The Diacritical List

ὁ διδασκαλος here...

Lesson Two of the PBC Greek Class was another roaring success! Trish, Colleen, Larry and Jocelyn all generously donated another 2½ hours of their busy lives to bless me greatly by allowing me teach them some more Koine Greek.

Trish was hard-out running back to Kerikeri to swap her mum and a friend for two bags of limes then rush back to class.

Colleen took a break from training for the Sport Northland Run/Walk Series Bayley’s Beach to Dargaville run/walk next Sunday (well, I presume she took a break; didn’t actually see her drive her car to the lesson).

Larry & Jocelyn had just finished a marathon drive from Haruru Falls to Auckland and back just to be here—their daughter and son-in-law Elle and Rob were moving to Melbourne for six months and L & J took them down to catch their flight out (all went well, too; both couples reached their respective destinations near enough at the same time!).

A big “thanks heaps” goes out to all of them from me.

I also want to thank our stationer and part-time projectionist, my beautiful and lovely assistant (and wife), Sandy, for the course binders and toilet door certificates. And her coffee wasn’t bad, either.

The lesson itself covered the capital letters, the seven main diphthongs, punctuation and, though we all made the diacritical list—breathings, iota-subs, diaereses, accents and elisions—none of us are any the worse for wear.

It is marvellous to note that now, after only two lessons, everyone has all the tools they need to be able to read the entire Greek New Testament! They might not understand it, but they can certainly start reading it—who knows how many words they’ll discover they do understand already?

Jesus is amazing!

Lesson Three has been put off a week because of Mother’s Day commitments and Colleen’s run/walk to Dargaville, so plenty of time for me to prepare the next lesson and for everybody to complete their huge, three-page homework assignment. They’ll be seeing breathing marks and iota-subs in their sleep….

…the lucky ducks.

God bless,
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