Biblical Greek: the best beginning Greek grammar of 2020?

[@bma]

Update: Since this video went live, B&H (the publsher) and Dr. Plummer have both confirmed that there are in fact plans to put this grammar AND Going Deeper with New Testament Greek on Logos. Not sure about Accordance yet. See the comments below for Dr. Plummer's comments.

[@BiblicalStudiesandReviews]

Wow! This is a really awesome grammar.

[@bma]

I really like it too!

[@cross-examininggod482]

I recently purchased this grammar, and just finished chapter 2. I like it so far and it has great resources online to supplement the book!

[@stevehobby3854]

Dr Rob Plummer and MNTG seems like a winning combination! I really enjoy Daily Dose of Greek and I really enjoy all the materials and videos of MNTG so if you are working together that is great. I also like the fact that Dr. Plummer has done a Spanish language Daily Dose of Greek as more resources are greatly needed for the Latin American church. Muchas Gracias Darryl :-)

[@bma]

Thanks for watching and supporting our work!

[@davidchilds9590]

I hope you were aiming this review at Greek teachers - as a potential user, the jargon went right over my head.

[@bma]

As a potential user, I think the key takeaway is that this is a great grammar that is not overly technical. The details are aimed at those who have a little more knowledge of the language. :)

[@doughook4313]

This is really cool grammar. I ordered it February 2020. Amazon would not ship to New Zealand, but with Youshop , not a problem, it just arrived yesterday in Portland Oregon, now paid the air freight and tax to Auckland. May see it in 10 to 20 days, as shortage of aircraft coming to NZ. I confess, I bought the ebooks kindle version as well. I started learning NT greek in 1970, and still learning it.

[@bma]

Good on you! It is hard to get good shipping to New Zealand!

[@davidclavey]

So I took your advice in another KZbin and bought a second hand "Basics of Biblical Greek 4" (BBG), but while I was waiting for it to arrive I looked at this Grammar "Beginning with New Testament Greek" (BNTG), as you can read the first 5 chapters for free on Amazon "look inside". So I read all the introduction and began to do Chapter 1, what was very good was all the supporting video's and material on the Web. I am tempted to buy a BNTG as well if I get stuck on BBG. From what I have read and watched the BNTG looks like it will be better for me, self taught, because of all the extra's included.

[@bma]

If I could advise you on one or the other, I think BWNTG will be better, but having Mounce as a second grammar will be very helpful!

[@davidclavey]

@@bma Thanks, as ever, great advice.

[@bma]

Anytime!

[@jasoncampbell1723]

This may already be in the comments but the structure with the Grammar (Nom Gen Dat Acc with First then second Dec) is how Machen set up his grammar. I first learned Greek from Machen’s book and if I remember correctly he starts with the second declension and then the first and later the third. Interesting! Thanks for the vid!

[@bma]

Machen may well have popularized the Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc ordering. Thanks for your comment!

[@luker290]

I have really enjoyed using this grammar since it came out in August!

[@bma]

Great to hear Luke! So have I!

[@storyofscripture]

Just bought it!

[@bma]

Great choice!

[@vincetarver8742]

Thanks Darryl. I just purchased the kindle version.

[@bma]

Thank you for watching!

[@davidrogers8516]

Thank You for this video! I recently converted my primary grammar I have been using to this one. One of many reasons because of the massive additional resources he has on his website. One additional resource I would like to see is an Anki vocabulary package with for the Greek audio for all the chapters and exercises.

[@bma]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!

[@neilellson]

I like that you are clearly very independent with your review. Despite being sponsored by Logos and having done several interviews with Dr Plummer you still point out that Logos is not selling it and that although there are many great improvements over other grammars, there are still areas where you feel it falls short. This gives me confidence in your reviews. I haven’t read through much yet but will be pleased by the take on verbal aspect. So far I preferred Mounce’s explanation of stems of nouns ending in ο, α, η, or a consonant to determine declension and to simplify case endings. Plummer and Merkle’s approach of learning endings consisting of the noun stem vowel and true ending combined seems counter intuitive and requires the learning of three forms for the first declension: those ending in α, η, and where α does not follow ρ, ι, or ε such as δοξα. As you say there are strengths in the morphological approach and the linguistic approach. This grammar may bridge the gap better but I think we will still unfortunately get our feet wet at some point, to extend the metaphor. I suppose it is a tough call as to what to teach in first year and what to teach in second to avoid overload. Personally I think the biggest hurdle for new students is the amount of word form changes that have to be learned and the easier this can be made the better. On the other hand correct and up to date information on verbal aspect and middle voice needs to be mentioned early, but perhaps leave the deeper implications for translation for the second year.

[@bma]

Thanks Neil! I work hard to be fair about my reviews, so I appreciate your feedback. There really is no perfect grammar as a grammar is dependent on both the teacher's teaching style and background and on the student. So any review is an approximation in many ways. Thanks for your other feedback - it is really helpful!

[@ryanmcgrath7978]

Hi Bro. Thanks for the video reviews. I am currently teaching myself Greek by using different grammars. I am probably breaking all the rules on how to learn Greek, but believe it or not, this is really working for me. Somehow, reading from different styles of teachers helps the information to stick. Currently I am using: Mounce - Beginning Greek. Summers - essentials to greek Machen - NT Greek for Beginners (free pdf) W E Vine - NT Greek Grammar (dated 19:30). I am interested in your thoughts on David Alan Black's grammar. Have you reviewed this before?

[@bma]

Thanks for your question! I have Black's grammar on my list to review, so look for it later this year. Using more than one beginning Greek is often helpful for many people. The choices you have are all in the same stream in many ways. You might benefit from adding Decker rather than Machen or Summers.

[@ryanmcgrath7978]

@@bma Thanks for the reply. I would love to get the Decker Greek, but unfortunately it is on the expensive side here in Australia. Around $75. The Machen, Vine and the Summers Greek grammars were all free or given to me. The mounce one cost a bit of money, but I also got the dvds, memory cards, and workbook with that, so that was worth it. The Alan Black one is a bit cheaper and I have heard very good reviews on it. Perhaps I should think about saving up more and buying the decker one. Thanks for you advice! P. S, my aim is to read Greek NT.

[@tycNvk]

Thank you for all your uploads. They are all very insightful. In this video you divided the grammars into those with pedagogical approach and those which are linguistically driven. Could you rank the grammars in each of these categories please? Or do you have videos on that already? :)

[@bma]

Certainly... I'm hoping to do a roundup of all the grammars I've reviewed at the end of the year, so I'll include this in that video.

[@grahambennett6715]

Thanks. I have it on pre-order from Amazon UK but they don't start shipping till Friday. Sadly the Parse Greek app you recommend still has not been fixed to run on Android 10 and both my Android devices have updated to 10 so I can't use it any more.

[@bma]

Thanks Graham. I believe it is only a few weeks away, but I can’t be sure.

[@Aaron_Wells]

This is an excellent grammar in most respects. A few comments so far. It's treatment of 3rd declension nouns is too brief in my view. Schwandt and Mounce both do a more thorough treatment. Like most grammars, it waits till the very end to deal with athematic verbs, which I never understood given the large number of occurrences these verbs have in the New Testament. Given that just about every New Testament grammar falls short in this respect, I cannot really fault the authors too heavily. Finally, it is just my preference that the vocabulary load would be a bit more for first-year, although I understand why the authors have restricted vocabulary to the most high frequency words in general. I personally would opt for between 450 and 600 words for the first year. On the other hand, this book is so creatively designed, and it's so exciting and inspirational to read through,, that I would definitely teach with it alongside some kind of supplementary material for a first-year student. The treatment of participles is top-notch, along with the treatment of the perfect. Treatment of verbs in general is superior to most other grammars. I also really appreciate that the exercises are not over glossed like they are in Mounce. I could never teach out of Mounce because of the two paths he forges, leaving his exercises way ahead of the level that the student is at in the early stages of the text. This new grammar has excellent exercises directly from scripture that are level-appropriate, along with some useful morphology exercises. However, I would really want more grammar and syntax exercises. For example, the first aorist lesson has 10 parsings prior to the translation exercises. I think students learn sometimes even better when they have to reduplilcate these forms, although not in excess. I would be interested in how many students come out of this grammar feeling prepared for Plummer's intermediate text.

[@bma]

Thanks Aaron! Great observations! I think the parsing could simply be replaced with ParseGreek or Paradigms Master Pro our Trainer, so these don’t worry me too much - and for what its worth, Mounce only has 10 parsing exercises per chapter too. Others just skip this entirely. I agree that I’d add some more exercises though. Thank you for your comments! I really appreciate them!

[@dennis.j5002]

In John chapter 3 verse 3, why is the word "ἄνωθεν" translated to "again", when the actual words meaning is "from above"? I have found this definition "from above" of the word "ἄνωθεν" in several lexicons.

[@bma]

A lot of the reason for this gloss has to do with John 3:16 where it is translated "again." Your observations are spot on - this is a preposition and literally means above. There is a perfectly good word for again, πάλιν which could be used, but wasn't. Thanks for the great question!

[@CDUTT360]

Hey, would you prefer this one over Reading Koine Greek? Iv'e gone through Duff's Elements of NT Greek, and looking for a second beginner Greek. Thanks.

[@bma]

This is good to pair with Decker. This is simpler, but Decker is more technical. Having these two types of grammars together can be really helpful.

[@GordonA-Jr]

Darryl I’d love to go thru this with you as I already have it and it would be fun to do a trial run. Since I’m already a member do you still want me to sign up on the waitlist?

[@bma]

No - mastery members get all the options available. ;)

[@GordonA-Jr]

Master New Testament Greek Count Me In!!!

[@yesseniaberroeta5787]

Hello Brother Ramey, I have a syntactic question regarding Romans 12:17. What is the syntactic function of κακον and κακού. That confuses me a little. It looks like the accusative is Direct object, but what about the other. Could you advise me, please?

[@bma]

I’m not sure if Ramey will answer this, but hopefully I can. The accusative is the object of the participle, and the genitive is the object of the preposition. The preposition has the idea of substitution (hence “instead of”) and takes its object in the accusative case.

[@yesseniaberroeta5787]

Master New Testament Greek Thank you 🙏 so much. It was so helpful

[@bma]

Anytime!

[@yesseniaberroeta5787]

Master New Testament Greek Hello Again, in John 15:2-4 the prepositional phrase after remain/abide “εν είμι.” What is its function Regime complement or Locative Circumstantial? That is tricky to me! Sorry

[@bma]

You mean ἐν ἐμοὶ? It carries a locative/spatial idea, but clearly remaining "in Him" cannot be a physical thing, so this is generally referred to as a dative of sphere. To understand what this means is a question of interpretation and theology rather than grammar. I hope that helps!

[@SteveM0732]

I wasn't able to commit to your most recent class launch in time so I've just started working through the Mounce book on my own and having the workbook solutions available is critical for checking my work and understanding. I don't see anything like that for this text. Am I just overlooking it? Either way, I might give your trial run of this text a go if things aren't too crazy with the kids back "in school".

[@bma]

Thanks Steve! I’d love to help you if I can. There is an answer key in the back of this grammar to help check your work.

[@bobcarden]

Excellent overview. Here's a question: I am about finished going through Mounce's beginning grammar (chapter 31). As a next step I could choose to go through Decker's or Plummer's first year grammar, since as you point our, they approach things somewhat differently. Or I could move directly to an intermediate grammar. I am planning on doing MNTG for the intermediate, but I want to be properly prepared. As a heads up, I am 66 and about to retire from active ministry. Any thoughts?

[@bma]

Great question. If you're finishing beginning Greek, I recommend you move on to start reading. I have a reading Greek course starting in the Mastery Membership in November if you're interested. It is designed to continue on directly from beginning Greek. mntg.me/waitlist

[@freshbreadloaves]

Hi what's your opinion on David Black's learning NT greek and his intermediate grammar?

[@bma]

I have Dr. Black's grammar on my list for early in the new year. I think it is a little dated now (published in 2009), though many have found it helpful, I suspect there are now better alternatives.

[@adamyork2333]

As a follow-up to my previous comment, could this be Logosoff saying, "No, we don't want any more Greek grammars?"

[@bma]

Good questions. It is a publishers decision where they will publish. I am not aware of any reason not to publish this on other platforms except for a scarcity mindset that might suggest that doing so will reduce profitability in some way.

[@adamyork2333]

Is there a reason why this is not being released on Logos? Some kind of publishing disagreement or something? I agree, this is most unfortunate.

[@robplummer6820]

(one of the authors here). I expect the book to be on Logos soon, but I'm not sure when. This is a change in policy for the publisher, which previously did all their own digital publishing. So, it's coming!

[@adamyork2333]

@@robplummer6820 Thank you very much for the clarification! Your book will be a blessing to have in many formats and, for me, especially Logos.

[@bma]

Awesome! Thank you for sharing this update!

[@tiosurcgib]

Oh dear! As an intro for newcomers this is double Dutch. Seems insensitive to how to pitch your teaching to learners ("morphology ", "augment ", "aspect"?) Sorry this is disappointing.