Advanced Greek Reading: Hebrews, Jesus, Sacrifice and Israel

This course is designed to offer students with intermediate -level Greek the opportunity to increase their fluency in Greek to an advanced level through intensive Greek reading. We will read advanced NT, LXX, and related extra-biblical texts, seeking to increase speed and ease of reading. In the course of reading, we will reinforce and expand the students' knowledge of grammatical and syntactical elements of Hellenistic Greek.

This year the focus is on Hebrews and its Septuagintal sources, with attention to the way in which the grammatical and syntactical structure of the Greek serves the texts' rhetorical effect and illuminates meaning. We will note also characteristics of Septuagintal Greek. The course provides an opportunity not only to advance fluency in Greek but by reading the text in Greek, to penetrate more deeply into its meaning. Hebrews, for example, weaves its argument out of the cloth of Israel's history, cult and hope. Where, then does it locate that cult, that history and hope in relation to Jesus Christ?