Subject: Teaching yourself Advance Greek

Jonathan Robie jonathan at texcel.no
Fri Feb 26 09:31:37 EST 1999


At 08:49 AM 2/26/99, Ed Gorham wrote:
>I agree that the best learning comes from reading through the text.  In 
>this regard, a most valuable tool is Wesley Perschbacher's "Refresh Your 
>Greek". It is a GNT with the following additions: a basic NT vocab list in 
>the front, a condensed reference grammar in the back, and helps on every 
>page of the text to identify more unfamiliar forms and less-frequent words. 
> It's beauty is that you can develop a better general proficiency reading 
>through the text using just this book. Certainly for more in-depth analysis 
>you'd want to consult the usual sources, and there is no apparatus for 
>textual study. But personally I have found no tool more useful in helping 
>me read and understand more.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has had 
>basic NT Greek and wants to move on from there.

I like that book, though I haven't used it much. On my Little Greek Home
Page, I mention three works that I find very useful for identifying
unfamiliar forms and less-frequent words:

http://metalab.unc.edu/koine/#cheating

Zerwick's Grammatical Analysis is, IMHO, much better than the original
Rienecker/Rogers Linguistic Key, which I have but basically don't use.
However, there is a new edition that at least *sounds* pretty good, but I
haven't seen it.

Here is the listing for the newer work on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0310201756/qid=919208330/sr=1-2/002-0
204789-6893672

There's a fairly negative review of the work there by someone who would
certainly encourage you to get Zerwick. For a more positive review of the
Rogers book, take a look at this message, which shows you how to get a free
review:

http://franklin.oit.unc.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?visit=b-greek&id=77691800

I have a lot of respect for Rod Decker, who wrote that review.

So the bottom line is this: I *know* Zerwick is great. I *suspect* Rogers
is probably pretty good too, but I can't say for sure without seeing it.

Hope this helps!

Jonathan
 
jonathan at texcel.no
Texcel Research
http://www.texcel.no



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