Greek Studies Bundle, S (6 vols.)

J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan’s lexicon was among the first to interact with the thousands of Greek papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions discovered in Egypt during the mid- to late-19th century. These papyrus scraps and potsherds, which date from between the 3rd century B.C. and 8th century A.D., are the written record of everyday life in that time. They are the business contracts, personal emails, office-wide memos, and legal documents of the day. Using this lexicon will help you see how ordinary people would have understood the words and expressions of the New Testament authors.

Moulton & Milligan used the papyri and other artifacts to show that New Testament Greek was not a special dialect (“Hebraic Greek”) but was rather the common or Koine Greek of the people who lived during this time. In fact, Moulton was an admirer of Adolf Deissmann, one of the first scholars to use the papyri in making a case for Koine Greek.

In writing the lexicon, Moulton and Milligan included numerous examples pulled from the papyri and ostraca that show how ordinary people used Greek in ordinary contexts—examples that will help you understand the New Testament as its first readers understood it. The authors quote heavily from the papyri and provide commentary on how those quotations inform our understanding of the language. Some quotations from the Greek papyri are translated, others are not.

If you use BDAG, you have seen the abbreviation “M-M” at the end of many entries. This note, which appears some 4,700 times in BDAG, indicates that Moulton and Milligan’s lexicon also has an entry for that word. With an electronic edition of Moulton and Milligan, it is easy to continue your research into a given word by moving straight from BDAG to M-M.

Learn to Read New Testament Greek is a user-friendly introduction to the Greek New Testament which offers insight into the language and thought of the New Testament writers. In this volume, David Alan Black provides tools and exercises for bringing readers to the experience of reading from the Greek New Testament after just seventeen lessons.

The goal of Learn to Read New Testament Greek is two-fold: to give students an insight into the language and thought of New Testament writers, and to prepare them to read and understand the original Greek text of the New Testament. Whether you are trying to write a solid expository sermon, prepare an accurate Sunday School lesson, or translate the New Testament, Learn to Read New Testament Greek is an essential guide.

The principles and methods used in Learn to Read New Testament Greek will enable rapid progress in Greek study. New information is introduced in small, manageable units, and points of grammar are fully explained and illustrated. After seventeen lessons you will begin reading selected passages from the Greek New Testament, and by the end of the course you will be able to read the entire New Testament with minimal reference to a lexicon. You will also acquire an understanding of the structure of the Greek language, an ability to use commentaries and other works based on the Greek text, and a growing capacity to plumb the depths of God’s revelation for yourself.

Paleography is the dating and study of ancient writings and inscription. Textual criticism is the study of manuscripts to determine the trustworthiness of the text with respect to establishing authenticity. Philip Comfort combines these two fields in an excellent introduction, giving readers a window into the transmission of the Bible in the earliest centuries of the church. In Encountering the Manuscripts Comfort explores scribal participation in the production of the earliest New Testament writings, gives an annotated list of all significant Greek manuscripts and early versions, assigns dates for the earliest manuscripts, presents the history of textual variation in the early centuries of the church, details various methods of recovering the original wording of the Greek New Testament, and provides concrete examples for the practice of textual criticism.

Intermediate New Testament Greek is an excellent resource for the second-year Greek student, and for the minister wanting to use Greek more effectively in his teaching.

Beyond merely presenting New Testament Greek grammar, the author focuses on helping students learn to use their knowledge of Greek in the exegesis of the New Testament. Moving past the surface structure of the language, Dr. Young introduces students to a number of modern linguistic models. These include a modified transformational grammar, propositional analysis, genre criticism, semantic structural analysis, pragmatics (what the speaker meant by the words), speech act theory, and discourse analysis.

Young presents a broader picture of communication that examines both the language of the Greek New Testament and how its meaning is influenced by its literary and situational context. Avoiding the risk in interpreting isolated sentences, this book helps teach the student to see how the context of a sentence determines its meaning, and then links the meaning of a text to the intent of the author. This aids the student to connect the author’s intent to the authorr’s purpose, which is to communicate certain ideas to his audience in a specific situation.

Most chapters end with exercises the student will find helpful. The Appendix offers a summary of the semantic relations presented in the text. A bibliography, a scripture index and subject index completes the resource.

Based on the research for his larger reference work, Grammar of New Testament Greek, Moulton’s introductory grammar has been used by thousands of first year students since its publication. Unlike the vast majority of introductory texts available, Moulton’s grammar brings a linguist’s perspective to the introductory study of Greek. In a number of areas, his discussion is superior to that of modern introductions. For example, Moulton recognizes that the middle voice continues to be a viable grammatical category during the New Testament period and is more caution on the question of deponency than most modern grammars. These features and more make this introductory grammar an important and helpful volume for studying New Testament Greek.

Easley’s inspiration for this book comes in a recommendation written several centuries ago from Martin Luther who said, “Languages are the sheath which hides the Sword of the Spirit…so although the faith of the gospel may be proclaimed by a preacher without the knowledge of the languages, the preaching will be feeble and ineffective. But where the languages are studied, the proclamation will be fresh and powerful, the Scriptures will be searched, and a faith will be constantly rediscovered through ever new words and deeds.” User-Friendly Greek is designed to help students and ministers bridge the gap between learning New Testament Greek and applying that knowledge as they study, preach, and teach from the New Testament. It is a practical resource, filled with useful summary tables and charts, and a great complement to the Greek Testament.

For more than 50 years Summers’ book has been a classic textbook and essential tool for students of New Testament Greek. Thomas Sawyer has updated this time-honored classic to make it even more effective for today’s students. The book’s major features are: a step-by-step approach to guide students through the learning process; clear explanations of the Greek language and how it works; extensive appendices with paradigms, indexes, and verb list; high-frequency Greek vocabulary, presenting every word used 50 times or more in the New Testament; numerous examples from the Greek New Testament to illustrate grammatical points; translation exercises which use nearly 300 New Testament verses; and an expanded, easy-to-read verb chart. Essentials of New Testament Greek, Revised is an exceptional textbook for college and seminary students, an effective resource for ministers, and an efficient guide for self-study.

Hellenika is a textbook to be used in teaching the Greek of the New Testament. Its focus is the grammar of Koine Greek, the “Common Greek” used at the time of the writing of the New Testament. Beginning with the Greek alphabet, Hellenika presents a series of 28 lessons covering the basics of Greek grammar. Each lesson concludes with an assignment designed to teach the rudiments of the particular lesson through translation exercises.

For anyone who wants to teach or learn Greek this is the resource for you!

Hellenika is a textbook to be used in the teaching of the Greek New Testament. Its focus is the grammar of Koine Greek, the “Common Greek” used at the time of the writing of the New Testament. The book features 28 lessons, each concluding with an assignment designed to teach the rudiments of the particular lesson through translation excercises. Hellenika can be used either by teachers who are conducting classes on Greek or by students who are interested in teaching themselves.

Several tools are used in order to help you teach or learn the Greek language:

• Easy to follow tables featuring letter-by-letter pronunciation, word formation and diacritical marks
• Assignments at the end of each lesson, which reinforce what you or your students will learn
• Appendix links that give single-click access to Verb Charts, Vocabulary Lists, and Grammar Articles

Beginner’s Grammar has served as an excellent standard for beginning students in the study of New Testament Greek. The Greek of the New Testament is the Koine of the first century A. D., and it is presented as such in this book.

This resource was designed to lay down a firm foundation for those students who will be progressing onward in their Greek studies. One of the benefits of this text is that it pays special attention to the meaning of the cases, the prepositions and the tenses, areas where most beginner Greek books have been faulty. Revised and expanded, this edition of a classic grammar includes a variety of improvements. These include additional examples, expanded paradigms and glossaries, a new section on English grammar, exercises, and a parsing guide. Dr. Shackelford has shown adroitness in combining the great work Davis has done with the most up-to-date perspective regarding the present status of Greek study. The text ends with a large list of Greek verbs, an English index, a Greek-English Vocabulary and an extensive bibliography.

Believing that a fresh study of synonyms is long overdue, Dr. Custer has utilized new sources of material in order to help pastors and students “determine the limits within which certain synonyms are equivalent and outside of which they are not.” Each word starts with its lexical definition as found in Arndt and Gingrich and amplified when necessary by distinctions given in Liddell, Scott and Thayer. The words are then traced through classical Greek, the papyri, the Septuagint, the New Testament, and occasionally through the writings of the apostolic fathers. A brief summary is given at the end of each chapter and an index of Greek words appears at the back of the book. Custer places the Greek words in two categories: Substantives and Verbs. Under the former is a list of words such as Burden, Good, Remembrance, Soul, Trickery, and Word. Under the latter are phrases like I Anoint, I Complete, I Send, and I Watch.

This edition is based on the widely known Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament of Bruce M. Metzger. It was especially designed for translators who have not received formal training in textual criticism. It enables them—and other people interested in the initial text of the Greek New Testament—to discover more easily the reasons that certain variant readings in the New Testament are more likely to be original than others. Therefore the notes of Metzger have been simplified and expanded. Included are discussions of significant differences in divisions and punctuation where those involve differences in meaning. Technical matters are explained in non-technical language. An easy-to-read introduction provides a brief overview of textual criticism, including explanations of key terms, a history of the text, and methods that are used by scholars to arrive at their conclusions.

Textual criticism has been a trusted method in studying the Scripture for decades, providing invaluable context and a sense of continuity. A landmark work on textual criticism since its publication in the early twentieth-century, Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament is essential for students of the New Testament. Eberhard Nestle, a premier German philologist and Biblical scholar, brings his considerable knowledge to bear on this method of study and its illumination of Scripture. In this study, Nestle outlines the history of the printed text, the materials used, and a summary of the technique and application of textual criticism. He includes study helps such as notes, appendixes, and indexes.

Though genetically related, Grammar of New Testament Greek is a distinct work from the later incarnation of A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Recognizing that the Hellenistic Greek in the New Testament has its own system of regular grammatical laws which needed description independent of Classical Greek, Blass determined to present the structure of New Testament Greek on its own terms rather than on the expectations of Attic Greek. The result is a New Testament grammar that both takes into account the development of the Greek language from the Classical period into the Koine, but also respects the Greek of the New Testament for its own genius and regular structure.

Beyond the pure grammatical strengths, Blass’ work as a textual critic add an additional strength to this volume. Grammarians preceding or contemporary to Blass merely used the critical editions of the New Testament available to them: Tischendorf, Tregelles, or Westcott & Hort. Blass broke this trend by going back to the manuscripts, allowing his readers to draw their own conclusions about the true text of a given passage themselves. Thus, Blass’ grammar not only provides students and scholars a description of New Testament Greek, but also provides a sort of text critical commentary on passages cited in light of the grammatical issues involved. For this reason, this volume is extremely valuable not only for grasping the grammar of New Testament Greek, but also for determining and understanding the text of the New Testament as well.

Georg Benedikt Winer’s A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek transformed the study of New Testament Greek in his lifetime and was the standard grammar from the first edition published in 1822 through the sixth edition, translated into English by W. F. Moulton in 1870. This third revised edition of Moulton’s translation was the precursor to Moulton, Howard and Turner’s four volume Grammar of New Testament Greek. At 880 pages, Winer and Moulton’s grammar has maintain an important place in the study of New Testament Greek for over a century and continues to be referred to by scholars today in commentaries series such as the New International Greek Testament Commentary, Word Biblical Commentary, and Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament.

Detailed and readable, this volume holds a deserved position beside the other great New Testament Greek reference grammars of the past two centuries, such as Blass-Debrunner-Funk, Robertson, and Moulton-Howard-Turner.

Georg Benedik Winer’s grammar went through seven German editions between 1822 and 1867, growing from fewer than 200 pages to well over 700. The importance of his work was so clear that it was translated in to English four times, the first in 1825, a mere three years after its initial German release. But it was the translation by W. F. Moulton that was the most important, culminating in the third edition of 1882. Moulton’s translation significantly expanded on Winer’s work, adding valuable notes and comments of his own based on the best scholarship of his day.

In the decades that followed the publication of the Winer-Moulton edition, the papyri revolution, led by Adolf Deissmann, changed the face of Greek grammatical study, but Winer’s grammar, especially as translated and expanded by Moulton, was one of the few to maintain its value. This can be attributed not only to the keen knowledge of Winer, but also to the brilliance of W. F. Moulton, whose expansions and annotations have provided significant lasting value to an already excellent work.

The second half of the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth century was one of the most fertile periods for the study of New Testament Greek. Georg Benedik Winer’s A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek set standard reference grammar for the day, but there was a distinct lacuna between introductory texts and the advanced reference work of Winer. Alexander Buttmann, the son of an accomplished classical grammarian, helped fill the need with his A Grammar of the New Testament Greek. As in intermediate grammar, Buttmann’s work can be seen as paralleling the contemporary efforts of scholars such as Richard A. Young, Daniel B. Wallace, and Stanley E. Porter.

The translation of Buttmann’s grammar by Joseph Thayer is the authorized English edition of Buttmann’s grammar. Thayer expanded several sections in the English edition in order to provide additional clarity for English students who would not have access to the German-only resources referred to in the original German edition. He also rigorously checked the indexes and references for accuracy, added a comprehensive index to the Septuagint and numerous notes to the grammatical discussions of other grammars for quick reference.

Alternately titled The Influence of the Septuagint on the Vocabulary of the New Testament, Kennedy’s fascinating book explores the influence of language from the Old Testament to the New. Burrowing into the Hebrew and Greek translations, Kennedy demonstrates the connection between the earliest Christian writers, dependant on the Septuagint for a linguistic framework, and the language used to explain the new faith and complicated theological ideas unheard of at that time.

The scholarly work of Blass can be characterized by precision, rigorous analysis, and an incredible knowledge of both primary and secondary sources. When many grammarians were merely working from critical texts, Blass determined to go back to the manuscripts themselves. In this way, he is not only able to refer to New Testament texts for evidence for grammatical phenomena, but also the differences in the manuscript tradition. This painstaking focus on the smallest details has given Blass’ grammatical, philological, and textual efforts an enduring quality that has lasted to this day and set him apart from the other grammarians of his day.

With the publication of Pronunciation of Ancient Greek, Blass entered into a debate that continues to this day: what is the correct historical pronunciation of Ancient Greek. Here Blass presents what he terms the true “Erasmian” pronunciation, not referring to the traditional pronunciation in universities and seminaries, used merely for convenience and practicality, but instead, his proposed historical reconstructed pronunciation based on cross-linguistic and historical evidence culled from transliteration of Greek into other languages such as Latin and the spelling errors of the transcriptions and papyri.

While the practice of the traditional pronunciation based on the language of the learners continues to be maintained in the classroom, gaining a grasp of how the pronunciation of Greek developed from the classical period through the time of the New Testament all the way through Modern Greek is crucial for understanding grammatical developments of the language and also textual criticism. Many of the changes in pronunciation directly influenced changes in grammar such as the loss of the optative mood. Moreover, the development of Greek pronunciation is of critical importance to textual criticism. In many cases, knowledge of pronunciation is a sort of prerequisite for understanding how various textual variants developed in New Testament manuscripts. In sum, for both grammar and textual criticism, Blass’ Pronunciation is an essential volume for the student of the New Testament.

Henry Barclay Swete’s Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint is an authoritative edition of the Greek text of the Old Testament. Work first began in 1875 at the initiative of F. H. A. Scrivener, and continued under the editorship and direction of Swete. The first volume appeared in print in 1887, and subsequent volumes were published during the following two decades. Swete’s Septuagint uses the Codex Vaticanus as its base texts, and also uses other important manuscripts, including the Alexandrine MS, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Cottonianus, Codex Ambrosianus, and other texts. For years after its initial publication, Swete’s Septuagint remained the standard edition in print, and has been widely used by students and scholars of the Septuagint.

This translation of the second—revised and expanded—Spanish edition of The Septuagint in Context deals fully with the origins of the Septuagint. The book discusses its linguistic and cultural frame, its relation to the Hebrew text and to the Qumran documents, the transmission of the Septuagint, and its reception by Jews and Christians. Included are discussions of early revisions by Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, the Christian recensions and particularly Origen's Hexapla, biblical commentaries and catenae, as well as other issues such as the relation of the Septuagint to Hellenism, to the New Testament and to Early Christian Literature.

While there was a time not too long ago when introductory texts on the Septuagint were few and far between, the past decade has seen a blossoming in the study of the LXX and several scholars have filled what was formerly a large gap in introductory texts for nearly a century. In 2000, Natalio Fernández Marcos led the way in the revitalization of Septuagint studies with his The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible.

The Septuagint in Context will prove particularly useful to biblical scholars and students of theology, ancient history and philology, and also to those interested in the history of Judaism and the origins of Christianity.

The approach to morphological analysis taken in this project is largely formal and traditional, but influenced and modified by a functional perspective. In some cases, therefore, the grammatical parsing may correspond to what the form is “being used as,” rather than what the form “looks like” according to traditional paradigms. For example, some forms traditionally classed as passive or middle are categorized as “deponent,” if they are serving as active or stative and not passive or middle. Also, lemmas that are often parsed as “adjectives” (but are really nouns) have been further refined in the parsing as nouns or “substantivals.”

Generally, Swanson’s compares the standard lexicography of BDAG with semantically based innovations of Louw and Nida, with a view to make a refinement of New Testament forms. While seeking to be positively innovative, it nevertheless regards the traditional parsing models as profitable.

The Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament contains an alphabetical arrangement of every Greek form found in the major printed editions of the Greek New Testament: UBS, Nestle-Aland, and the Majority Text. Consequently, ANLEX is not a lexicon of a single edition of the New Testament; rather, it is a lexicon of the New Testament’s language in all its manuscript forms.

Both beginning and advanced students of Greek will find this an invaluble tool. It enables one to read the text more quickly, seeing at a glance the grammatical relationships between words. It serves admirably as a reference tool, allowing one to check in a moment the accuracy of his own analysis of a word. And it proves most helpful to those looking for creative ways to review and improve their knowledge of Greek.

The analysis is, write the editors in a lengthy, explanatory appendix that should be of interest to all scholars and serious students of Greek, “both traditional and innovative, both transparent and opaque.” It takes into account more than morphological considerations, considering sentence-level and discourse-level information as well. “This volume reflects discourse principles,” write the editors, “especially in its analysis of conjunctions and particles.”

For almost a century, Burton’s work in New Testament studies, Greek linguistics, Christian history, and source criticism has been lauded for its authority and influence. Head of New Testament Literature and Interpretation at the University of Chicago, Burton’s substantial contribution to Christian thought and biblical exegesis has been astounding.

With the purpose of laying the lexicographical foundation for the interpretation of the words “spirit,” “soul,” and “flesh” in the New Testament, Ernest DeWitt Burton explores the ancient Greek and Hebrew writer’s use of these words in the Old Testament and in Greek literature from the earliest period to 180 A.D. An extensive and methodical study, Burton’s important work is also practical: Greek, Hebrew, and Latin passages are given in the original and in translation.

While not a complete grammar, The Language of the New Testament has much to commend to it. Simcox’s goal in this volume was to examine where the Greek of the New Testament falls in its relationship to both classical and post-classical Greek usage and then also to classify those differences based on their origin, whether it be the common Greek of the masses, the result of linguistic interference with Hebrew and Aramaic, or even a result of the influence of the Septuagint. The book is laid out with a brief introduction to the Greek people and their language following Alexander the Great and then proceeds to survey the inflection of various parts-of-speech, discussions of syntactic and semantic issues, and concluding with a look at conjunctions, particles and other miscellaneous features of New Testament Greek.

Overall, the book is incredibly helpful, not only for interpreting the New Testament text, but also for gaining a grasp of how the Greek of the New Testament compares with that which preceded and followed it. The ability to put into historical context the state of the Greek language in the first century cannot be undervalued. And for that reason, The Language of the New Testament has retained its importance even to this day.

This volume was originally intended to be published together with The Language of the New Testament all in a single volume, but both books together grew beyond the limits of the Theological Educator series of which they were a part. The Writers of the New Testament picks up where the previous book left off. The Language of the New Testament examined the Greek of the New Testament in an attempt to describe what the various writers had in common over and against other Greek writers such as the classical authors or Philo and Josephus. The goal of this companion volume attempts to do the same for the individual authors themselves. What makes Paul’s writing different from that of Luke, Matthew, or Peter? The Writers of the New Testament seeks to study the idiolects of the individual authors: their choices of idioms, grammar, and vocabulary. The central focus is how Greek language is used by Jewish authors, with what Simcox terms “Hebraic modes of thought.” Whether this terminology should be preferable is debatable. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that the New Testament authors were primarily bilingual authors, whose first language and culture was not Greek. And read in light of that fact, this volume provides an extremely helpful analysis of New Testament authors and their style of writing.

The book concludes with two appendices. The first compares the vocabulary differences and similarities across authors and the second presents representative examples of non-Biblical Hellenic and Hellenistic Greek text of a variety of genres: Old Testament paraphrase, original narratives, and theological and philosophical exposition. These are followed by a mini-commentary of grammatical and lexicon notes on various words and phrases with reference to the historical development of the Greek language and parallels in the New Testament. For example, Simcox compares Epictetus to Paul, Luke to Polybius, and so forth. These comparisons provide the student and scholar both with helpful examples of differences between Biblical authors and their contemporaries, and also with detailed notes on specific passages of scripture.

It has often been a challenge when Bible readers are enjoying reading one of the Gospels or Paul’s letters and come across difficult names of people and places, such as Cenchrea, Epenetus, Stachys, or Tryphosa. John Walker’s work on the pronunciation of Greek, Latin, and Scripture proper names provides an excellent solution. By first working through the pronunciation of Greek and Latin names before moving on to the proper names of Scripture, Walker forms a sure foundation for guiding the reader through difficult spellings or unusual clusters of consonants and vowels.

John Walker’s A Key to the Pronunciation of the Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names stands as an important contribution to 19th century scholarship. Walker’s work is part of an ongoing debate about the pronunciation of Greek and Latin that continues to this day, while also providing a system for pronouncing difficult Scriptural names and places, which gives this volume enduring value as a guide for pronouncing names and places in the Bible.

The Philology of the Greek Bible demonstrates Deissmann’s keen Biblical scholarship and knowledge of the Greek language as he examines the New Testament from a critical and linguistic standpoint. He considers the significance of the Septuagint writings on the entirety of the New Testament, as well as the impact of Greek and Hebrew culture, linguistics, and traditions on the writing of the New Testament. Holding that the texts must be read from a critical and contextual viewpoint, Deissmann shows great insight and acumen throughout this work, which is based on a series of four lectures delivered at Cambridge University in 1907.

Essays in Biblical Greek contains seven lengthy essays on Greek, derived from a series of lectures first delivered at Oxford by Edwin Hatch. For more than a century, Hatch’s work has been an invaluable aid for Greek scholarship, textual criticism, Septuagint scholarship, and anyone interested in linguistics and the history of biblical Greek. These essays are designed to point out the rich fields in the study of the Greek language. Hatch begins with a lengthy essay on the Septuagint, and argues for its interpretive and linguistic value. This volume also contains lengthy essays on textual criticism of the Septuagint, Origen’s revision of the Septuagint text of Job, and a lengthy essay on the Greek text of Ecclesiasticus.

The scholarly work of Blass can be characterized by precision, rigorous analysis, and an incredible knowledge of both primary and secondary sources. When many grammarians were merely working from critical texts, Blass determined to go back to the manuscripts themselves. In this way, he is not only able to refer to New Testament texts for evidence for grammatical phenomena, but also the differences in the manuscript tradition. This painstaking focus on the smallest details has given Blass’ grammatical, philological, and textual efforts an enduring quality that has lasted to this day and set him apart from the other grammarians of his day.

Building on his critical editions of the Gospels and Acts, Blass presents his theory of the history background and text of Luke’s two volume Gospel and Acts in Philology of the Gospels. He deals with issues of the Gospel’s literary character, the location and date of writing and the condition of its text. The variety of issues examined and the quality of the discussion caused Alfred Plummer to write, “The interesting work on the Philology of the Gospels, by F. Blass, is chiefly occupied with the Gospel of S. Luke, and should be read side by side with the sections of the Introduction to this volume which treat of the same topics” in the preface to his International Critical Commentary on Luke.