Customer Reviews

A Reader's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Andrews University Monographs)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book exists to solve a very specific problem. Once you've worked through a basic grammar (e.g., Mounce), you want to get into the text -- but at first, your vocabulary in the language leaves something to be desired. You've diligently studied your vocabulary lists from the basic grammar, but these are only the most common words; nearly every sentence has words you don't know. Eventually, though reading the text, you'll learn many of them, but at first you'll find yourself needing to look up so many words, it takes forever to translate a passage. This book helps with that. It helps quite a lot.

This book is not, and is not intended to be, the only lexicon you need. If you can only get one lexicon, get the big one (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, Danker). The big lexicon has all the words; this one only has the words that occur fewer than fifty times. The big lexicon gives the full range of meaning for each word; this one only gives a basic meaning for each word. The big lexicon gives examples of sentences from the text, showing how the word is used; this one does not.

However, the big lexicon is big; you'll want it on your desk, but you won't want to haul it around everywhere you go; this one is small enough to take with you; it's barely larger than a copy of the NT.

But the really big difference is the arrangement: the big lexicon (and almost all lexicons, for that matter) are arranged entirely in lexical order -- all the words starting with alpha are at the front, and so forth. This one is different: it lists the words in the order in which they occur in the text. (This means it repeats them each time. That's why it has to leave out the common words.) So, if you're reading a certain passage, you can open your Kubo lexicon to the corresponding section, prop it open with a rubber band or clip, and refer to it repeatedly as you work through the passage, without a lot of page-flipping. This is a huge time-saver.

When you start digging into the more nitty gritty details of a shorter passage, studying each word carefully, you'll want the bigger lexicon. This one is too basic for that. But for reading through longer passages, for understanding the whole context of a passage and getting the big picture, this lexicon will save you a lot of time. Highly recommended.

If you are going to study the NT seriously, you will have to put the $125 on the table and get the BDAG lexicon. This lexicon was never meant to take the place of a serious, in depth book which has the dimensions to impress your friends and a pricetag to irritate your wife.

That said, it will take you decades to get the gist of the NT in Greek if you spend all of your time working through passages with a lexicon and a grammar. But with this handy little tool, if your word frequency knowledge is better than 50 occurences, you can do your daily devotional with your handy-dandy UBS4 or NA27.

I read ten pages in the Greek New Testament per day, hoping to read through the GNT four times per year. I use Kubo to help me get a relatively good translation in my head of what I'm reading in Greek and it works wonderfully.

The key to using this book is in carefully reading the title: it's not "A Translator's Greek-English Lexicon..." but "A Reader's Greek-English Lexicon..." For $30 or less, this thing is a steal.

This work was suggested to me by my seminary Greek professor after going through a basic textbook. His reasoning was that in class we learned all of the words that appeared at least fifty times in the New Testement and Kubo's lexicon gives a simple definition of the words that do not appear fifty times. Simply open your Greek New Testament and this book to the corresponding chapter and verse and you are set to read. This has cut my reading time in half! Besides UBS Greek New Testament and the BDAG Lexicon, this is the most important book for a biblical Greek scholar's library!

Kubo's book is everything you need to quickly and efficiently read Greek with a limited vocabulary. Verse by verse the book lists definitions for the Greek words used most frequently in the New Testament. One of the biggest time consumptions in my translations has been the time it takes to look up words I don't know. Now they are all right there in one place!

A very very helpful tool for translating the Greek NT. It proceeds through the NT verse by verse, giving the lexical form and meaning (from BAGD) for words that occur 50 times or less throughout the NT. There are other helpful features as well, such as a special vocabulary list, at the beginning of each NT book, of words that occur 50 times or less (throughout the whole NT), and more than 5 times in that particular book. Very helpful, especially for the student translating the Greek New Testament!

This book is an invaluable aid to reading through the Greek New Testament. It gives verse by verse vocabulary, and tells you the frequency of each word in the book and in the NT as a whole.
I find it useful to make lists of words to learn for books I am planning to read. Then I study the list a bit before I begin reading the section, and continue to study the list between reading sessions. In this way my vocabulary has grown by leaps and bounds, and I have actually seen the words in context as I have been learning them.
There are some mistakes, and some of the definitions are too limited, so this can not be your only lexicon. But its usefulness for learning words in context make it too valuable to miss.

I think this is simply a must have for those learning Greek. Vocabulary is quite a stumbling block for those wanting to read NT Greek, and it seems most grammers don't ephesize it. There are about 5500 different words in the NT (and I'm guessing 3000 of those appear less then 5 times and 2000 probably only once or twice). That's alot of vocab to learn before you have a fluent reading of the text.

Kubo lets you continue to practice your Greek without spending 90% of your time in BAGD, by offering the more rare words inline with the text. It still takes time to have your eyes leave the text to find Kubo's definition but it beats a lexicon in a second.

Still, I reccommend you spend time learning vocab on the side and at least try to get 95% of the word occurances of the NT memorized, which is only about 1800 words. Its do-able for any serious student. Many of those words are cognents and still more are common words with different prepositions placed in front, often with an expected meaning.

The only reason I don't give this book five stars is that the Book quality (at least mine) was fairly poor. The book itself doesn't lay open flat, so you have to hold it open underneath; the pages or dark and sometimes hard to read; and my edition with the dusk jacket is simply ugly when the dusk jacket is removed, which is exactly what I do when I use it. This edition above is quite an improvement on looks but I don't know if it will lay open flat for you.

If you have spent a year studying the grammer of the Greek NT, I don't know of any other book that is more valuable for your continued Greek reading.

Sakae Kubo's A Reader's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament is a great addition to the bookshelf for any student of the Greek New Testament. There is a trinity of divisions: the appendix in the back lists 301 words that occur more than 50 times in the GNT, a good section to learn first, or as the author suggests, copy it out so you don't have to keep paging back to it. Next, each book of the NT is given a special vocabulary list of words that occur more than five times in that book. Finally, verse by verse, are word lists for vocabulary in that verse, unless the word appears in the previous verse. Thus, one way to approach the GNT would be to master those 301 words first, then as you are ready to begin a book, learn the special vocabulary for that book. Finally, as you begin to read that book, you will only need to refer to the verse by verse section. That should keep you from paging back from one section to another.

The only disappointment for me was the lack of Appendix II, mentioned in the original Preface of the 1967 edition. Appendix I has now, evidently, become the only appendix, so you won't get that list of apparently difficult verbal forms. Still, the inclusion of two frequency numbers for each word entry, one for the frequency of the word in the particular book, and the other, for the frequency of the word in the complete GNT, is a plus. All in all, I can see why one would want this book and the Trenchard vocabulary book, too. I certainly am glad I bought this book, but I do agree with another reviewer who said that a spiral bound edition would be even more useful. I'll add my two cents to that by saying not only spiral bound, but with tabs to introduce each section and book, wow, now that would rate a 5! In the meantime, I'll just get out my PostIt colored flags and use those until that edition comes out.

Kubo's remarkably helpful reading tool gives verse-by-verse definitions for the less common words in the Greek New Testament.

Following the order of the NT canon, Kubo lists words appearing fewer than 50 times in the order they appear in each verse, giving the lexical form followed by a simple definition. Words which are characteristic of a given book (i.e., occurring 5 or more times in the book but fewer than 50 times in the entire NT) are listed with definitions at the beginning of each book, while words occurring 50+ times in the NT are listed in an appendix.

The best way to use the book is first to memorize all the words which occur 50 or more times in the NT (a good foundational NT vocabulary), then follow Kubo verse by verse for definitions of the words you don't know.

Once you have a working knowledge of NT Greek grammar and vocabulary, Kubo's book makes reading the New Testament quick and relatively painless. I recommend the book to any student of the Greek NT.

As the others have commented...this is a book you want to have...BUT please get an older copy, not the new ed., because of the poor quality of the new ed., which I suspect is just like Zondervan's Analytical Lexicon by Mounce, in their "Zondervan Greek Reference Series"...have bindings which are glue-injected, cardboard "hardback"...which means they WILL NOT open and lay flat, and more than likely the spine will crack and pages will fall out with extended use...My copy of Kubo is 9th printing 1982 and has folded and stitched folios...so the pages will never fallout...Some books Zondervan publish still have this quality...unfortunately this series does not seem to.