Customer Reviews

A Parsing Guide to the Greek New Testament

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

 

 

Learning to parse Greek verbs is quite difficult at first. This useful book gives the tense, voice, mood, person, and number for each verb in the Greek New Testament, verse by verse. Not a very interesting book, but a useful one; however, it is important not to become too dependent on this - if you want to get good at Greek, you will have to learn to recognize these forms. Do not use this book before you try to parse the verbs yourself, use it to confirm your own understanding. I have found a useful game for improving my parsing skills - I read a few verses, write down the verb forms, then check them in Han. For comments on other grammatical aids for Greek, as well as commentaries, textbooks, lexicons, and grammars, see "http://www.mindspring.com/~jwrobie/littleGreek.html".

Previous reviewers have commented on the fact that there are numerous errors in this volume, and I have discovered this to be true; this is rather unfortunate in a volume that is designed to help, primarily, the beginning Greek student. The volume is useful to a degree because it follows the GNT verse-by-verse, but the errors keep it from being a foolproof aid to study. This may be just as well, since the other problem that is likely to arise is that the beginner will continue to rely on the book as a crutch rather than mastering the parsing of verbs.

If you want a better (i.e. more reliable) parsing guide, then try either William Mounce's "Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament" (Mounce gives a stern warning about who should and shouldn't use this lexicon in his introduction; in other words, he doesn't want Greek students to rely on his volume rather than learning the verb forms for themselves either) or "The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament" by Cleon Rogers, Jr. and Cleon Rogers III (this volume, as the title indicates, goes well beyond the parsing of verbs and also follows the GNT verse-by-verse).

As far as Han's volume goes, you will know that you are on your way to mastering the parsing of verbs once you are able to catch the errors in his book. Of course, that's not the best or most appealing way to learn. If the errors ever are corrected, then this volume will be an indispensible aid to reading and studying the GNT.

I contributed to this work in a very small way years ago. I submitted to the publishers corrections which they joyfully received. However, numerous errors still exist, and the guide is not reliable. Far better guides exist (that is -- analytical lexicons). Save your money.

An excellent resource for Pastors and New Testament Greek students. Well arranged and easy to use - a real time saver!

I really like this book. It has been a good companion to my recent restudy of Greek. He does not cover every verb in every verse, skipping it if it appears in a nearby verse. I didn't read his introductory note telling me of this approach. But other than that nit, its worth the money to own.

Do NOT waste your money! There are so many errors in this book as to make it completely worthless.

A MUST for second year Greek students!