Reviewing Greek Grammars

Years ago I did a thread reviewing all of the Greek lexicons and dictionaries I had, and it was quite well received. As far as I remember, I never did one on Greek grammars, so I thought I'd start that today. Our missionary conference is over (had a leading Bible translator as the main speaker--wonderful man of God), so I have a little extra time, since another event is going on and I'm not teaching for two days. After this week, I'll contribute when I get a few minutes.

First of all, I'll consider what I think to be the classic Greek beginning grammar, New Testament Greek for Beginners, by the great Presbyterian scholar J. Gresham Machen. It was originally published in 1923 by the MacMillan Co., and for decades was the leading beginning grammar. I was taught from it in the early 1970's and still have my much-worn copy, underlined throughout and occasionally highlighted from times I consulted it in later years. It is now in the public domain, and you can get a PDF copy here: http://icotb.org/resources/GreekGrammar-Machen.pdf

I taught from it in Japan in the late 1980's, since it was virtually the only available beginning grammar in the language. How disappointed I was one year when it was out of print and I had to use a grammar hand-written by a well-meaning Japanese scholar! I still have my Japanese copy of Machen, mostly for nostalgic reasons since I'm pretty sure I'll never teach Greek in Japanese again--but you never know! What a ride that first year teaching from Machen was! I had so many grammatical terms to learn. My two years of Japanese training at the prestigious Tokyo School of the Japanese Language did not help there, since it was an immersion program and did not use linguistics much in the course.

Overall, Machen is still a good grammar, and good to have in the library, though I would not teach from it nowadays if I could help it. The introduction gives excellent background. The lesson on the alphabet is average, but there is a good chapter on accents. All in all, there are 33 chapters, making it difficult to get through in just one year (at least it was for me). Some of the chapters could have been combined. Though it was the best in its day, there have been some advances in linguistics that I'm sure Machen would include were he writing it nowadays, especially in the area of verbal aspect. He gets to the present active indicative verb in Lesson 3, but doesn't get to other verbs until Ch. 10 (except for eimi, "I am").

To show how good this grammar is, it is still in print after almost 100 years, and there are still supplemental materials being published. Machen made up his own translation exercises, so the wise instructor will buy David L. Thompson's Study Guide for J. Gresham Machen's New Testament Greek for Beginners. This volume, published in 1980, is also still in print, and I used it in Japan.

 

Well now, to my surprise I just figured out that I had done a thread on this back in 2015. So rather than continue this thread, I'll just give you the link to that one: Greek Grammars and Helps

Instead, maybe I'll start a thread on books about Bible translation.