[B-Greek] reference book question

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Nov 22 15:40:16 EST 2004


At 12:28 PM -0800 11/22/04, Steve Raine wrote:
>Hello folks--
>
>Looking to get a good reference book for NT study (to supplement Mounce
>& Wallace.)
>
>Probably deciding between  Smyth's Grammar and Robertson's Grammar (in
>light of historical research).
>
>Pros and cons of each?

You were expecting five or six different responses weren't you? I think
you'll have several!

I don't think anything current has the depth and range--and the
sophistication in terms of diachronic understanding of forms and
constructions--of Robertson's big book--but it's very old and you've got to
do a lot of reading in it to get at questions. I personally think it's very
worth having, but I don't think it's adequate as something to rely upon
today; on the other hand, I think that in some situations I'd pit
Robertson's view of things against Wallace's (I've always been disturbed by
Wallace's tendency to divide and subdivide {and invent?} grammatical
categories based upon how one translates constructions into English rather
than upon how they function in Greek).

Smyth is the best English-language grammar of Greek currently available;
its focus is upon Classical Attic, but a reader of Homeric or dialectal or
Koine Greek can usually find something relevant there to just about any
question asked about Greek morphology and syntax. Its use is rendered
easier by having had some exposure to classical Attic.

Then there's BDF: Blass-Debrunner-Funk: Funk's translation of the classic
German New Testament Greek grammar, the current German revision being known
as BDR (Blass-Debrunner-Rehkopf). This is a very useful advanced grammar,
but it too rests upon an assumption that its user has had some exposure to
classical Attic, even though its focus is indeed New Testament Koine.

Finally there's a brand new book that I'm waiting to have a look at myself:
Chrys C. Caragounis, _Development Of Greek & The New Testament: Morphology,
Syntax, Phonology, & Textual Transmission_--a 750 page work (in English)
published in Germany and offered by Amazon for $220; our fellow list-member
Wieland Willker indicates he's very impressed by it; I know that I'm
impressed by what I've seen of Caragounis' work previously. It may be that
this is the ultimate successor to A.T. Robertson, but it is certainly
steeply-priced.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list