161 of 162 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect NT Greek grammar for the self-learner, January 28, 2004
This review is from: Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar (Hardcover)
This is an excellent NT Greek grammar. Unlike some Greek grammars (notably Hansen and Quinn's Attic grammar, one I have experience with), this is ideally suited for the self-learner. Here's why:
- Mounce tries to minimize the amount of memorization required. Greek is a difficult language, no two ways about it: but the way the material is presented can make learning easier or harder. For those of us who come at it as adults, memorization is difficult. Some grammars require massive amounts of rote memorization; Mounce takes instead the tack of giving you a number of rules to apply, then only requiring memorization where the rules don't apply. Using this method, the amount of memorization is cut dramatically, and the effort required is reduced accordingly.
- To ease the remaining memorization, Mounce includes lots of good vocabulary helps. Unfortunately, vocabulary acquisition is usually another rote memorization affair. Mounce includes either derivations or cognates in other languages (drawing in some cases on Metzger's "Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek"), or silly little memorization aids. An example of the latter is Mounce's memorable word play on the word ELPIS (="hope"): "Some people HOPE that ELVIS did not die." I think I can safely say I will never forget the meaning of ELPIS.
- In many ways (including the previous two items) Mounce includes the fruit of his years of experience as a teacher of New Testament Greek. Many books that I'm sure would be just fine when learning from a professor completely fall apart when an autodidact (like myself) attempts to use them. With this book, it's almost as good as Mounce being right there.
- Although I would not have believed it, Mounce has successfully integrated devotional sections at the beginning of most chapters. A combination textbook/devotional? Yes, believe it or not. The section for chapter 10, for example, is simply amazing - building off John 1:14, KAI hO LOGOS SARX EGENETO ("And the Word became flesh.") This answers another big problem for autodidacts, which is that you don't have much of an inducement to continue when the going gets tough. These devotional sections (I am assuming a Christian student, of course) add greatly to your experience and make you look forward to new chapters.
The end result is that this book makes it possible to learn New Testament Greek on your own to just about the same depth as you would get at a seminary. That's an amazing feat in itself.
But be aware, this book has no exercises in it. Rather, you need to buy the companion workbook, which has all the exercises.
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74 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book on Biblical Greek, February 16, 2001
I was disappointed when I had to switch teachers following my first semester of Greek. However, it was well worth it--because I switched to a class using Mr. Mounce's book: "Basics of Biblical Greek." It is excellent!
Mr. Mounce is a genius at teaching Greek. It is simple that he should re-title the book to "Greek for Dummies" (lets face it--when it comes to Greek, we're all dummies).
The text book completely divides the nouns and verbs into two semesters. As a student who spent a semester trying to do both verbs and nouns at the same time with no system like the one Mounce uses...let me tell you: this book is very helpful.
Along the way Mr. Mounce explains concepts first in how they are used in English grammar. He then teaches the Greek grammar. This was most useful to me because my English grammar is a little sub-par.
Another quality of this book that I really enjoyed were the exegetical insights at the beginning of each chapter-it is always nice to know why what you are learning is of importance.
All in all, the "Basics of Biblical Greek" is a great book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you want to learn Biblical Greek, this book is the first book you will want to get a hold of.
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44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding learning tool, September 6, 2003
This review is from: Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar (Hardcover)
If you've read "Greek for the Rest of Us" by William Mounce and decided that you really wanted to learn the basics of Biblical Greek including vocabulary then this is the book that you will want. William Mounce has a gift for taking the Greek language and making it approachable even to those who have tried before but not succeeded in learning Biblical Greek. While there are many, many grammar details to learn such as whether something is dative, nominative, accusative, genitive, active, passive, dependent, independent, etc. Mr. Mounce actually makes it interesting and finds ways to keep the student interested and feeling positive about their progress. All those grammar rules are very important in correctly interpreting the Greek texts and in understanding English translation. Sometimes there is no English equivalent for a Greek word, sometimes we can only approach a correct translation by approximating a similar word in English, but then our personal prejudices and beliefs affect the word that we choose. Understanding Greek is important to a serious level of study of New Testament writings. This book gives you the basic ability to look through a Greek text or Interlinear Translation of the Bible and understand not only what is said, but also what is actually meant but the text. This is a very highly recommended text for anyone desiring to learn Biblical Greek and one of the best books on the subject that I have ever read.
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