Great Expectations

I think I disagree more than I agree, but its not an either/or for me. Karyn Traphagen wrote a great paper for SBL on this years ago, just as the cohelet stuff was taking off. I'll try to find it. Obviously, immersion is the best method for learning a new language. No one is arguing differently. Methods like TPR do well to exploit embodied cognition and make the learning go faster and be internalized in much more personal ways. But, I find two problems with the communicative methods for biblical languages: content and purpose. I think these two problems are significant enough that communicative methods for biblical languages are best used as supplements, not as the primary (and certainly not superior) method. Even Booth recognizes the content problem. Biblical Hebrew has the word for dog, but not cat. The biblical Hebrew corpus is not large enough to form a corpus-based "language". So if we teach someone to speak biblical Hebrew, what are they speaking exactly? Further, there is disagreement (though only one side is correct) about how biblical Hebrew should be pronounced. The same is the case with Koine. In both cases, one would be teaching students a classroom language that only exists in that classroom. I find a better solution is simply to take time to be immersed in modern Hebrew and modern Greek. One gets the vocabulary retention benefits, the embodied internalization with TPR, and a useful linguistic skill in communicating with real people in the real world. I did a modern Hebrew ulpan after my first year of biblical Hebrew, and its made my biblical Hebrew sharper and faster, not to mentioned given me the ability to read unpointed Hebrew (ancient or modern). The second problem is purpose. I am not trying to read the Bible as I read a newspaper. I read Bible translations that way, but its not my goal to be a "fluent" or "competent" speed reader. Nor do I teach students that this should be their purpose. If it is, I tell them to go learn modern Hebrew or Greek. My objective in reading the Bible is analysis. My students have wanted to be better exegetes and preachers. I have found that the best way to develop a skill is to practice that skill for 10,000 hours. Over and over and over. So the skill I need (and thus teach) is using tools and being critical of tools. I am very good at using HALOT and Waltke and BHRG. I might not "read" as well as others, but I can motivate all of my decisions with scholarly literature. I have also learned how to use usage-based linguistic approaches (namely cognitive semantics and grammaticalization typologies) to evaluate the scholarly literature in biblical languages and criticize it/build on it. My knowledge of biblical Hebrew will at best produce an intuition about the language that may (rightly) be perceived as reliable/authoritative. But it won't help me prove my claims to scholars. Consider a small Greek word like γαρ. Would a communicative approach teach a student that this form is often used in the switching of speakers in Greek literature like the Bacchae and LXX Isa? Would such an approach help a student analyze a text like Rom 1 and see the plausibility of a speaker switch in 1:18 marked with γαρ? It seems only a more analytical approach is capable of that. I also disagree with the idea that the grammar/translation model of biblical language instruction has been a failure in the West. The method, supplemented by time immersed in modern forms of Hebrew and Greek, has worked out great for me and many of my students. I think the failure is on the part of teachers and on departments who lack love and creativity.