Our Knowledge of Greek: An Embarrassment to the Profession!

We New Testament scholars and Greek professors are often embarrassed by our level of Greek fluency, even after, as in my case, 35 years of studying this ancient biblical language. A lack of true fluency in Greek, active knowledge of the language as opposed to passive, is the scourge of our professions. Finding ourselves in this situation, our disappointment is real, but it is kept hidden from the general public.

If a layperson were to approach one of us after a public lecture, and say,

I've always wanted to meet a Greek scholar. Could you please tell me how you say in Greek, "Stand up. Go over to the door. Open it. Step outside, and shut the door"?

we probably wouldn't be able to answer immediately. Or, if we could manage the answer,

Ἀνάστηθι. Ἐλθὲ πρὸς τὴν θύραν. Ἄνοιξον αὐτήν. Ἐκπορεύθητι ἔξω, καὶ κλεῖσον τὴν θύραν,

we probably wouldn't be able to answer the follow-up question:

Thank you. Now, could you please tell me in Greek what you just did?

The conversation would probably end at this point. This more complicated task would require us to transpose all the verbs of our answer into the past tense, like this:

Ἀνέστην, ἦλθον πρὸς τὴν θύραν, ἤνοιξα αὐτήν, ἐξεπορεύθην ἔξω, καὶ ἔκλεισα τὴν θύραν.

And if, in the unlikely event that we, the assumed Greek experts, managed to spit out this second answer, would we be able to respond to the questioner's final challenge?

Thank you very much! Now, could you please put your last answer in better Greek, the Greek of an ancient native speaker of Greek, who would, of course, have sprinkled his or her speech with participles?

Our response should be:

Ἀναστὰς καὶ ἐλθὼν πρὸς τὴν θύραν, ἤνοιξα αὐτήν. Ἐκπορευθεὶς ἔξω, ἔκλεισα τὴν θύραν.

Is there a way out of this intolerable situation? Yes, the obvious solution is for Greek students, as in past centuries, to learn the language actively, by speaking it and listening to others speak it. One should not attempt to learn the ancient Greek language by discussing and analyzing (in English, or some other modern language!) its grammatical and syntactical features, gaining speed only in dissecting and decoding Greek sentences. To internalize a language, that learning method is the embodiment of futility. One only internalizes a language, ancient or modern, when one learns to speak it. The way to fluency in Greek is to try to speak it.