and his letters.  Each day Marty and I talk about how our classes went and what we covered.  On Monday and Tuesday, he covered Philemon, Galatians, and Romans with them.
          I asked Marty if it was OK if I took Greek verses from those letters to use as translation exercises in class. He readily agreed.  Today I presented half a dozen or so verses from Philemon and Galatians for the class to translate.
         Galatians 2:16 reads (in the New Revised Standard Version):  "And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ."
          The Greek of that sentence can read:  "And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by/from (the) faith of Christ."  I asked the students to think about this example:

                                              the love of God

           Does that mean "God's love for us" or does it mean "our love for God"?  Abraham immediately said, "It means God's love for us."  When I asked him how he knew that, he replied, "Because God came down to love us."  I agreed with that statement, but I asked him how he knew that the simple phrase "the love of God" means "God's love for us."   Shingi (she is a very bright student!) spoke up and said, "When it's written in the Greek, you know, because it would be possessive."  In a sense, she can be right.  In the Greek, it might mean "God's love for us," but it still could be translated "our love for God." 
           I told the class, "Let's see how it's translated in the English Bible."  So I read the translation from above.  They all shook their heads as if in agreement.  Then I said, "But there's a footnote in my Bible with an alternative translation that says, 'the faith of Jesus Christ.'"  They looked somewhat crestfallen!  I assured them that many scholarly articles and books had been written on this very question.
          After class, Godwill spoke to me and seemed very enthused.  He mentioned a verse from Colossians that Marty had covered in class yesterday that reminded him of our discussion about "the faith of Jesus Christ."  I shared with him that, in Greek, there is what is known as the objective and subjective genitive.  Even though the Greek might be translated "the love of God," it might mean "God's love for us" where God is the subject (subjective genitive) or "our love for  God" where God is object of our love (objective genitive).  That is part of the challenge and fun of making translation decisions.  Godwill seemed genuinely excited.  I encouraged him to ask Marty about this.
         When Marty and I talked about this at lunch, he told me they would be talking about that very topic at length in class on Friday.  So, it's nice to coordinate our teaching and to try to reinforce each other.  I'm trying hard to help the students see that studying Greek has a valuable purpose in translating and interpreting scripture, and that Greek class is not just another academic requirement.
          Another "light bulb" moment -- I wrote a Greek sentence on the board for us to translate.  A couple of the students pointed out that I had misspelled a personal pronoun (I put the word for "you all" and instead of "we all").  I asked them how they knew it was wrong.  They said it didn't agree with the verb ending.  Yea!  Then I told them I had misspelled the word on purpose just to see if they would catch it.  They laughed at that!  (I didn't really do that, it was my mistake.)
        This morning I attended the weekly faculty Bible study which was led by Dr. Retief, who is an Old Testament professor from South Africa.  However, the study was from the Pastoral Epistles in the New Testament.  Specifically, the study was on the idea of "conscience" and "faith" and how they are related.  The Bible study was designed to address the them of the school year, "The Person and Work of the Minister."  We had quite an interesting discussion.  I was particularly interested because some of my research for my dissertation touched on that topic, and the idea of whether or not people in Paul's day would have engaged in any kind of introspection, as we do today.  It was also helpful to talk about this topic in terms of being a pastor in the church and of being a believer in Christ.
           At some point this afternoon, Marty, Jurie, and I are going shopping.  Saturday is Sports Festival Day here on campus.  That ought to be interesting.