[B-Greek] hi everyone

Sam Robb bgreek at oneparticularharbor.net
Tue Aug 16 23:40:25 EDT 2005


> Beginner Books:
> One book that seems to be very popular is "Basics of Biblical Greek 
> Grammar" by William D. Mounce.

This is the text we used for first-year Greek.  It was a decent
textbook, but I have some doubts the usefulness of the 5-case
system it presents.  Once you get past introductory Greek, you
will need to understand the 8-case system - otherwise, a vast
amount of existing material will be confusing to you.  So why
learn two case systems when you could just learn one?

For second year Greek, we moved to "Essentials of New Testament
Greek" by Summers and "A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament"
by Dana and Mantey.  Both are 8-case.  Summers is (IMHO) more
readable and much better organized as a translation aid/reference;
D&M is an excellent grammar reference, though I find myself
working more from the D&M notes I made than from the text itself.

> At any rate, there seems to be a pretty wide range of recommendations so 
> I need a little guidance.  I work in the technical industry and I am 
> very accustomed to reading very technical books to learn certain subject 
> matter.

Hmm.  I'm also a technical person (software development), and of
the three books I've mentioned: Mounce is in excellent condition,
D&M is in very good condition, and Summers is falling apart from
frequent use :-)  It's not that the other two books are not as
good, mind you - it's just that, for day-to-day translation work
over the past two years, I have usually found myself turning to
Summers as a primary reference before trying other resources.

-Sam Robb





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