Customer Reviews

A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

So. You've finished first-year Greek, you've got a lexicon at your side, maybe an advanced grammar as well; what's next? Dive straight into the Greek New Testament, clutching commentaries and reference works to keep you afloat? You could...but if you'd prefer to ease your way gently into the New Testament, consider putting the Nestle-Aland back on the shelf and first working your way through this reader. Its aim is to teach how to read Greek with facility, an essential skill for accurate exegesis and interpretation. Twenty selections survey nearly all the books of the New Testament and are not altered or abridged from their sources. To aid the learner, abundant footnoting navigates the hard parts and calls attention to nuances and important details. The novel system of phrasing taught in this book is easy to understand and should help the student still mastering Greek syntax to keep up with St. Paul and his long discursive sentences. Seminary students will appreciate the sample sermon outlines that accompany the early chapters, as examples of how to turn study into instruction.

This reader is meant to follow Mounce's well-received "Basics of Biblical Greek," but does not depend on it; you can come having studied from any textbook of basic Greek. It was also written to be compatible with Wallace's "Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics," but, once again, does not explicitly require it.

Keep in mind that the sole purpose of this reader is for practice reading Greek, and you should not be disappointed with the contents. There are many things it does not include. It does not cover the manuscript tradition or the critical apparatus, or teach how to weigh variant readings. It does not set passages in their historical or Scriptural context, or address questions of dating and authorship. There is no treatment of stylistic differences or comparisons with non-biblical Koine. If Mounce had crammed in such information, this book would have been twice as long and probably not any more helpful. And while the readings are representative of the books of the New Testament (and Mounce usually explains in the headnotes why each passage was chosen), one should not assume that they form a mini-course in theology or represent the most canonical of the canonical.

Indeed, any teacher of NT Greek could draw up a similar set of graded readings for second-year students, but with this reasonably-priced book, all the work of transcribing and annotating is already done.

Mounce's "Graded Reader" is intended as a transitionary textbook for students who are in their second year of Greek. I give it three stars because, while it is better than any alternative I have found, I think it is lacking in several respects and is somewhat disappointing given the quality of Mounce's BBG.

The book consists of 20 extended passages in Koine Greek, coming primarily from the New Testament. The readings cover all four Gospels, several letters, and Revelation. In addition, a Septuagint Psalm is thrown in, as well as an excerpt from the Didache, one of the earliest teaching documents of the Church. In addition to the passages, there is an introductory section on a technique, developed by Mounce, called "phrasing." It is essentially a means of diagramming Greek sentences to clarify the relationships of the parts of the sentence. Also, the book has a synopsis of Wallace's extensive "Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics," and a "cheat sheet" which lists the various cases, tenses, etc., and their uses.

The passages themselves have footnotes, which are primarily used for vocabulary. The footnotes gloss words that occur 20 or fewer times, and in addition to a definition provide the number of occurrences of the word in the NT. This is useful for finding the words in Mounce's flash card deck, if you have that. Aside from the vocab notes, each page explains various theological and/or grammatical concepts. At the end of each passage is a grammar summary and reflections on the text. I agree with a previous reviewer that Mounce's theology can be ignored.

My biggest complaint about this book is that the commentary in the notes is not very useful. The footnotes consist primarily of references to other author's commentaries. They tend to be in this form: "Why did Paul use the aorist here? See John Doe, p. 100." This is not terribly helpful, since he references 15 or 20 books, few of which I have. If Mounce is simply going to refer to someone else's commentary, why not just buy the commentary and skip Mounce's book? Since 90% of his notes are question format (e.g., p.7 "What is the antecedent of auto?") without answer, they do serve to call attention to important concepts, but if you can't answer his question you are out of luck.

That Mounce is the master of morphology is certain. However, one can see from his BBG that he is light on syntax, and I found many challenging concepts unmarked even by one of his questioning footnotes. After struggling through Ch. 7 (Romans) with extreme frustration, I recalled that at the beginning of the chapter he said the grammar was not difficult. If Mounce is in tune with students' morphological struggles he is not in tune with their syntactical struggles. Nonetheless this book is more useful than a non-commented text, and better than the JACT New Testament reader. Still, one hopes that a better reader with commentary will show up some day.

Looking for an Intermediate Reader for Biblical Greek students? Look no further. This reader is a great tool for helping students move from beginning Greek to more difficult Greek. It also contains helps for Greek syntax and phrasing.

This workbook has been kept me on the right track thoughout my studies of Greek. In a fairly systematic way, Mounce introduces practical grammatical and syntactical ideas as they show up in the given texts and keys them into Wallace's grammar. This allows the student to inductively learn and retain more intermediate concepts while working in the New Testament without having to sit down and read Wallace cover to cover (which would take a long time...)

First work through Basics including the workbook, then A Summer Greek Reader (for practice with easy syntax and additional vocablary memorization), then this. After that read the Greek New Testament with A Reader's Lexicon to cut down on time spent thumbing through the lexicon. Start with the gospels or Acts.

I am partially self-taught in Biblical Greek (one semester of Greek in bible college) and owe my success in this effort to Bill Mounce's excellent Grammar and Daniel Wallace's equally excellent Syntax volume. I purchased the graded reader after completing both and have been steadily working through it. Each chapter presents a passage of Scripture in Greek (though the last two chapters are from the LXX and Didache) with comments and questions about grammar, syntax, and even exegetical points. Each chapter is increased in difficulty. It serves to effectively illustrate many of the important points in the grammar and syntax books. My comprehension of Biblical Greek is better for it. It is a fun book to work through if you enjoy Greek. I wish it were the first in a series. Highly recommended.

Interesting passages, well annotated; good review of grammar; original methode (phrasing) to unterstand the text I think all these qualities plead for this companion to Greek Grammar beyond the Basics (and others).
The format is well adapted. The difficulty is introduced step by step.
I can't imagine a best way to learn Greek New Testament than in the Greek New Testament, and this the case of this recommanded book.

I used Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, which I thought was excellent. I bought the graded reader at the same time so that I could start diving in the New Testament. The way that he selects the various texts in the book is great -- starting with passages that are easy to read and then progressing to harder passages. He includes text from the Didache and Psalms (LXX) to get students outside of the NT as well, which is a plus.

Overall, though, I am not sure how valuable this text really is for the extra money spent. Students can certainly find the Greek texts online that will be linked to a lexicon. This will not, of course, have many of the additional notes that Mounce provides in his text, but to be honest I didn't find these as useful.

If the cost of the book isn't an issue, it is certainly is of help. If you don't want to spend the extra money, there are ways to get this kind of practice without doing so.

I have been studying Koine Greek outside of the classroom and I sincerely do not think that I could have gotten to the level of proficiency that I have without this workbook. It would be so easy to finish the Basics of Biblical Greek textbook (or any other first year grammar) and begin translating right away without any real confidence in one's application of even the basic concepts. Also, as a companion to Wallace's intermediate grammar it is very useful. Wallace's tome can be daunting as it lacks a real system for working through it as a solo-learner. The Graded Reader gives the student much needed structure as it takes them through the intermediate concepts.

This is a good workbook in the beginning or intermediate level. When your study covers "beyond basics" this will become rudimentary to you. But that does not mean we can just skip the basic stuff. There is also a good review for basic grammar in different approach: HANDBOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK an Inductive Approach Based on the Greek Text of Acts (Two Volume Set)