So about this Greek thing…. The text book is named Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An exegetical syntax of the New Testament. And I can think of only a few things that could make me laugh less. But laugh I did.
In a most ironic twist the author included a quote from Douglas Adams. What do New Testament Greek and Douglas Adams have in common you ask?
Absolutely nothing.
But he included the quote to make a point about the complexities of verb tenses and the struggles that grammar students face. It was a point well made I must say.
“In Douglas Adams’ delightfully insane The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a brief chapter describing the major problem in time travel:
‘The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
‘Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.’”
You know, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
