Customer Reviews

A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament

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After reading the reviews of this work, I hesitatingly ordered (fearful that it might be a little too "basic" and perhaps too "elementary" to be of much help). WRONG! This baby is a jewel! Besides providing the basic information concerning tense, voice, mood, etc., it also provides a brief interpretation of figures of speech and other truly relevant information that is either explicit or implicit within the Greek text. For example, in Revelation 1:18 you will find this notation explaining the idiom "keys of death and hades"--here, the power of delivering from or consigning to the lower world." In various genitive constructions, Zerwick provides the relevant possibilities for one to consider. For example, Romans 1:5 the phrase "obedience of faith" (the literal translation of this phrase) is rather ambiguous (as Paul likely meant it to be). But Zerwick shows that this gentive phrase could be understood as (1)a subjective genitive= "obedience that springs from faith" (2) an objective genitive= ("obedience to faith") or (3) an epexegetic genitive= (obedience which consists in faith." In some verses Zewick doesn't give ALL of the possibilities (for that would make the book prohibitively large). But he gives an amazing amount of information in a very small amount of space and with a brevity of words. One note--this work does use lots of abbreviations. But they are pretty self-evident. But for the newbey to greek grammar, there is a brief glossary explaining the abbreviations. The preface speaks of the "purpose" for which this work was produced--" It is hoped that this English revised edition...will mean that the Greek text of the New Testament will not remain excusively a tool on the desks of a decreasing number of specialists but will become a living power in the hands of theologians, of preachers of the Word, of directors of Bible discussion-circles, and finally in the hands of those who pray in private from the Word of God. This is the purpose to be served."

As far as production quality. It isn't actually paper-back. It is a thin plastic. I wish it were thicker as it feels a little fragile. And it may be that the binding will wear out and come apart if this baby isn't treated with some care. But be that as it may, this is a work that every person working in the Greek text ought to have. I wish I had known about this analytical grammar back in my days of seminary. For now I see that this is something that I will probably keep on my person both at home as well as when I travel and can't take my library with me.
One more thing: This work is great no matter what level you are on. If you are new to Greek, you will be able to glean much. And if you are well-seasoned in Greek, you will glean even more. But let me say with no reservations--This baby is a jewel! You will not be sorry if you purchase this. I just pray that they will improve the cover and the binding in future editions. But I'll take it "as is" anyway! 5 stars!!!

I took first-year and Intermediate Greek; we used the Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek to get our vocabulary down to 10x word occurrences in the Greek New Testament. Yet doing this, you only cover roughly 99% of all words in the Greek New Testament. There are many, many words in the Greek New Testament that occur quite often, and it's good to have this book to look up what they mean. Alan Wong (one of the reviewers) also told me about this book, and it is fabulous!

Especially when reading Paul where there are many hapaxlegemons, it is essential to have a good dictionary around, and "Max and Mary" (as this is nicknamed) is very good to have around, especially that it is layed out verse-by-verse, parsed. I use this book quite regularly when I'm in the Gospel of Luke or in the Acts of the Apostles, or in the Epistles. (The book of Hebrews is another matter altogether!)

In addition, the book also covers a number of textual variants, grammatical constructs, and idioms, all very helpful. It is bound in vinyl (I think to be lightweight), so unfortunately, if you use this heavily, it may fall apart over the years.

It's worth it for the student and pastor who has learned a good amount of Greek grammar, and wants to do some Greek translation and exegesis, and is a great tool to have when beginning exegesis. In addition, I'd also recommend Daniel Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (which was our Intermediate Greek textbook), which explains a lot of the more advanced Greek constructs and grammar.

However, as a good working translation is important in exegesis, this book is invaluable.

After I finished first-year NT Greek, I used this precious gem of a tool to read Colossians with significant understanding in about four hours! This is better than ANY of the computerized Greek NT study helps.

Use this tool with Zerwick's excellent little grammar book, to which it's keyed. In the few places where I've found that my biases differ from Zerwick's, his have always been easy enough to isolate and think about.

Use this tool for quick reading; don't use it for exegesis papers, and don't let it become a crutch for verb forms.

My Greek professor at seminary heartily recommended this (aka affectionately as Max & Mary). For rapid reading of the NT and doing quick translations, this is the first tool I turn to (ahead of my lexicons). Besides parsing words that occur less than 60x and translating idioms, it occaisionally some functional translations (e.g. whether a genitive is subjective or objective or plenary), which can be a very helpful starting point in exegesis of the NT.

As a pastor who had all the basic and advance Greek grammar years ago...i try to do a good job of exegesis on each sermon. As I have developed my exegesis process, this book, and it's companion, Biblical Greek (by Zerwick) have helped me expand my understanding of Greek. The little lesson codes in the Grammatical Analysis lead you to more training in Greek. For example, prepositional phrases may have a variety of nuances depending on the shade of meaning that the preposition implies in the context. Zerwick labels these nuances and gives relevant lesson codes tied right into the text. So for a typical passage I'm working on for a sermon, I can often have 4-7 five or ten minute Biblical Greek lessons at my finger tips. That is very cool. Sometimes they are just technical jazz that wastes time....but other times it helps me retranslate the passage or phrase! I always try to check those little lessons...in fact I have gotten into the habit of highlighting them for the passage I'm working on and zooming in on them while waiting for something somewhere.

The criticisms of this book (don't believe the reviews that say it's fabulous...it has it's flaws too). Sometimes I've seen a catholic bias in the text (it is from Rome you know)....or have been unable to find scholars online who really know what he's referring to...he can be difficult to understand...but that is rare-maybe a couple times per year for me. The more substantive criticism really is that he gives so little information and uses so many abbreviations that you have to be on your toes to know exactly what he means or look up a lot of stuff. Once you start using it all the time, then these problems go away...because your knowledge level should rise.

If you really don't remember your first year greek at all...this book is probably too tough for you. If you remember some of your first year Greek, it may help you start moving forward in your exegesis. It sure is practically laid out...organized like the NT starting with Matthew 1:1. I use BibleWorks 6.0 for my exegesis and have Zerwick with me in my book bag where-ever I go right next to my laptop.

For the exegesis process, NT Exegesis by Gordon Fee is the best book I've found. I use his sermon exegesis process. He recommends Zerwick as the best Grammatical Analysis tool for quickly identifying exegetical difficulties in a text when doing either full exegesis or sermon exegesis. His analysis is that Zerwick is the most complete and helpful analysis of the NT for the exegesis process! I completely agree.

This book explains the difficult vocabulary and grammatical constructions for each verse in the New Testament. The explanations are concise and helpful, and grammatical constructions are indexed to Zerwick's Biblical Greek, a good intermediate grammar.

If you're learning Koine, this helps when your brain shuts down and you have absolutely NO clue what form that word is or what the lexical form is and your dictionary has failed you. With this, like Kubo Sakae's handy-dandy Reader's Greek-English Lexicon, you can look up book & verse! :D It gives you Greek idioms, too & sometimes commentary. :)
This book will make you want to cheer!

1. The layout is skillfully done with much shorthand used throughout and brief definitions of words used > 60 times kept at the front of the book.
2. I took Greek grammar, syntax, and some additional Greek in seminary and have found so far that whenever I run into something I don't know, Zerwick has the answer.
3. Great to have a reading companion for the Greek New Testament that keeps me from having to open up Bibleworks everytime I don't know something.
4. Wonderfully compact volume that isn't too unwieldy when working with your GNT.
5. Especially appreciate the syntactical notes included, comments about various prepositional phrases, participles, all the notorious places where many variations are possible.
6. Great middle way between the actual Greek and a commentary.

It's a wonderful reference book for anyone who knows a little Greek and wants to read NT in the language it was written in. It provides translation for almost EVERY word apart from simple ones. This way one can basically try to read NT without any dictionary even during an elementary course.

The book is however something more than just a contextual dictionary. It contains also some elements of a grammatical commentary. For example, I learned from it that the form 'pros to' in 'blepon gynaika pros to epithymesai auten' (Mt 5:28) may render a Semitic construction with force of gerund ('lusting', 'with lust').

The edition is Catholic. If you're not Catholic yourself, don't worry. It's still something you should have in your personal library. The book doesn't seem to have any ideological bias. It represents a pure linguistic approach.

The binding is sewn and the cover is a sturdy vinyl rather than what one usually calls paperback binding. This is a very complete analysis of vocables in the Greek New Testament with additional notes on the meaning of various constructions. It is a great help to most students of the Greek New Testament. It includes a description of grammatical terms as well as a list of words used sixty times or more. It is a bit thick for carrying in one's pocket, but still very portable.