Customer Reviews

A Summer Greek Reader

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This book is perfect for any student (Highschool or College) who wishes to preserve what was learned during the school year. It contains 12 weeks worth of daily reading passages and parsing questions. The length of the reading passages only require about 15-20 minutes a day and the 3 parsing questions are perfect for paradigm maintenance. Each chapter has a small vocabulary list which is easy to memorize in a small amount of time. Also, students can check the back of the book which contains full English translations of the daily passages. It would be helpful if it had a comprehensive Vocabulary list in the back but, if a word is forgotten, it is not that difficult to look through the lesson lists. Overall, this book is a terrific collection of daily 20 minute studies.

This is a pretty good workbook for its stated purpose. I worked through Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek on my own, and when I was done I found this book to be at a very good level for practicing and maintaining what I had learned.

Probably the chief drawback to this workbook is that it encourages the practice of thinking of the Greek text in terms of Englishing the text rather than actually trying to understand the Greek directly. As I worked through it, after producing my "translation" I tried to go back and re-read the Greek to see how much I could understand without thinking it in English.

There were a few (but just a few) cases where unfamiliar vocabulary wasn't defined as described in the preface. There were more than a few cases where verbs were presented for parsing in completely unfamiliar forms, so that rather than practicing parsing one is actually learning a new principle part. That's useful, obviously, but a little frustrating. I would have rather had a footnote hinting at the lexical form.

My biggest complaint about this book is that the binding on my copy was terrible. The pages kept falling out. By the time I finished, the last page was the only page still attached to the cover.

I used Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek for Seminary Greek and have found this an excellent way to maintain what I learned. I like gaining experience translating larger passages from the Greek text. I'm starting to feel more comfortable working with the Greek.

The one reviewer who said the binding is terrible and that pages quickly fall out is absolutely correct.

It was very helpful to use this workbook with Mounce's BBG Vocab cards. The vocab lists are organized in a Friends, Cousins and Strangers format, but they actually pick up from the BBG vocab card list and move in order.

Overall, the tie-in with Mounce's BBG material is excellent and this is a more than worthwhile investment to maintain your NT Greek and prepare for Mounce's Graded Biblical Reader.

There are many Greek readers out there, but in my opinion in terms of level of difficulty and format, this is one of the more suitable ones for a student who has just completed an introductory course such as William Mounce's "Baics of Biblical Greek".

This reader presents daily passages for reading, parsing and translating. The readings are spread over 12 chapters, each chapter a block of text drawn from Matthew, Mark, John or 1 John consisting of 30 to 35 verses. One feature of this reader that sets it apart from others is that each chapter is divided into short, manageable daily passages of about 5 to 6 verses, so it is easy to incorporate the translation exercises into one's daily routine and develop the habit of reading some Greek everyday. (Other readers I have seen simply have large chapters that can appear rather overwhelming to the beginning student.) Ample space is provided on each page for the student to write down his translation. The texts chosen have relatively straightforward syntax, and new words are introduced in the footnotes. This, coupled with the literal translations of the passages provided at the end of the book, make this reader easy for the student to work through on his own. Unlike some other readers, this reader does not have the irritating feature of constantly referring the student to reference works which the student may not have access to.

Each chapter ends with a vocabulary list to learn in preparation for an intermediate course. In addition to definitions, many of the words also come with mnemonic devices, which is a nice touch.

Note that the purpose of this book is not to teach new grammar, but simply to maintain whatever has been learnt in an introductory course, so there are no detailed grammatical explanations, no new grammatical items to learn, no charts of verb paradigms, nor are there any exegetical discussions. It assumes at least one year of study of Greek, so it is not exactly for "beginners". The purpose of this book is simply to get the student to start reading in Greek entire texts for himself, and it does the job well.

I faithfully completed this workbook in between Basics of Biblical Greek and Mounce's Graded Reader, and while it was helpful I'm not sure that I wouldn't have done just as well to go straight into the Graded Reader. I am a solo-learner and don't need to follow along with the normal schedule of first year, summer break, second year Greek, so perhaps I am simply not the target audience. Nevertheless, it is a well made tool that adds additional guided translating resources to students of NT Greek.