A Reader's Greek New Testament: 2nd Edition [Leather Bound]

Richard J. Goodrich (Author), Albert L. Lukaszewski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2007

Ideal for Greek students and pastors, A Reader's Greek New Testament saves time and effort in studying the Greek New Testament. By eliminating the need to look up definitions, the footnotes allow the user to read the Greek text more quickly, focusing on parsing and grammatical issues. This revised edition offers the following features: * New Greek font---easier to read * Footnoted definitions of all Greek words occurring 30 times or less * Mini-lexicon of all words occurring more than 30 times * Greek text underlying Today's New International Version * Footnotes offering comparisons with UBS4 * 4 pages of full-color maps Featuring a handsome Italian Duo-Tone binding, A Reader's Greek New Testament, 2nd Edition is a practical, attractive, and surprisingly affordable resource.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard J. Goodrich (Ph.D., University of St. Andrews) is lecturer in the department of history at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.

Albert Lukaszewski (PhD New Testament, University of Saint Andrews) is co-chair of the Hellenistic Greek Language and Linguistics Section of the international meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. He has also served as editor of the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament and is author of the forthcoming Grammar of Qumran Aramaic. He lives with his family on the east coast of Scotland.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Leather Bound: 576 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan; 2 Revised edition (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310273781
• ISBN-13: 978-0310273783
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great revision of a great resource!, November 18, 2007

By 

Markos (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Reader's Greek New Testament: 2nd Edition (Leather Bound)

I gave the first edition a five star review and after using it for several years I am just as sold on it and LOVE the fact that Zondervan issued a second edition. They have improved the font and added a ribbon. This book is great because (1) it is more portable than any Greek NT available. Although the font size is as big as most, the book, because of the thin paper and a more efficient page lay out, is thin and light weight. It lies flat when open and you can almost read it like a magazaine, it's flexible and feels soft in your hands but ironically, the binding has held up BETTER than the awful bindings you get with UBS or NA products. (2) You can do armchair Greek. You can read the text without having to have another book open or even flip in the back. Memorizing words that occur more than 30 times is doable and all NT Greek learners should do it. Once you have those words down, you can read this. (But if you forget a common word the revised edition now includes a small dictionary with these words in the back.) (3) This book builds your vocab better than anything. At first you will be looking down at the page pretty often, but the more you read the better your vocab gets, and after a while you just look down to CONFIRM the meaning and form, but I think frequent glances at the words drill the meanings as well as flashcards. (4) the definitions are taken from Trenchard's book, which for my money is an excellent way to do it; just list all the possible meanings.

And don't worry about the text used here. Again, I have used this book a lot along with my NA diglot and I have never had any problems going back and forth. The few times it differs from NA-27 are in footnotes. People make a big deal about this not having a critical apparatus, but this allows the book to get all the defintions in and still be portable.

Now UBS has joined the band wagon and their own Reader's Edition is out. But this one is cheaper, more portable and includes several options for translations whereas the UBS just gives a single word gloss. The UBS does have parsing info, but vocab is the main thing you need. Everyone who reads the Greek NT should have this book, and everyone should read the Greek NT!

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Review of A Reader's Greek New Testament, September 14, 2008

By 

Daniel J. Doleys - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Reader's Greek New Testament: 2nd Edition (Leather Bound)

The following review is also posted at Biblical Studies blog http://textcommunitymission.wordpress.com/.

I would like to thank Nick Norelli of Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (http://rdtwot.wordpress.com/), for sending me this extra copy of RGNT.

As an intermediate Greek reader who is attempting to do all he can not to loose the last few of Greek study during an academic hiatus, I believe A Reader's Greek New Testament (RGNT) is an extremely helpful resource. The basic purpose of this volume is to allow Greek readers the freedom of reading their NT without the need to finger through a cumbersome lexicon for every tenth word. In my undergraduate training, I was fortunate enough to have a Greek professor who required his students to learn all the Greek vocabulary that occurs 25 times or more in the NT. This lines up quite nicely with RGNT. RGNT lists glosses, in a footnote, for any word occurring 30 times or less in the NT. This allows an intermediate reader, like myself, to continue to practice and increase Greek reading proficiency without the frustration of not knowing less common vocabulary. The price for this volume ($35 list, $25 New and about $20 used on Amazon), is quite reasonable for the use a student of the NT will get from it. RGNT states that its definitions (more properly glosses) are taken from Trenchard's Complete Vocabulary Guide to the Greek New Testament along with references to BDAG, L&N and LSJ (10). The glosses are given in the following ways: for nouns - Lexical Form, Genitive Ending, Article, Definition (read gloss), for adjectives - Lexical Form, Alternate Nominative Endings, Definition (read gloss), All other forms - Lexical Form, Definition (read gloss) (11). There are also special markers for indeclinable words such as proper nouns, genitives with alternate endings and words with multiple gender forms. Finally, prepositions, adverbs and adjectives are listed by their syntactical function when listing their glosses. The lexicon listing all words used 30 times or more is very handy when one is unable to recall a common word.

The text, while not able to use the standard NA27 for obvious copy reasons, is an eclectic critical text that disagrees with Nestle 285 times (10). While this may seem to be small a problem, all fears are subdued when one sees that these 285 differences are noted in a second footnote section on their corresponding page. RGNT is certainly not meant for textual critical work and if a student has a serious question concerning the reason for a difference, the footnoted differences allows him or her to reference their standard UBS4 or NA27 volumes.

The exterior ascetics of RGNT are also quite impressive. The burgundy Italian Duo-Tone leather is soft to the touch and the slimness of the volume allows for easy travel.

All of these excellent characteristics aside, RGNT is no longer the only Reader's New Testament on the market. Recently UBS published The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's Edition (GNTRE). Since this is not a review of GNTRE, I will not detail all of its characteristics, only those that highlight the short comings of RGNT and lend to explaining my views on how Zondervan might improve RGNT. My biggest complaint about RGNT, as well as many others, is the font. The type is not one I have seen in a GNT before and only bears some resemblance to fonts I have seen in other publications. The main problem is the thinness of the letters and the font's small size. GNTRE uses the beautiful standard NA and is quite easy to read. I do not know the exact copy laws for such an idea, but my suggestion would be for Zondervan to use Mounce's Teknia Greek font for further editions. Teknia Greek, along with being my favorite Greek font, is also quite easy to read, regularly used by students as it is free to download, very familiar to students as Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek is by far the most widely used introductory grammar, and Zondervan already has uses it to publish Mounce's grammar and morphology book as well ad Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics and its abridged version. A size larger font would also be welcome. Such changes would greatly propel the status of RGNT.

The second major benefit GNTRE has over the RGNT is the form and content of the footnotes. (For a listing of inconstancies in the footnotes of both versions see Nick Norelli's review). As stated above RGNT lists glosses for all words occurring less then 30 times. GNTRE follows suit, but also includes parsing. I have found this to be quite helpful in determining irregular forms of words I am not familiar with. Also, GNTRE footnotes and parses verbs occurring more than 30 if the textual form is irregular. This can helpful or hurtful depending on one's level of discipline for continuing to study morphology. The format of GNTRE footnotes is also superior to RGNT. RGNT lists the glosses in a running paragraph form which can sometimes make finding the corresponding note quickly difficult. GNTRE lists glosses in a two column format which is much easier for eye movement on the page (For visual comparisons see the Nick Norelli's aforementioned review). While incorporating these changes (a new easier to read, bigger font and listing glosses and parsing in column form) may increase the thickness of a future edition of RGNT, the difference would not be substantial and any small addition of weight or thickness would be welcome for an increase in reading ability.

For my personal use, I do not carry a GNT with me in book form, as I use Accordance on computer in class or when out of the house. I do make an exception for Sunday Worship as bringing my Mac to church would not be the best option. Therefore, the size advantage of RGNT over GNTRE does not effect me much. I will continue to use GNTRE as my main reading text at home for my daily readings from the GNT. I will take RGNT to my office at church to use when I have available time to read there. However, if Zondervan was to improve some of the previously mentioned short comings of RGNT in a future 3rd edition, I could certainly be persuaded to switch. However, students should not dismiss the RGNT as it is nearly $50 less to purchase than GNTRE. I was lucky enough to receive GNTRE as a gift from a friend, otherwise I would not have been able to afford its hefty price tag ($80 list, $44 on Amazon).

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What I have been wanting (without knowing it) for years, February 22, 2008

By 

Laurent Tranqui "HetLongNgoiKhen" (Baguio, Philippines) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Reader's Greek New Testament: 2nd Edition (Leather Bound)

Before I have been struggling in learning Biblical Greek, because of all the vocabulary to be learnt, and the fact that I needed to open a Greek Lexicon almost every sentence was enough to scare me away from reading the Greek New Testament.
This Reader's Greek NT has everything that makes you want to open your Greek New Testament.

First, it is beautiful, with the cover looking like real leather. It really makes you feel like you are reading one of the beautiful leather-bound english version. Zondervan's experience in publishing English Bibles really helped.

Second, the presence of the lexicon under the Greek text is the real strength of this Bible, for when you read the Greek text, you will no longer need to open a Lexicon every sentence anymore. There is no waste of time, so you can really focus on what most important: translating the Greek text and analyzing its Syntax. As a seminary student, I can use the words list under to learn all the vocabulary of the text I am reading by heart. It saves so much time, and you realize that it is in fact feasible to learn all the vocabulary of the Greek NT. How? For me I set the goal to study (translating + analyzing the syntax) a new chapter every week and to learn all its vocabulary which is located under the Greek text).

Third, I hated the presence of the critical apparatus in the UBS and NA versions. For although Textual Criticism has its importance, this importance is really overstated. What a student of the Greek NT really wants is to get the ability to read the NT in Greek, and not do Textual Criticism.
Of course you need to have both (Reader + NA27 or UBS4) but you need to have a develop a good ability to read the Greek text (by using this Reader's Greek NT) before Textual Criticism can become useful to you.

And concerning your fears that the text might be too different from the NA27 text, do not fear. For the differences are not so many, and when there are some, this text gives a footnote giving the NA27 version.
The other negative things I could say is that the font of the Greek text should be a little more bold to be more readable. And also I would have like to have some basic parsing in the words. Well, but this is just a minor thing.

Now I love so much this Bible that I bring it along to church and to all services that I can attend, along with my English Bible. They are now inseparable. You will love your Greek Bible, and probably (like me) even more than your most precious English Bible.