Learn to Read New Testament Greek

On the strength of reviews, I bought Black's Learn to Read New Testament Greek and Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar and tried to read them together. But I quickly gave up on that as both books follow a very different course and studying them together is just not possible. Because Mounce's book has a separate workbook, which I did not buy, I decided to start with Black as it comes with exercises. This review compares both books and is written primarily for people studying Greek on their own.These are the advantages Black has over Mounce:1) It's much cheaper. Not only is the book much cheaper than Mounce's but when you add in Mounce's workbook, the difference in price is very significant. Please note that there are no exercises at all in Mounce apart from the workbook.2) Black's book is very nicely sized and lightweight. During the months I studied it, I carried it around with me everywhere and every time I had to wait for something, like in line at the supermarket cashier or while waiting for my wife as she performed her perennial shopping rites, out came the book. This would not have been possible with Mounce. The book is just too unwieldy; in fact, the postal service even refused to deliver the book from Amazon and I had to go pick it up! Reason given: "Large package".3) The most important advantage Black has over Mounce is that his book is perfectly suited to the beginner. I cannot imagine how a book on Greek grammar can be simplified further without sacrificing vital content. I think Mounce is just way too difficult for the beginner. This is especially true in the second half of the book, on verbs. Verbs are the most difficult thing to learn in basic Greek and I'm afraid many beginners will drown if they try to take on Mounce.4) Closely related to 3) is Black's organizational genius. His book is not just easy to study but it's made easier by the way he organizes his material. I cannot understand it but Mounce is very much inclined to tell you about something and then ask you to wait for further explanation later. Look at the way he deals with the middle voice. He tells you the form of the middle/passive voice and then tells you to wait for later chapters where he will explain what the middle voice is! If I had used Mounce as my first book, I would have torn my hair out or more likely, given up on Greek altogether. The same goes for vocabulary lists. Black's vocabulary follows closely the chapter content. For example, if he has just taught you second declension nouns, he will then give you a list of second declension nouns to memorize, arranged nicely in their sub-categories. Mounce's vocabulary lists have no order at all. You may think this is a small thing to bring up but my memory seems to associate words I learn together and learning words from the same type really helps my recall.5) Again, related to 3), is the way Black writes. If you want to know what concise means, read his book. He does not waste a single word. This makes his book ideal for reviewing your lessons. In comparison, Mounce's book feels overwritten and bloated. There's quite a bit of repetition. He has a sectional overview, a chapter overview, a mid-lesson review and a final review! This, especially when added to the lack of organization, makes finding a piece of information very hard.6) I really don't like the cartoon professor in Mounce. I just don't see the point of having it. I know he's trying to add some light-hearted humor but it's hard enough trying to memorize hundreds of Greek words without being taught modern Greek words as well. Some of you may adore the professor though.7) The most difficult thing in basic Greek grammar is the participle. Black's chapter on participles is a model of concise clarity. He gives many examples of the use of participles in simple sentences he creates himself that allow the student to try translating them. Mounce's examples come form the New Testament and are much harder to work on.These are the advantages Mounce has over Black:1) There's a great deal more Greek in Mounce than in Black, a lot more details.2) Mounce is very concerned with his readers. He makes a lot of effort to encourage his students. His warmth is very touching.3) Even though I think Black's vocabulary lists make memory work easier, Mounce's vocabulary has some weighty, secret weapons. For one thing, Mounce teaches you all the words that occur 50 times or more in the New Testament. Black cares less about the frequently recurring words. Because I use the Reader's Edition of the UBS Greek New Testament which gives, at the bottom of the page, definitions of words that occur less than 30 times in the New Testament, I am sometimes surprised to find that I know words that are explained. Not that knowing less frequently occurring words is a disadvantage of course but it's better for beginners to learn the high-frequency words first and Mounce concentrates on those.Another thing about Mounce's vocabulary that I like is the care he lavishes in explaining details pertaining to the words he asks you to memorize. Some of this information is valuable.4) Even though Black's conciseness is much appreciated, at times he can be a bit too concise. For example, after spending months almost killing myself learning the different paradigms for the various tenses of verbs, I was totally dismayed when I reached the last chapter and found a new type of verbs, the -mi verbs, with a whole new set of paradigms to memorize. In this last chapter, Black just pretty much gives the various paradigms in table form and then asks you to memorize some of them. Mounce, as usual gives more details, details which are much needed to encourage the distressed student. He says (on Page 319),"There is good news and bad news about these verbs. The bad news is that their forms change so drastically that they can become almost unrecognizable. The good news is that there are very few of them. The bad news is that these few mi verbs are common. The good news is that most of the changes occur only in the present tense."A few paragraphs later he adds, "But even those people who use Greek regularly have trouble in reproducing the mi verb paradigms from rote memory." This was sufficient to lift my spirits and made me continue studying!Throughout his book, Black came across as a master-teacher making the path as easy as possible for his students to travel. Mounce is more of the scholar with a passion that he wishes to share with his students. My advice to you, if, like me, you do not enjoy the benefits of the classroom, is to study Black thoroughly, master it and then let Mounce add to your knowledge.

I wrote my first review far too soon. I'm at Chapter 16 and NOW I can say that this beginning grammar is fully worthy of any five-star review it receives. At Chapter 16, the author stops you by explaining that ALL the indicative mood morphemes UP to that point MUST be mastered before going on. This, of course, made me stop - I was tearing through this little hardcover textbook at a pretty quick pace, which was and is one of its finer points: it's pithy without any filler. Now, I looked over these lists of forms to memorize and was overwhelmed but now on my third day of looking the lists over, I am really feeling more confident about Greek than an equal number of pages of Croy's Primer (Eerdman's) could have accomplished. The reason: D.A. Black gives you a couple lists of ALL the morphological changes within the indicative mood. When you stop and really TRY to master these, you'll do so by going by his listing of 8 morphemes that make up all forms in the mood, and so it'll come to make a lot more sense as you spend a lot of time with it. This might make you desire, as I did, reviewing whole chapters to, for instance, really internalize the aorist active. If you have absolutely NO familiarity with Greek, don't be disappointed by my use of any of these grammatical terms - getting this beginning-level grammar will get you up to speed QUICK. Just be sure to spend a few DAYS on Chapter 16, because that extra time spent will pay off in spades. I say this because you'll surely be impressed with how short Black's chapters really are, often nothing more than three pages. Don't be fooled. He packs a lot into these chapters and does so so that you deceptively FEEL you are progressing super-fast. And so you are. Just be sure to utilize Chapter 16 in order to review. I'm thinking of going back to college at this Bethlehem College & Seminary, with a goal of perhaps teaching Greek - I thought right away how much easier that task would be if I used THIS grammar with students. It's perfect. I own Decker's beginning grammar and Porter's beginning grammar, as well. I trust that those two will reinforce what this beginning grammar teaches, but I would not be surprised if those other two merely added detail to what this grammar by Black already teaches. This little grammar seriously gets one ready to read the Greek New Testament. Start with it! Oh! It also has pasted inside the back cover a fold-out chart of all the Koine verbal system. I recommend going at your own comfortable pace all the way to Chapter 16 and then letting Chapter 16 guide you in your review of material up to that point. The author is an excellent educator in that he planned Chapter 16 to be exactly what it is, and that's really the point where I became impressed with this grammar AND impressed with my progress. Some grammatical categories and terms seem foggy at first, but the more time you spend with Chapter 16, the more you'll surprise yourself at your confidence level.As a little pointer, I'd recommend during Chapter 16 that you take a book like 1 John, use biblehub.com interlinear, and then analyze the verbs in there according to Black's Chapter 14 charts. You won't be overwhelmed by 1 John, and I recommend 1 John to anyone wanting to start out learning to read Koine. It's an EXCELLENT starting point, from a linguistic point of view as well as from a spiritual point of view - it's a truly inspiring epistle. Anyway, you'll find that John uses mostly perfect and aorist tenses at the beginning of this epistle. Use that. Get used to morphological analysis, as Black recommends, because morphological analysis is the HUGEST part of understanding the Greek New Testament's verbs. Nuances exist in there that none of the English translations have picked up, not even the KJV (I use the "Testus Receptus" from TBS (Trinitarian Bible Society) - it's the only edition I could find that comes in a nice soft calfskin and contains ONLY Greek and no English - it's a must-have because interlinear Bibles just make it too easy to cheat, whereas using this Greek New Testament with just a copy of BDAG (indispensable to any serious student of Koine) will allow one to make leaps and bounds in learning - as for the debate about Textus Receptus versus Aland/UBS Greek texts, I found evidence in the ante-nicene church fathers for the Textus Receptus coming earlier than the Alexandrian text, because there are several quotes by these church fathers, some of whom lived at least 100 years BEFORE the Alexandrian text is dated, which exist ONLY in the Textus Receptus since the Alexandrian text LACKS many important doctrinal verses - btw, do NOT order the calfskin Textus Receptus on Amazon, as it was last listed at $140, whereas evangelicalbible.com sells them at $45!). Point is, get a hold of a Greek New Testament as you work through this grammar, so you can see and utilize what you learn using a real Greek text. As for the Textus Receptus, look at it like this - it contains verses the others do not, so why not get the practice? And most of all, GET THIS GRAMMAR!

Great book for learning or refreshing your biblical Greek. Great format with many examples and practice examples at the end of each chapter.

Dr. David Alan Black's Greek primer is a special and usable introduction to the Koine Greek language. The third edition is the latest and probably the best distillation of Dr. Black's paidiagogical method with brief but adequately treatment of all the essentials of Greek grammar and syntax. The first two chapters carefully introduces the student to the letters and sounds of Koine Greek and the rudiments of the Greek verbal system with what the beginning student needs. Then the author proceeds with twenty-four more well-designed chapters for a total of twenty-six which covers the gamut of the language and vocabulary of the Greek New Testament. Included in this expanded third edition are nine appendices which review Greek accents, a memory song for the alphabet, a key to exercises, noun paradigms, the case-number suffixes, the person-number suffixes, a summary of prepositions, words differing in accentuation and breathing, and principal parts of selected verbs. As the Introduction states, " This book is suitable for study or review, for individual or group work, as part of a refresher course, or as a handy reference guide. In most classroom settings it can be used for a full year of study by taking up a lesson a week . . ." This design and Dr. Black's insightful illustrations make this little textbook just right for a year's course in high school or during the freshman and sophomore years at a Christian or Bible college level. This little book of less than 260 pages is probably the best introductory text written since J. Gresham Machen's New Testament Greek for Beginners.