I spoke to my pastor the other week and he has approved our plans to teach BL-415: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. Right now, our class is working through chapter 15 of the book of Romans. Though I greatly love Paul’s epistle to the Roman church, I am looking forward to wrapping things up and moving on!
BL-101 Lesson III Lab Now Published on YouTube
After a long period of prepping and praying, Lesson III Lab is now published and made available on YouTube. As you might have read, I recently found out that J Gresham Machen’s textbook, New Testament Greek for Beginners is in fact not public domain, as I was first told, but still falls under US copyright laws. Thankfully, I had not given out any copies of my pdf file of the text! After seeking legal council and much prayer, we had found out that our free Greek lessons do fall under the “fair use” protection act. Though I am not permitted to give out copies of the pdf file I have, I can use portions of the textbook in my lessons.
You can watch Lesson III Lab at the following link:
Please, if you have not done so already, allow me to encourage you to pick up your own copy of Machen’s magnum opus. In my opinion, this textbook is one of the finest Greek textbooks out there.
Dealing with Copyright Concerns
Back in 2002/2003, I contacted a publishing company called Wipf and Stock. They had begun publishing J. Gresham Machen’s text, New Testament Greek for Beginners and I wanted permission to make an electronic copy of my own textbook into a pdf file. They wrote back and informed me that the text was now considered public domain and that it should not be a problem. So I made the pdf and gave it out to whoever wanted a pdf copy of Machen’s book.
Well, several weeks ago (2012), I noticed that Wipf and Stock were no longer providing the book, so I wrote them again. According to the publisher, they had made a mistake and it now appears that NT Greek for Beginners is in fact still under copyright protection!
This revelation concerns me greatly! All my teaching materials have been developed for this textbook, and I don’t want to break any laws, so I have put a hold on publishing any new videos until I am sure I am not violating any copyright laws.
I have made several contacts and have spent some time researching the laws, and I am pretty confident that my teaching classes fall under the “Fair Use” laws. Once I have confirmed my suspicions, I will continue to provide free educational classes based on Machen’s book. If you would, please keep this matter in prayer. God’s Word teaches us that we must submit to our authority and I want to make sure I am not violating any laws.
Thank you.
YouTube Channel
NTGreekTutor has setup a YouTube Channel for those interested in New Testament Greek Classes. Our goal is to have both BL-101 and BL-102 completely on YouTube.
If interested, stop by our channel http://www.youtube.com/user/NTGreekTutor?feature=mhee and it Subscribe!
Lesson III B Published
Lesson III-B is now published on YouTube. This deals with the mechanics of the Greek Present Active Indicative verb. Please feel free to post comments and suggestions. Am always eager to hear from you.
Lesson III-A Published
Spent the day producing and polishing Lesson II A – Greek Vocabulary. After one or two significant obstacles, we were able to make the corrections and finally post the video to YouTube.
My next video will be dealing with the Present Active Indicative Verb.
Lesson II Published
Finally received permission from BibleWorks to make my Lesson II video public. Lesson II would normally cover Rules of Accents in NT Greek, but duee to the tools available to the students now, I decided to forgo this specific corner of Purgatory and give a plug for one of my most useful tools.
