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A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
A powerful, time-saving new study resource for readers of the Greek New Testament
Only by immersing oneself consistently in the Greek New Testament can students, pastors, and other readers gain facility with the language. This invaluable guide from Charles Lee Irons streamlines and enhances the process, allowing readers to interact with the Greek text with minimal interruption and maximum understanding. By focusing specifically on syntax, this guide takes its place among other resources as a time--saving new tool that builds on, rather than replaces, what already exists. In the author's words, it "picks up where these other tools leave off, presupposes their use, and moves on to more complex issues of syntax, translation, some textual criticism, and limited exegesis." Eminently useful, A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
Only by immersing oneself consistently in the Greek New Testament can students, pastors, and other readers gain facility with the language. This invaluable guide from Charles Lee Irons streamlines and enhances the process, allowing readers to interact with the Greek text with minimal interruption and maximum understanding. By focusing specifically on syntax, this guide takes its place among other resources as a time--saving new tool that builds on, rather than replaces, what already exists. In the author's words, it "picks up where these other tools leave off, presupposes their use, and moves on to more complex issues of syntax, translation, some textual criticism, and limited exegesis." Eminently useful, A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
608 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2016
3 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Charles Lee Irons
10 books6 followersCharles Lee Irons (PhD in New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary) began his studies of classical and koine Greek as an undergraduate at UCLA and has studied the Greek New Testament for twenty-six years. An ordained Presbyterian pastor, he currently serves as the director for the Office of Research Administration at Charles Drew University.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 24, 2016
I thoroughly enjoy resources that enable me to dig deeper into Scripture. Of particular note is the ability to explore and understand the biblical languages. While there is certainly nothing wrong with simply reading Scripture via the numerous quality translations available to us today, it is vitally important in my humble opinion to grasp what the words, concepts, and ideas found in Scripture mean in their original tongue. Sometimes to be quite frank, the English translations just do not cut it.
A helpful tool for engaging the original languages, specifically Greek is Charles Irons’ A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament published by Kregel Academic.
While I have a passion for digging into the biblical languages, by no means can I consider myself a reader of the Greek New Testament in the manner of reading straight through in the Greek. I am more of a look at the meaning of a word and how is used in similar or different manners in other contexts type student. With that said, I do have a desire to learn how to read both Hebrew and Greek or at least to begin to develop the ability to recognize words in the original language.
As Irons notes in the introduction to this book, “This Syntax Guide is intended to assist readers of the Greek New Testament by providing brief explanations of intermediate and advanced syntactical features of the Greek text. It also provides suggested translations to help the reader make sense of unusual phrases and difficult sentences.” The format of the book is such that Irons walks the reader through the New Testament, focusing on terms and phrases in each book that fall under the aforementioned umbrella of intermediate and advanced syntactical features of note.
One might wonder, especially the more novice reader of Greek (such as myself) or the non-reader of Greek what use such a book might be for them. How would this help me in my study of Scripture? While this book is certainly focused on those with a more developed understanding of Greek, I submit it is also worthwhile to the novice and laymen reader of Greek as well. If one uses this as a reference tool, by sheer repetition they will begin to notice patterns of language if nothing else. Furthermore, they will also take note of parts of speech that greatly impact successful exegesis of the text.
This is a tool I highly recommend for both the experienced reader of Greek and the laymen. While both ends of that spectrum will use a book such as this in different ways, in the end, it is a helpful means to dig into the pages of Scripture, a task given to all believers. A resource that is impactful for understanding what the original languages have to reveal to the reader is a resource I am all for using. Irons’ A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament is such a resource for those willing to do the work it takes to use it properly and to take the time we all should take when it comes to studying Scripture.
I received this book for free from Kregel Academic and the opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
A helpful tool for engaging the original languages, specifically Greek is Charles Irons’ A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament published by Kregel Academic.
While I have a passion for digging into the biblical languages, by no means can I consider myself a reader of the Greek New Testament in the manner of reading straight through in the Greek. I am more of a look at the meaning of a word and how is used in similar or different manners in other contexts type student. With that said, I do have a desire to learn how to read both Hebrew and Greek or at least to begin to develop the ability to recognize words in the original language.
As Irons notes in the introduction to this book, “This Syntax Guide is intended to assist readers of the Greek New Testament by providing brief explanations of intermediate and advanced syntactical features of the Greek text. It also provides suggested translations to help the reader make sense of unusual phrases and difficult sentences.” The format of the book is such that Irons walks the reader through the New Testament, focusing on terms and phrases in each book that fall under the aforementioned umbrella of intermediate and advanced syntactical features of note.
One might wonder, especially the more novice reader of Greek (such as myself) or the non-reader of Greek what use such a book might be for them. How would this help me in my study of Scripture? While this book is certainly focused on those with a more developed understanding of Greek, I submit it is also worthwhile to the novice and laymen reader of Greek as well. If one uses this as a reference tool, by sheer repetition they will begin to notice patterns of language if nothing else. Furthermore, they will also take note of parts of speech that greatly impact successful exegesis of the text.
This is a tool I highly recommend for both the experienced reader of Greek and the laymen. While both ends of that spectrum will use a book such as this in different ways, in the end, it is a helpful means to dig into the pages of Scripture, a task given to all believers. A resource that is impactful for understanding what the original languages have to reveal to the reader is a resource I am all for using. Irons’ A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament is such a resource for those willing to do the work it takes to use it properly and to take the time we all should take when it comes to studying Scripture.
I received this book for free from Kregel Academic and the opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
December 13, 2016
Most books are meant to be read. Other books, like this one, help you to read. A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament is designed to "assist readers of the Greek new Testament by providing brief explanations of advanced and intermediate syntactical features of the Greek text" (7). Charles Lee Irons, the current director of research administration at Charles Drew University and an ordained Presbyterian pastor, compiled this resource "to encourage students, pastors and others to devote themselves to reading large portions of Greek New Testament, and ideally, all of it" (8).
Picking up where parsing tools, readers editions, readers lexica, and Bible software leaves off, Irons aims to iron out difficult syntax and text critical issues. A Syntax Guide follows closely critical editions of the 27th and 28th Editions of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.
The guide is comprehensive with more than six-hundred pages of textual notes, plus indexes. Though it is not exhaustive, because Irons focuses solely on advanced issues. Some verses are skipped past without any comment and with other verses, Irons comments on a single word or phrase. Still there is enough here to give an intermediate student of Greek an at-a-glance aid to translating and understanding the passage before her. A mid level grammar (i.e. Daniel Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics), a critical apparatus and a good lexicon will unearth all the essential lexical issues with greater detail than this; however, what Irons has done is provide a quick resource for students and readers of the Greek New Testament, with references to the lexicons (most often BDAG), grammars and other resources for those who want to dig deeper.
Most importantly, this is a small book–about the same size of your Greek New Testament. You can take this and your Nestle-Aland to Starbucks and make serious headway on the text, instead of bringing a whole library of heavy text books with you. Anyone who has wrestled out a translation of Greek as sermon prep, for a paper or devotionally will benefit from this resource. I give it four stars.
Note: I received this book from Kregel Academic in exchange for my honest review.
Picking up where parsing tools, readers editions, readers lexica, and Bible software leaves off, Irons aims to iron out difficult syntax and text critical issues. A Syntax Guide follows closely critical editions of the 27th and 28th Editions of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.
The guide is comprehensive with more than six-hundred pages of textual notes, plus indexes. Though it is not exhaustive, because Irons focuses solely on advanced issues. Some verses are skipped past without any comment and with other verses, Irons comments on a single word or phrase. Still there is enough here to give an intermediate student of Greek an at-a-glance aid to translating and understanding the passage before her. A mid level grammar (i.e. Daniel Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics), a critical apparatus and a good lexicon will unearth all the essential lexical issues with greater detail than this; however, what Irons has done is provide a quick resource for students and readers of the Greek New Testament, with references to the lexicons (most often BDAG), grammars and other resources for those who want to dig deeper.
Most importantly, this is a small book–about the same size of your Greek New Testament. You can take this and your Nestle-Aland to Starbucks and make serious headway on the text, instead of bringing a whole library of heavy text books with you. Anyone who has wrestled out a translation of Greek as sermon prep, for a paper or devotionally will benefit from this resource. I give it four stars.
Note: I received this book from Kregel Academic in exchange for my honest review.
December 9, 2016
This is a great work for reference for preachers and students of the Greek New Testament. The book examines the Greek New Testament text at the level of syntactical observations and when appropriate several possible interpretations. The author Charles Lee Irons wrote this work with the intent of going beyond merely parsing Greek verbs and declining Greek nouns but at the stage of interpretation involving phrases, clauses and sentences. This work is helpful for those who want a single volume providing this kind of observation from the Greek text. Why is this important? As Irons wrote in the introduction, “Analysis of syntax often entails making judgments about the various uses of a certain grammatical form, giving rise to a particular meaning in that context” (9).
While I did mentioned in the first paragraph of this review that this would make a great reference I also found that it helpful for those who are trying to read the New Testament outside of sermon preparation (I’m writing this review with pastors in mind). The short concise nature of each entry allows readers to go back and forth to the Greek passages one is studying. It is helpful that the guide follows closely the 27th and 28th edition of Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. I plan on using it for my own morning devotional as I translate and meditate through the Greek New Testament. As I was going through this book in order to write this review I went back to passages of the Bible that I have translated before as part of my sermon preparation and was blessed by this book since there were materials that made me rethink my interpretative decisions or saw other possibilities I didn’t considered earlier. While I wished the book would have argued more for certain decision in understanding the function of certain words syntactically (for instance I wanted to see Irons talk more about the righteousness of God in Romans 1:17 which I understand he’s written scholarly works on!), there were times the book has helped answer questions I had of New Testament passages. For example a few weeks back before I got this Syntax guide I was wondering how to understand the subjunctive mood of the verb “justify” in Romans 3:4 (Usually in my own study notes I highlight in red questions that remained unanswered as something of a subject for further study). Lee Irons noted it is subjunctive as part of a οπως + αν +future verb construct to designate further consequences (Irons, A Syntax Guide For Readers of the Greek New Testament, 340). Despite my criticism that I wished at times Irons would have landed on a conclusion or have more of his argument fleshed out, nevertheless it is helpful and the brevity can be understood in light of the fact that the book was already over 600 pages!
I don’t think in any of my reviews I have ever commented on the book’s aesthetic appeal. I’m of the opinion that you should never judge a book by its cover. While I still hold that this principle is true I must say though I appreciated the physical quality of this syntax guide. It comes in a beautiful red hard cover. For those who like the way the red cover UBS Greek New Testament looks, this work looks like that. Actually at times I thought this work was my Greek New Testament! Not that appearance is everything but I think it would make a handsome addition to the reference library of any student of the Greek New Testament. I recommend this work.
NOTE: This book was provided to me free by Kregel Publications without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.
While I did mentioned in the first paragraph of this review that this would make a great reference I also found that it helpful for those who are trying to read the New Testament outside of sermon preparation (I’m writing this review with pastors in mind). The short concise nature of each entry allows readers to go back and forth to the Greek passages one is studying. It is helpful that the guide follows closely the 27th and 28th edition of Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. I plan on using it for my own morning devotional as I translate and meditate through the Greek New Testament. As I was going through this book in order to write this review I went back to passages of the Bible that I have translated before as part of my sermon preparation and was blessed by this book since there were materials that made me rethink my interpretative decisions or saw other possibilities I didn’t considered earlier. While I wished the book would have argued more for certain decision in understanding the function of certain words syntactically (for instance I wanted to see Irons talk more about the righteousness of God in Romans 1:17 which I understand he’s written scholarly works on!), there were times the book has helped answer questions I had of New Testament passages. For example a few weeks back before I got this Syntax guide I was wondering how to understand the subjunctive mood of the verb “justify” in Romans 3:4 (Usually in my own study notes I highlight in red questions that remained unanswered as something of a subject for further study). Lee Irons noted it is subjunctive as part of a οπως + αν +future verb construct to designate further consequences (Irons, A Syntax Guide For Readers of the Greek New Testament, 340). Despite my criticism that I wished at times Irons would have landed on a conclusion or have more of his argument fleshed out, nevertheless it is helpful and the brevity can be understood in light of the fact that the book was already over 600 pages!
I don’t think in any of my reviews I have ever commented on the book’s aesthetic appeal. I’m of the opinion that you should never judge a book by its cover. While I still hold that this principle is true I must say though I appreciated the physical quality of this syntax guide. It comes in a beautiful red hard cover. For those who like the way the red cover UBS Greek New Testament looks, this work looks like that. Actually at times I thought this work was my Greek New Testament! Not that appearance is everything but I think it would make a handsome addition to the reference library of any student of the Greek New Testament. I recommend this work.
NOTE: This book was provided to me free by Kregel Publications without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.
December 12, 2016
A Syntax Guide For Readers of the New Testament by Charles Lee Irons is a nice addition to one's NT Greek tools library. It is not a stand-alone tool, but meant to be used with other lexical aids. Irons notes that, "This Syntax Guide does not duplicate the help provided by such tools. Rather, it picks up where these other tools leave off" and "presupposes their use…" The introduction explains that in this guide, "select cases, glosses and parsing are not the focus". Rather, in some places it gives specific explanations of "syntactical, clause-level features".
There is a chapter for each book of the New Testament, and each book is divided into chapters and each chapter has a list of select verse references from that chapter and next to the reference there may be a section of the Greek wording of the verse and some comments . Some of the verses only have a brief suggested translation without any grammatical comments, I give an example below:
(Note: I've attempted - probably not very well - to transliterate the Greek words which are actually presented in Greek font in this book)
1 Cor. 1:22, "Epeideh kai = 'for indeed'"
And other verses are dealt with more in depth:
"4:23 [erketai hora kai nun estin = 'an hour is coming and is now here,' erketai is ingressive-futuristic present (W 537) ] kai gar = 'for indeed' ] ha patair toioutous zatei tous proskunountas auton = 'the father is seeking such people to worship him' (ESV), 'the Father wants people of this kind as his worshipers' (ZG)"
At first I was a bit disappointed that it is not more detailed, and still am. But again, as the intro explains, this guide is not meant to be a stand-alone resource, but rather used along with a parsing guide or other similar tools. Irons wants to encourage people to read the Greek NT as a whole instead of merely tiny portions of it, and created this tool with that idea in mind. In this book Irons tries to eliminate the "need to stop and look up intermediate, advanced or unusual grammatical features of the Greek text". Irons believes that a very good way to truly learn NT Greek is to familiarize oneself with the text by reading through large portions of it or preferably the whole NT.
I think that that is a good idea and it makes sense, that simply reading through the Greek New Testament will build up one's skill in a more natural way than just memorizing individual Greek words and tenses, verb forms..etc. Even having to look things up in a parsing guide and a syntax guide almost every step of the way will build one's knowledge over time.
At the end of the book is an index of subjects where you may look up many of the verses (it's not exhaustive) by their grammatical form, for instance, under "ACCUSATIVE" you may look up verses that are "adverbial accusative", or under "NOMINATIVE" you may look up verses under the section "qualitative predicate nominative". You may find the adjectival genitive section, or pluperfect periphrasitic - (I'm still only a beginner in Koine Greek so at the moment many of those terms don't make any sense yet…). There is also section in the index that lists verses that have "Septuagintisms" - which I find interesting as I have been doing some study on the Septuagint, its history and its quotation in the NT.
It is an interesting and handy work for students of Greek who wish to start building up their ability to easily read and comprehend Koine Grk.
Many thanks to the folks at Kregel Academic for sending me a free review copy of this book! (My review did not have to be favorable)
There is a chapter for each book of the New Testament, and each book is divided into chapters and each chapter has a list of select verse references from that chapter and next to the reference there may be a section of the Greek wording of the verse and some comments . Some of the verses only have a brief suggested translation without any grammatical comments, I give an example below:
(Note: I've attempted - probably not very well - to transliterate the Greek words which are actually presented in Greek font in this book)
1 Cor. 1:22, "Epeideh kai = 'for indeed'"
And other verses are dealt with more in depth:
"4:23 [erketai hora kai nun estin = 'an hour is coming and is now here,' erketai is ingressive-futuristic present (W 537) ] kai gar = 'for indeed' ] ha patair toioutous zatei tous proskunountas auton = 'the father is seeking such people to worship him' (ESV), 'the Father wants people of this kind as his worshipers' (ZG)"
At first I was a bit disappointed that it is not more detailed, and still am. But again, as the intro explains, this guide is not meant to be a stand-alone resource, but rather used along with a parsing guide or other similar tools. Irons wants to encourage people to read the Greek NT as a whole instead of merely tiny portions of it, and created this tool with that idea in mind. In this book Irons tries to eliminate the "need to stop and look up intermediate, advanced or unusual grammatical features of the Greek text". Irons believes that a very good way to truly learn NT Greek is to familiarize oneself with the text by reading through large portions of it or preferably the whole NT.
I think that that is a good idea and it makes sense, that simply reading through the Greek New Testament will build up one's skill in a more natural way than just memorizing individual Greek words and tenses, verb forms..etc. Even having to look things up in a parsing guide and a syntax guide almost every step of the way will build one's knowledge over time.
At the end of the book is an index of subjects where you may look up many of the verses (it's not exhaustive) by their grammatical form, for instance, under "ACCUSATIVE" you may look up verses that are "adverbial accusative", or under "NOMINATIVE" you may look up verses under the section "qualitative predicate nominative". You may find the adjectival genitive section, or pluperfect periphrasitic - (I'm still only a beginner in Koine Greek so at the moment many of those terms don't make any sense yet…). There is also section in the index that lists verses that have "Septuagintisms" - which I find interesting as I have been doing some study on the Septuagint, its history and its quotation in the NT.
It is an interesting and handy work for students of Greek who wish to start building up their ability to easily read and comprehend Koine Grk.
Many thanks to the folks at Kregel Academic for sending me a free review copy of this book! (My review did not have to be favorable)
November 28, 2016
About the Book:
A powerful, time-saving new study resource for readers of the Greek New Testament
Only by immersing oneself consistently in the Greek New Testament can students, pastors, and other readers gain facility with the language. This invaluable guide from Charles Lee Irons streamlines and enhances the process, allowing readers to interact with the Greek text with minimal interruption and maximum understanding. By focusing specifically on syntax, this guide takes its place among other resources as a time--saving new tool that builds on, rather than replaces, what already exists. In the author's words, it "picks up where these other tools leave off, presupposes their use, and moves on to more complex issues of syntax, translation, some textual criticism, and limited exegesis."
Eminently useful, A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
Provides brief explanations of intermediate and advanced syntactical features of the Greek text
Suggests translations to help the reader make sense of unusual phrases and difficult sentences
Eliminates the need for the reader to stop and look up intermediate, advanced, or unusual grammatical features of the Greek text
Recognizes Hebraic constructions, Semitic inferences, and Septuagintisms
Closely follows the Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th and 28th editions
My Review:
It helps someone that only reads English just have a "helper" to help with other languages. Books like these really come in handy for those of us that basically don't want to have learn a second or third language to glean from books such as the Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament. In this book you are taken on a journey that is in explainable in itself. An amazing guide and help understanding the Greek New Testament.
Even with the explanations listed in the book, it was still a little difficult to understand but if you are in ministry or are a seminary student of some kind you would probably understand it a lot more. The book provides explanations as well as how each phrase is used and a cross reference for each. It takes you book by book in the New Testament. With over 600 pages to this reader, I still find that it is simple and straight forward and I was glad to see it wasn't long and drawn out. Great book to learn from!
**Disclosure** This book was sent to me free of charge for my honest review from the author. All opinions are my own.
A powerful, time-saving new study resource for readers of the Greek New Testament
Only by immersing oneself consistently in the Greek New Testament can students, pastors, and other readers gain facility with the language. This invaluable guide from Charles Lee Irons streamlines and enhances the process, allowing readers to interact with the Greek text with minimal interruption and maximum understanding. By focusing specifically on syntax, this guide takes its place among other resources as a time--saving new tool that builds on, rather than replaces, what already exists. In the author's words, it "picks up where these other tools leave off, presupposes their use, and moves on to more complex issues of syntax, translation, some textual criticism, and limited exegesis."
Eminently useful, A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
Provides brief explanations of intermediate and advanced syntactical features of the Greek text
Suggests translations to help the reader make sense of unusual phrases and difficult sentences
Eliminates the need for the reader to stop and look up intermediate, advanced, or unusual grammatical features of the Greek text
Recognizes Hebraic constructions, Semitic inferences, and Septuagintisms
Closely follows the Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th and 28th editions
My Review:
It helps someone that only reads English just have a "helper" to help with other languages. Books like these really come in handy for those of us that basically don't want to have learn a second or third language to glean from books such as the Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament. In this book you are taken on a journey that is in explainable in itself. An amazing guide and help understanding the Greek New Testament.
Even with the explanations listed in the book, it was still a little difficult to understand but if you are in ministry or are a seminary student of some kind you would probably understand it a lot more. The book provides explanations as well as how each phrase is used and a cross reference for each. It takes you book by book in the New Testament. With over 600 pages to this reader, I still find that it is simple and straight forward and I was glad to see it wasn't long and drawn out. Great book to learn from!
**Disclosure** This book was sent to me free of charge for my honest review from the author. All opinions are my own.
December 10, 2016
Lee Irons has recently published a new Syntax Guide For Readers Of The Greek New Testament (SG). The purpose for this guide is to give readers of New Testament Greek a jump start in to the discipline of reading the New Testament in its original language. Typically studies of the Greek tend to either get overlooked or focus on individual word studies. What Irons would like to see is students of New Testament Greek take up the practice of reading whole sections of the Greek text and eventually the entire New Testament. However, anyone who has taken up that task has recognized immediately the difficulty before them in being able to readily interpret as you read. SG provides the syntactical information (i.e. idioms, syntactical categories, etc. )to help aid in understanding Greek phrases and sentences in order to "streamline" the reading experience.
While this is a helpful volume it requires some prior familiarity of the Koine Greek. I would say this volume was ideally written for any one with at least two years of Greek. In fact the volume assumes it's reader's understanding of Greek. My only reservation is the Iron's does not sight the sources he has used for his content. Then again this isn't that kind of tool, which is fine with me as I have always known Irons to be competent with his Greek.
This volume has several appealing features. First it follows the Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th and 28th editions. To me it even looks like the maroon hardback UBS Greek New Testament. There is also a subject index that allows the reader to look up verses by grammatical form. This is a very helpful volume. I have attempted to use it as Irons had intended and I found personally I come away with a better understanding of the text since my tendency is to skip over phrases or sentences that I didn't understand. Definitely a must for any Greek reader's reference library.
Rating 4 out of 5
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
While this is a helpful volume it requires some prior familiarity of the Koine Greek. I would say this volume was ideally written for any one with at least two years of Greek. In fact the volume assumes it's reader's understanding of Greek. My only reservation is the Iron's does not sight the sources he has used for his content. Then again this isn't that kind of tool, which is fine with me as I have always known Irons to be competent with his Greek.
This volume has several appealing features. First it follows the Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th and 28th editions. To me it even looks like the maroon hardback UBS Greek New Testament. There is also a subject index that allows the reader to look up verses by grammatical form. This is a very helpful volume. I have attempted to use it as Irons had intended and I found personally I come away with a better understanding of the text since my tendency is to skip over phrases or sentences that I didn't understand. Definitely a must for any Greek reader's reference library.
Rating 4 out of 5
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
May 11, 2017
The study of the original language of scripture is a lost art in the study of the Bible. Yet it is one area that sorely needs correction to understand the depths of the Word of God. As a minister to children, youth, and families I prepare an average of six gospel messages a week, a process which takes most of my work week. Yet when I neglect a study of the original languages the gospel messages suffer because there is a noticeable lack of depth missing due to this neglect.
Now granted this process can require many extra hours to the preparation time. But if I have a lexical aid the process is greatly simplified. While there many, many lexical aids on the market currently, some try to accomplish too much, some to little, lacking any scope at all.
A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament by Charles Irons and produced by Kregel Publications is the perfect median. Iron's work on the Greek New Testament is not a verse by verse exposition, yet this limited scope is the best approach to lexical aids, focusing on the important and problematic words. Some may see this limiting scope as problematic, yet the limited scope makes this work manageable and useful. Furthermore this aid is not only useful to the pastor alone, the Greek scholar will also find this tool invaluable. I wish I had this tool a few years ago when I started to study Greek.
In addition, while I usually do not comment on the binding of a product, this product's binding is spectacular. Most lexical aids for the original languages are paperback yet this aid is a durable hardback which will extend the life of this excellent work. With all of these positive elements in this lexical aid, I highly recommend Irons' work to all pastors and students of the original languages. The one caveat is, there are a few places in which I disagree with Irons interpretation of meaning for a number of works, yet his logic is internally consistent and his orthodoxy is sound, making this one of the few works that can be turned to in any circumstance.
This book was provided to me free of charge from Kregel Publications in exchange for an unbiased, honest review.
A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
© 2016 by Charles Irons
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Page Count: 608 Pages
ISBN: 978-0825443824
Publishers Website: http://www.kregel.com/
Book’s Landing Page: http://www.kregel.com/biblical-studie...
Now granted this process can require many extra hours to the preparation time. But if I have a lexical aid the process is greatly simplified. While there many, many lexical aids on the market currently, some try to accomplish too much, some to little, lacking any scope at all.
A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament by Charles Irons and produced by Kregel Publications is the perfect median. Iron's work on the Greek New Testament is not a verse by verse exposition, yet this limited scope is the best approach to lexical aids, focusing on the important and problematic words. Some may see this limiting scope as problematic, yet the limited scope makes this work manageable and useful. Furthermore this aid is not only useful to the pastor alone, the Greek scholar will also find this tool invaluable. I wish I had this tool a few years ago when I started to study Greek.
In addition, while I usually do not comment on the binding of a product, this product's binding is spectacular. Most lexical aids for the original languages are paperback yet this aid is a durable hardback which will extend the life of this excellent work. With all of these positive elements in this lexical aid, I highly recommend Irons' work to all pastors and students of the original languages. The one caveat is, there are a few places in which I disagree with Irons interpretation of meaning for a number of works, yet his logic is internally consistent and his orthodoxy is sound, making this one of the few works that can be turned to in any circumstance.
This book was provided to me free of charge from Kregel Publications in exchange for an unbiased, honest review.
A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament
© 2016 by Charles Irons
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Page Count: 608 Pages
ISBN: 978-0825443824
Publishers Website: http://www.kregel.com/
Book’s Landing Page: http://www.kregel.com/biblical-studie...
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