The past year I’ve been working exclusively with biblical Hebrew. This year I will add biblical Greek into the mix. This will officially be my third year of Greek. I had taken two years at the undergraduate level. I was also privileged to be a substitute Greek teacher for a one and a half months. During my undergrad studies, I found Greek to be more easily dissectible, while I thought Hebrew to be the funner of the two. Now that I’ve become better acquainted with the Hebrew language, I will have to hold off on comments until I finish this program.
The course I will be taking is Introduction to New Testament Greek. Looking at last year’s syllabus, it appears we have a few required textbooks, one being William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek. The one that is listed is the first edition; I suspect we will be using the second edition.1
I am familiar with this book because I used it as a supplement to my grammar in my bachelor program. Now that it is required, I am looking forward to making it a well-used resource in my library.
One advantage I have found with Mounce’s book over the one I used in my initial studies2 is the correlation between the English grammar and the Greek grammar. Mounce introduces a particular grammatical concept in English first (for instance, the idea of the imperfect tense—continual action in the past), how it is expressed (e.g., he was saying) in English, and then connects it to the Greek (elegen). When I taught the advanced Greek class, I did the same thing, and the students instantly got it. Also his memorization system is top notch.
On the other hand, I feel Summers and Sawyer’s work has an advantage over that of Mounce’s in that it introduces the student to syntax much earlier. For example, their chapter3 on the imperfect active indicative is a condensed version of what one would find on the imperfect in Daniel Wallace’s Greek syntax.
I am truly looking forward to relearning and honing my Greek translating ability up to a competent level.
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1 William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003).[Back]
2 Ray Summers, Essentials of New Testament Greek, rev. Thomas Sawyer, rev. ed. (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1995).[Back]
August 29, 2009 at 11:11 pm
I think Mounce's work is much better. Summers/Sawyer seems a bit dated. Plus Mounce's comes with a CD with his lectures and a link to his website which has other resources.
August 30, 2009 at 11:20 am
I also think Mounce's work to be better overall for learning Greek. I haven't used the CD much but from what I've seen it had helped. The only part place in which Mounce seemed deficient to me was when I wanted a little more detail into things like the article and verb. Until I got Wallace, Summers was the only resource I had that apparently went further than Mounce in that respect.
August 30, 2009 at 11:28 am
Much of what you learn in Mounce and Wallace will need to be unlearned if you intend to go beyond the advanced beginner stage in the language. I would prefer to avoid them to begin with since the framework they use is very difficult to get rid of once it is entrenched in your greek studies. This has been discussed ad museum in the b-greek forum. You will note there that even the traditionalists like Carl Conrad have been highly critical of the translation motivated approach to syntax.
August 30, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Batholomew,
The only problem is those of us who do our Gk. @ seminary do not really have the option to learn it another way unless we outsource and take a class at another institution while hoping our seminary will accept the credits. But you are probably right that it is not the best starting point. I haven't learned the language as I would have liked to.
August 30, 2009 at 10:42 pm
C. Stirling Bartholomew,
Brian is right, there isn't much of an option to go without Mounce and Wallace. What strategies do you suggest for one trying to go beyond the advanced beginner stage in Greek? Would one be able to supplement Mounce's and Wallace's framework (or even minimize it) while doing things to put one on the right track to get into intermediate and advanced stages?
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