Customer Reviews

Word Study Greek-English New Testament: with complete concordance

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
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I like literal translations of the New Testament, especially interlinear ones. McReynolds provides one in this book. It is very literal, therefore it is difficult to casually read.

His stated goal is to try to assign one English word per Greek word. Although this is helpful for consistency's sake and allows you to read a Greekified English, it doesn't help if you are curious to see how he translates a particular occurrence of any given word compared to another translator. For example, if doing a translational study of the Greek word "mello" by comparing translations by Young, Marshall, Berry, Comfort, Farstad, Green, and McReynolds, you will find that McReynolds translates every occurrence of "mello" as "about to," whereas the other translators try to differentiate various shades of meaning. For such a comparative study, it would be almost useless to consult McReynolds' work.

But laying aside this one limitation and returning to strengths, McReynolds provides Strong's concordance numbers for every Greek word. He also helpfully differentiates between the singular and plural "you" in his translation. Greek verb tenses are translated carefully herein. Furthermore, he provides a concordance of his own, based on Greek words and not English, which is quite useful. Finally, he lists the page numbers where you can find discussion of each Greek word in several popular lexicons. All of this between two covers! This resource will grow on you, guaranteed.

This is a great buy! The amount of info you get in this volume for the price is unbelievable. McReynold's is a very literal translation, with Strong's number above every greek word, and a great word study in the back of the book.

Another great interlinear is Comfort's, that one is much more handy (small & compact) -- a nice little hard cover, great for quick reference.

With McReynold's you get the most bang for your buck, but with comfort you get a more readable/understandable translation in a much more compact size.

I would suggest getting both McReynold's and Comfort's......they work well together, and both choose many differnt words when translating the greek (it's nice to see the difference)

I prefer both of these over Marshall's and Zane Hodges interlinears. (I have them both but use Comfort's and McReynold's much more often than those two).

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If you only buy one Christian book in your lifetime (apart from a regular bible of course), this is the one! This is the most unbelievably useful study tool I've ever come across, and without any doubt, by far the best interlinear ever made.

The text is United Bible Societies 3rd Edition (which BTW, is exactly the same to the word as the latest 4th Edition). NRSV is in the margin. (BTW, the NRSV is an ok translation, it matches the UBS4 text quite well, even though I prefer either NASB95 or ESV).

Strongs numbers are above the word and a complete concordance in the back based on Strongs number.

Each word is always translated the same way in the interlinear no matter how appropriate that may or may not be. This is good and bad of course. In my opinion it is good because it highlights when the same word is being used in different contexts and is very useful for making an unbiased translation of your own.

It is a big bulky book. If you need something compact go with the Personal Size Edition of the Brown/Comfort/Douglas Greek/English interlinear. It's no where near as good without Strongs and concordance but it is very compact.

The book "Word Study Greek-English New Testament" by Paul R. McReynolds was an indispensable tool used in my Th.D. dissertation! In particular is the author's correct description of the Greek word "eis" which was central to my thesis.
Also helpful was his use of incorporating Strong's Exhaustive Concordance numbering system.
I strongly recommend the McReynolds book to anyone seriously interested in Biblical study!
Dr. Cris Graham, Rapid City, SD

It's difficult to imagine a more compact package of such great study tools--and at a bargain price! First, the impeccable UBS text--4th edition! For the serious student, the straight text itself is probably worth the price Amazon charges for the entire toolbox.
Second, a great literal interlinear text. I never study the Greek New Testament without the lexicon close at hand; but this interlinear is great as a prompt for the casual contribution in group Bible study or Sunday School. Some people will say it is wooden, but it is not meant to be a substitute for a translation; it is not meant to flow but to prompt the reader as to the significance of the word.
Third--and the main reason I purchased this book--is the terrific Greek concordance. The numbers are Strong's, which is great for anyone using other similarly keyed study tools; but every single word in the text is keyed, and every single text--every usage of the given word--is listed. Verbs and nouns are listed in their lexical forms. If you want to make a comparison of the uses (for example) of AGAPAO and PHILEO, it is all at your fingertips.
The fourth great tool--almost like a bonus thrown in for being one of the first ten callers--is the parallel NRSV text, in detail with its footnotes. The NRSV is my personal choice for both study and devotional reading. Its textual soundness is virtually without parallel. It is just the thing to complement this great package--kind of like the handle that fits all of the other tools.
I don't know how this work had esceaped my attention in the past; I will not be without it again.
One more thing: I had priced the hard copy edition at a bookstore chain, and seeing Amazon's price I expected it to be paper--it wasn't!

A review below covered the strengths of this interlinear very thoroughly. I would want to add/re-emphasize that it includes the exhaustive concordance, NSRV translation in the margins, and an easy to grasp system to understand the case/number/gender et cetera. A complete work.

The interelinear portion of this book is great and many of the other reviews have done a fine job of explaining why. I would just like to add how awesome the concordance is that comes along with it. It is arranged by strongs number (rather than the english word) and thus makes it a much more useful tool for finding relevant cross-references. I definitely prefer it to a Strongs concordance and consider it to be my favorite concordance bar none. This book is just an incredible tool for the serious studant of the Bible.

This is a great find for anyone that wants to study the Bible. It's word for word translation straight from the Greek text is amazing. It has brought new life and light to a lot of the scriptures I know from memory and has helped me to understand some of the words used better. For instance,the word faith and believe are always translated 'trust' in the Greek. I'm glad I found this.

This is an interlinear with a built in concordance. The New Testament translation is NRSV. There are Strong's numbers over the Greek texts in the interlinear. Handy and thorough, one of my favorite tools.

This interlinear is good in that each Greek word has a Strong's # above it, to easily find the word in a Greek dictionary that uses Strong's numbering system. However, if you are serious about delving into the Greek, it seems that you would eventually want to at least learn the Greek alphabet, in which case you would not need these numbers to look up Greek word definitions. Also, the type is easy to read. Also, the book contains a Greek concordance at the back, to quickly see where a particular Greek word is located in the NT.

First, let me preface this review by stating that I am an extreme novice, in the serious study of the scriptures, so don't regard my opion too highly.

I do not trust any one completely, when it comes to the matter of my own salvation, which is very much dependent on my understanding of scripture. I have what I regard as a healthy contempt for doctors of divinity, and conferred degrees; all people are subject to common human frailty, and are thus subject to being deceived, no matter what seminary they attend, whatever academic degrees they have obtained, and however sincere they may be. Once a concept is accepted as true, it generally is highly resistant to being rejected, even after the light of truth has revealed it to be error. What I am trying to say, is that generally, children in a Baptist Sunday School class, generally grow up to become Baptist theologians, and Lutheran children likewise usually grow up to become Lutheran theologians, and so on. I know that all theologians have their own particular set of presuppositions and biases, and these biases necessarily affect their interpretation of scripture, even though they may strive valiantly to resist all subjectivity, when called upon to perform the holy, sacred, and even frightening work of translating the scriptures.

McReynold's has chosen a scheme of scripture translation, which only renders a single English word, for each Greek word. That is, he has not sought to enter into speculation regarding which shade of meaning a Greek word has, depending on the context of the passage, nor I suppose, it's grammatical placement (where the word is placed in the sentence), as well as other factors that I am not seeing, due to my great ignorance. This may seem like a severe drawback, and to some extent it probably is. However, consider that it has the advantage of being relatively free from the theological presuppositions and biases of a translator, who sincerely tries to help along the scripture, to say what he believes it is trying to say, and you will then see that McReynold's translation is inherently more trustworthy in this respect. To my knowledge, no other interlinear, nor Bible version, is translated this way.

Being that I am so easily deceived, because I have virtually no background in Greek, I find this interlinear to be a preventive bulwark against the subtleties of man. Better yet--if I understood biblical Greek fluently, I could generally dispense with using interlinears; but for now, they are a necessary help, to bridge me over to the original writings, to some degree at least.