Bad Things Happen:  Carry on With Greek

There are several flavors of bad things that can happen to our class.  It is good to have a strategy in mind to deal with them.

1. You have power or Internet problems on your end.
   
    
2. I have power or Internet problems in Alberta, Canada.  You will get a message that looks something like this:
   
   
   
   You can confirm that the problem is on my end by checking the site from:
   
   https://isitdown.me/
   
   If you see a message that looks like this:
   
   
   
   Then the problem is definitely on my end.
   
   On the other hand, if you see a message like this:
   
   
   
   ...then the site is OK. 
   
   If it is listed as OFFLINE, then please alert me with an email or WhatsApp message.  I will do my best to get the site back up as soon as possible.
   
    
3. I can become permanently unavailable.
   
   Jesus can take any of us home at any time.  This is inevitable.  If it happens sooner than later, I will not be around to tell you that I am having coffee with St. Luke, to ask all those little questions about his grammar in Acts.
   
   No.  You will simply find that my web site drops off line, and never comes back up.

The general strategy for dealing with all of these problems is the same.  Plan ahead by acquiring:

• Reader's Edition of the Greek New Testament
  
  
   
• Purchase Benjamin L Merkle and Robert L. Plummer , Beginning with New Testament Greek for $42
  
  or:
  
  Download J. Gresham Machen's textbook New Testament Greek for Beginners for free.
  
   

Of these, the Reader's Edition GNT is obviously the more important.  If you are reading Greek by candlelight, you simply MUST have a copy of the GNT.  A textbook is not as critical.

Regarding Plummer and Merk

Plummer and I share a different approach to teaching, of course.  One of my lessons will be named something like Acts 2:30-35.  Plummer's lesson will be called something like SECOND AORIST INDICATIVE VERBS.

But still, in terms of our understanding of what makes Greek tick—the grammar of NT Greek—Plummer and I are extremely compatible.

Regarding Machen

The good news about Machen is that his book is 99 years old, and is in the public domain.  You can get it for free.  Thousands of students have learned Greek using Machen's book over the course of the past century.

The bad news about Machen's book is that it is 99 years old.  We simply have a better understanding of Koine Greek now than we did a century ago.  This is particularly true when it comes to verbs.

 

It can't hurt to download Machen right now.  There are no downsides.  If you lose the Internet, but your computer still works, then you can use Machen.  Unzip the file and put all the contents in some folder on your computer.  There is one PNG file per page of Machen's book.  It is inconvenient to use...but as I say, it is free.

If you lose power as well as the Internet, then your computer is also inoperative.  Having downloaded Machen won't do you any good.  You will need to already have a hard copy textbook...and for that, you want Mounce.

DO NOT TRY TO PRINT OUT ALL 914 FILES that go to make up Machen's book.  By the time you do that, it will probably turn out to be less trouble—and maybe even cheaper, since you will not want 914 loose sheets of paper; you will need to purchase one or more binders as well!—to simply purchase a copy of Mounce's book.

If you DO purchase Plummer, and I am still available to you by Zoom/Internet, then you can of course use it at any time.  But you can also just leave it on your shelf as a reference book, and save it there primarily as a hedge against bad things happening.