Customer Reviews

Morphology of Biblical Greek, The

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4 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

"I hate memorization" is how the book begins, and Mounce makes it so you do not need to do mindless rote memorization either. This book explains in simple language the rules used by Greek in the formation of words. Once one understands the rules, the language behaves VERY regular and in an understandable fashion. For example, one you realize the spelling changes are for the sake of pronunciation, they make sense! This book is well worth its weight in gold. You can use it as a stand-alone reference work, but it is designed to go with Mounce's Grammar and Lexicon. I can't encourage you enought to get this book if you want to understand the langauge instead of just memorizing a bunch of paradigms.

Just about everyone who teaches Greek knows William D. Mounce's material. His "Basics of Biblical Greek" is now the standard first year grammar. The Morphology of Biblical Greek (MBG) is an important text for those in their second year of Greek and are beginning to experience both the joys and the sorrows of reading the Greek New Testament (GNT) I instruct my students to purchase Sakae Kubo's "Reader's Lexicon" and this volume once they successfully finished their first year of Greek.
MBG gives every lemma that appears in the GNT a unique morphological code and places the lexical form and the code in an index at the end of this book. When you find a word in the GNT whose form you don't understand; simply look up the lexical form in the index, get the code and then read that section in the body of the textbook. Mounce explains the 'whys' of the form so the student can understand each step in the words formation. Since the rules learned apply to an entire class of words, the next time you encounter any similar word (i.e., a word with the same code), you will understand it as well.
I believe that the best way to master Greek is to read the GNT. This book, coupled with a good Reader's Lexicon and Syntax will give you the tools you need to master reading the GNT (obviously more tools will be required for in-depth study).
My only criticism of MBG is that Zondervan printed this as a softcover -- what in the world were they thinking!!

Yes, you can own Greek for yourself by using this precious gem of a book. Free yourself from endlessly reviewing paradigms and principal parts. Prevent yourself from using analytical lexicons and interlinear texts, which are the fastest ways to forget the Greek you worked so hard (and paid so much money?) to learn.

By making a habit of looking up "hard" word forms in MBG first, your command of the details of Greek word formation will become stronger and stronger.

There is no doubt that this is an excellant resource and if you master it you will really know Greek. My experience was that I got bogged down in it. At some point I found reading and understanding the why more difficult than just memorizing it. It's intended as a reference tool and that is how it's best used early in your Greek - use occasionally but mostly just read the Greek and figure it out. After some practice you can read the Greek without having to think about what form it is or why, you just know it.

If you want to use Greek to learn, teach or study the New Testament, this book is essential for the long term.

I found the information on consonantal iota (p43f), digamma (p45f), accentuation (p47f) particularly useful. The paradigms and referencing system is also something you'd definitely pick this volume up for. Every word is accented throughout.

A few minor errors (then again it could always be me that's wrong):

p50- "preperispomenon" should be "properispomenon"

p201- n3d(1) should include KREAS (meat).

p335- ERHMOS is a-3a, but also n-2b, see footnote 3 on p232.

I bought the soft-cover from Amazon, but immediately covered it with contact. It is too valuable to allow to fray.

In short, this is a very handy volume, but usefulness is lessened by reliance on the short contents page and a word index without page numbers to find one's way around.

I decided to take classes in Biblical languages at the Lutheran university I attend. Our class used Voelz's Greek Grammar as a text book. I had already worked through Mounce's Grammar, and so I decided to use this book to help learn the forms that we would go through much better. I not only learned the forms better, but by the end of the class, the teacher said that I was tempting him to study Morphology in this much depth!

When your teacher gives you a list of principle parts to learn, and you find a verb that has some odd principle parts, then look it up in the index and find the morphological class the verb is in. Then check the footnotes and cross references. It is also good to have a copy of Robert W. Funk's "A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellinistic Greek," Smyth's "Greek Grammar," and the Blass-Debrunner-Funk "A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature." These are excellent supplemental works as they are cited quite extensively by Mounce. LaSor's "Handbook of New Testament Greek" is also cited alot, although I have not yet gotten a copy of it.

The only thing bad about this book is that it is a paperback. One of the corners of my copy are already dog eared, the outer film is starting to come off the front cover and the binding has a large bend in it. Hopefully we can encourage Zondervan to make a hardcover edition of this excellent work of high scholarship.

I am a newbie for Greek and I use this book daily. Great book.
My only problem is that I could NOT figure out the verb section. How the verb tense 6 columns sorted? Present, future, aorist, ?, ?, ?. The book does not explain this.

If someone can help me out, please put your comment.

I also found one error: Page 314 v-6 note 6 ...used in ~41ff should be ~41.3

Thanks a lot.

Excellent work! It explains everything concerning the biblical Greek grammar in detail. Anyway is not for the beginner who could get lost, especially in the introductory chapters regarding phonology. Always I thought that the phonetics should be kept at minimum. Once progress is made, the phonology can be inserted in small bits.

However, the book is for the intermediate learner. The beginner should stick to Mounce's BBG's grammar explanations. But for a in depth study of biblical Greek, The Morphology of Biblical Greek is essential.

The only downside of the book is its binding... A pity for a such a great work!

I got this because I was interested in the word formation parts of Greek. Apart from telling you to see other works, it didn't cover this at all. Having said that, I've found it useful in a number of other ways. The books he recommended for word formation are grammars by:
a) Blass, Debrunner and Funk
b) Moulton & Howard
c) A. T. Robertson
d) Herbert Weir Smyth

HTH

I really enjoy this book. Very helpful in the formation of Greek words and the behavior of the language. In depth coverage of how and why Greek words form the way they do, probably more information than the beginner will need unless you are like me and you're just all about every aspect of the Greek, even the details. Only problem is that it is not available in a hardcover! What a travesty! It is a book that will get used often once one has become acquainted with how to use it, so I can see how the other reviewers talk about theirs falling apart, even though mine has not. I would highly recommend it to anyone starting Greek or is just more curious on the formation of Greek words.