Memorizing Philippians

With some of the challenges presented by other bibliobloggers with regard to memorizing Scripture in its original languages, I have decided to memorize Paul's epistle to the Philippians. What makes this convenient is, one, the length-- only four chapters, or 104 verses to be exact, and the fact that I have been using Jerry Sumney's Philippians: A Greek Student's Intermediate Grammar. This grammar has many strengths, one worth noting is that many grammatical constructions are covered with lucid explanations given along with other examples from the NT. I would highly recommend this grammar to anyone wanting to sharpen their reading and translation of the Greek NT.

So far I have worked through and memorized the first eight verses. I only have 96 more to go!

A couple of observations are in order. Memorizing has helped facilitate recognition of different grammatical forms (i.e. verbal forms and vocabulary to name but a couple.), and enables ease of translation into English. One trick I have learned is to bite off small chunks. For example in Phil 1.3 the phrase εὐχαριστῶ τῷ θεῷ μου ἐπὶ πάσῃ τῇ μνείᾳ ὑμῶν may be broken up into εὐχαριστῶ τῷ θεῷ μου and then ἐπὶ πάσῃ τῇ μνείᾳ ὑμῶν. These smaller chunks seem to ease the trouble of memorizing wholesale phrases which can be in fact, quite daunting. Another thing I have noticed is how much work and repetition is involved in just going over the verses you have already committed to memory. I'd like to say that once you have memorized it, that is that, but that is far from the truth. Only constant repetition will ingrain the particular passages into your mind. I find it helpful to start at the top at times, or pick up a particular verse and see if I can go from there.

Despite the amount of time and work involved, this has become quite a fruitful exercise. I love the fact that I am getting to know Paul's letter to the Philippians much more intimately than I did before.

Spiritually this has become a routine I do during my devotional times at night and in the morning with a nice, hot, cup of coffee. I encourage those of you who have considered doing something along these lines to go for it! It will be well worth your time and effort.