Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself New Testament Greek Complete Course

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

 

 

I read this book about five years ago when a local Greek professor decided to teach some people from his church how to read the language. The book made Greek as simple as it can get by starting out with the Greek alphabet which included pronunciation. The book then became much more advanced, teaching grammar. I plan on buying the book again since one of my friends lost it and was happy to see that it was still being sold on line. If you are just starting out, buy this book. It is cheaper than most and is all you'll need to get a good beginning foundation of New Test Greek.

It's okay, though may be oldfashioned for some. Has decent traditional verb tables in the back, but no handy summary of case inflection. Haven't seen McNairs similarly titled book (which is probably in breach of Hodder's Teach Yourself trademark).

I really liked this book. It covers all the basics.

It has gives a good coverage of the basics, and has good explanations, and good practice exercises, charts, etc.,forming a solid foundation for future study of New Testament Greek.

The first half of the book is paced well, and eases you into the New Testament Greek. About the midway point, conveniently when the grammar gets more advanced, I think the explanations and lessons start to weaken. That could be just the nature of the level of study, when you get into Optative mood and all the obnoxious Genitive usages, nonetheless, that is when the instruction should step up and clarify better. I felt the instruction took a step back instead. Nonethless, the beginning chapters are excellent, just be prepared to be patient when you get to the really hard stuff.

This is an older edition from the 60s. It's ok as an introductory text, but doesn't really prepare you to read the Greek New Testament. A lot of effort is wasted translating English-to-Greek, which is not really necessary.

After you finish this book, you should buy the book by Gavin Betts which currently fills the slot formerly occupied by this older book in the Teach Yourself series. (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-New-Testament-Greek-Yourself/dp/0071752641/ref=sr_ob_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1325714732&sr=8-5)

By the time you complete both of these books you'll be ready to work through a Greek reader or two, then take on the New Testament.

One thing about this book is that almost none of the reading exercises are taken from the Greek New Testament. The vocabulary words are all NT words, but it just seems strange not to include more than just a few sentences from the NT. In the Gavin Betts book mentioned above, all the reading exercises are taken from the NT.

The book, Teach Yourself New Testament Greek, by D. F. Hudson makes a good coverage of the language, I've used several other such books and this one is very clear and well done. I like the use of passages from the classical literature but think that more could be done with the New Testament, such as giving more examples of grammar points from Scripture itself. I would also have liked to have seen more use of the NT and even the Septuagint in the exercises. There are one or two errors, as for example on page 41 where Hudson gives an exception as occurring only once in the New Testament. It actually occurs twice! However, Hudson's grammar explanations with interesting and numbered points are really quite valuable. I would be happy to recommend this book to any beginner of New Testament Greek and even for others like myself who are better acquainted with it.

D.F. Hudson's TEACH YOURSELF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK was first published in 1960, and while Teach Yourself has recently replaced it with a new version by Gavin Betts, editions of Hudson's book widely remain on sale.

One will notice immediately that Hudson's textbook is pretty old school, with each chapter consisting of lots of tables of paradigms followed by exercises of translation into and out of Greek. That's not really such a bad thing, as that's the only way to really learn Greek (textbooks that coddle you don't get you far). It covers pretty much everything you'd need to know about the grammar, though I'm not very satisfied with how it teaches vocabulary. I was quite unhappy with Hudson's decision to leave accents out entirely. While Greek accents can be difficult to remember, they do help distinguish between two or more words written with the same letters but with different meanings.

I can't really recommend Hudson's book. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if the idea of a textbook specifically for New Testament Greek might not be a misstep. If you just work through a standard introduction to Classical Greek, which sells for no more than this volume, you'll then find the language of the New Testament and the Septuagint a piece of cake, but you'll also have access to all the wisdom of Athens, the histories of Herodotus, and the epic verse of Homer. Seems like a much better deal.