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Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: July 9th, 2015, 9:09 am
by Eeli Kaikkonen
http://zondervanacademic.com/blog/the-c ... -of-greek/

Does anyone has any more information about this? Is this same kind of mild disappointment as Basics of Verbal Aspect? I.e. Advances in one camp, instead of the whole field.

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: July 9th, 2015, 11:46 am
by Paul-Nitz
The excerpt on the Zondervan site and the description at Amazon expand on the title. Campbell sets out to highlight the current and contested issues in the discussion of Greek. I would like to see a table of contents, but cannot find one listed. If it does what it promises, it will satisfy what I have long wished for. I thought and hoped that Decker's primer would fill that void, but I was disappointed by it. His primer introduces some new issues, but not clearly or completely enough for my tastes. Hopefully Campbell's book will deliver. I've already bet on it and bought it via pre-order.

On Amazon, this book is only on pre-order release (for $19, full price $35). It is due to be released 28 July.

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: July 9th, 2015, 7:41 pm
by Stephen Carlson
A review summarizing the contents is here: http://readingacts.com/2015/07/08/book- ... -of-greek/

From http://www.thinkivp.com/9780310515951 it looks like the contents are (but the order of some of the chapters seems to differ with the review):
  1. A History of Greek Studies
  2. Linguistic Studies
  3. Pronunciation
  4. Lexical Semantics and Lexicography
  5. Voice and Deponency
  6. Verbal Aspect and Aktionsart
  7. Idiolect, Genre, and Register
  8. Discourse Analysis: part 1
  9. Discourse Analysis: part 2
  10. Methods of Teaching Greek

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: July 21st, 2015, 2:17 pm
by Eeli Kaikkonen
Here's another (positive) review:
http://www.thegoodbookblog.com/2015/jul ... -of-greek/

It's clearly written by a non-specialist. "The middle voice, it is suggested by some of these scholars, is employed because there is some self-involvement of the speaker." "[A]spect theory asserts that time isn’t the central characteristic of Greek tenses, nor is Aktionsart (type of action), the central issue is viewpoint, whether a Greek speaker or author views the event from outside an action or from inside." It's difficult to say if these are reviewer's words or Campbell's.

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: July 27th, 2015, 3:12 pm
by MAubrey
I'm co-authoring a review of the book for Themelios. I'd say it's a mixed bag of decent, good, and bad--each depending on Con's own experience with a given topic.

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: August 4th, 2015, 9:17 am
by cwconrad
I’ve now finished my own careful perusal of the book and find that I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I’m astounded that nobody has undertaken this sort of a survey sooner; I’m glad it’s arrived and hope that reviews and reaction will stimulate revision and alternative perspectives. As for the content of his accounts, I’m pleased that he’s chosen the particular areas in which he endeavors to pinpoint advances in scholarship and resources. Whether or not one agrees with him, it’s useful to have an account of the developing impact of Linguistics ( on the understanding and teaching of ancient Greek (including Koine Biblical Greek). On the other hand, I do have my own reservations about some of what Campbell has to say, as I’m sure others will as well. Does he do justice (whatever that may be) to consensus and controversy over matters of verbal aspect in Greek? Opinions will differ, I think. For my part, I think the areas of developing discussion in recent decades are rightly identified. I’m glad to see the discussion of semantics and lexicography, of discourse analysis, of pronunciation and of pedagogy.

Mike Aubrey has indicated that he’s involved in one review of the book; there will surely be others as well. I’ll do no more here than note that I’m pleased with Campbell’s account of developments in the understanding of deponency and middle voice. Here I think he’s got it about 85% right; I think he’s missed a couple items in the history of recent thinking about voice matters, but he mentions most of the scholars and work done of importance, including, I was glad to see, Neva Miller. I also think that issues remain in understanding Greek voice forms and usage (e.g., perfect active forms with subject-affected sense; how aorist athematic intransitives in -ῆναι relate to 1st and 2nd aorist passive forms in -θῆναι). At any rate, we shall see what the repercussions may be; it is to be hoped that some who still think of Greek grammar in 19th-century terms may be wakened from what Kant called “dogmatic slumbers.”

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: August 20th, 2015, 4:43 am
by Eeli Kaikkonen

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: August 20th, 2015, 7:15 am
by cwconrad
Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:Does anyone has any more information about this? Is this same kind of mild disappointment as Basics of Verbal Aspect? I.e. Advances in one camp, instead of the whole field.
This is a rave review:
This is a great book that should be mandatory reading for anyone who teaches Greek and required reading for anyone doing taking Greek exegesis classes.
In my view, Eeli's original suspicion may be on target: it is a book that was very much needing to be written and to be read; I think it might have done better at what it aims to do.

Campbell's account of the new perspective on voice in the ancient Greek very is essentially the paper delivered in the 2010 SBL meeting. The reviewer's take from it:
Deponency died the same year that Tony Curtis did (2010), but passive deponents are still a curious problem.
That's a statement that reminds me of one of my favorite student final-exam bloopers:
This statement is good as far as it goes but it goes too far.
I'm still waiting on Mike Aubrey's review;

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: August 20th, 2015, 12:20 pm
by Eeli Kaikkonen
cwconrad wrote: I'm still waiting on Mike Aubrey's review
Likewise; it wasn't in the recently published Themelios, so it must be in the next one in Nov/Dec.
There really is need for a good, maybe edited, volume which could replace this one and parts of the old Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation (Cotterell & Turner).

Re: Campbell: Advances in the Study of Greek

Posted: August 26th, 2015, 1:53 am
by Louis L Sorenson
I've been reading through this book lately. Perhaps we should have a subforum on this book so we can create nested threads. My comments are as follows:

On the middle voice. I really wish that Campbell had listed the following books:
(1) Susan Kemmer: The Middle Voice Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co., 1993. Series: Typological studies in language, v. 23.

(2) Middle Voice in Modern Greek: meaning and function of an inflectional category. Linda Joyce Manney, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub., ©2000. Series: Studies in language companion series, v. 48.