Customer Reviews

New Testament Greek: A Beginning and Intermediate Grammar

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

 

 

We used this as textbook. The advantage of this book is its explanation of dialectical forms. It is a litte bit different from other grammars, but for students it seems easy to memorize. And it is very helpful when I perse forms of the verbs in the actual text.

But some problems are also there: of course it has exercises, mainly from the NT, but especiallyin the former part of the book, there are some strange sentences ( it may be artificial sentences only for exercise), so they may cause some difficulties to the students because they cannot understand the "meanings" of the exercise texts. Another problem is that though the title includes "intermediate grammar," there are little of syntax matters.

Except the problem of the exercise, I would recommend this as the beginning grammar of Greek NT.

I have not yet found a beginning Greek text that thrills me, but this is the introductory text which I found most helpful. Explanations are clear, exercises are pretty good, and solved exercises are available - a very important consideration if you are teaching yourself. There aren't enough excercises for me, but all in all, I think this is a very useful text. I only give it a 7, but I haven't found a beginning Greek grammar that does better than this. Fortunately, there are some great intermediate texts - see "http://www.mindspring.com/~jwrobie/littleGreek.html" for more comments on beginning Greek texts, intermediate grammars, lexicons, etc.

I used this text in Seminary and found it very helpful, for the most part. But I just recently completed a full restudy of Greek using this as a self-study text. I appreciate it even more now. It has great problem assignements, and its very clear. But you will want to order the answer key too. The answer key is not real good, since it only give his translation. It does not tell you what verse he is using, nor does he parse the verbs. You will need a concordance and lexicon to really get the most out of the text. Too bad he doesn't revise it with this information, then it would be a 5-star text.

This is a great grammar for learning Koine Greek. Don't expect any readings, but aside from that the grammar introduced is very good.

The book is divided into a series of lessons which do a great job of explaining points of grammar and vocabulary. A series of exercises follow with vocabulary.

The first few lessons do an excellent job of explaining the differences between Greek and English, such as grammar and pronunciation. I especially found the sections explaining grammar very well written.

The only thing I would have liked to see are readings from the New Testament or other early Christian literature included (hence the 4 of 5 stars), but other books can easily be used to this end. For example, New Testament Greek: A Reader.

This is a great introductory grammar that goes into more depth then most others.

I am teaching myself Koine, and started with Dobson, then bought a GNT and the Zerwick Grammatical Analysis and began going through the New Testament again and again. After a couple of years I had attained a pretty decent level of comprehension, but had not really got to grips with the inflections like I should, with Dobson being more of an inductive style grammar. So, based on the recommendation of Jonathan Robie's website (I believe he has reviewed this grammar also), I bought this instead of Mounce or Black, and I have been very happy with it so far, as his clarity and organzation is bringing cohesion to my learning. I have probably gone about it all a bit backwards anyway, but focusing on the GNT first has made it an enjoyable ride, and it is easier to settle down to the nuts and bolts of the grammar now that I can be reading through the Koine fluently while I learn.

I would say that Dobson and Hewitt would actually go well together, being two sides of the coin, but I would above all recommend purchasing a GNT and grapple with it daily - let it be the main course!