A Reader's Greek New Testament

by Richard J. Goodrich, Albert L. Lukaszewski

A Reader's Greek New Testament offers two features unavailable in other print editions of the Greek New 1.Footnoted definitions for all words that occur thirty times or less in the New Testament 2.The complete Greek text behind the New International Version, today's most widely used Bible translation Ideal for Greek students and pastors, this volume saves time and effort in studying the Greek New Testament. By eliminating the need to look up definitions, the footnotes allow the user to read the Greek text more quickly, focusing on parsing and grammatical issues.

Genres: Reference

592 pages, Leather Bound

First published April 1, 2004

Reviews

[Fred Kohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Oct. 29, 2023] I acquired a used copy of this book many years ago but was unable to read it until approximately 2018 when I began to study Greek. My course of study was Classical Greek at Ohio State University. There is a lot of overlap between the vocabulary of Classical Greek and the Greek of the New Testament, but it is still necessary to acquire a lot of additional vocabulary to read the New Testament. This is a reader's edition, which means that the more uncommon words are glossed in footnotes at the bottom of the page. This is still my goto New Testament for reading as there are few books that I can read without difficulty without this help. For the occasional word that I don’t recognize and is not footnoted, there is a short lexicon in the back of the book, which makes the text pretty easy to understand for someone with an elementary understanding of Greek.

The biggest drawback of the first edition of this book is the leather cover, which after many years began to flake off. It got so bad that I had to finally remove the cover and my wife replaced it with contact paper. But I recommend getting the third edition, which has a faux leather cover, which, I assume, will not flake. Or, I suppose, you could get the Kindle edition, although I am not a fan of Kindle New Testaments. I find it easier to look up verses in a physical Bible.

[update: Apr. 4, 2026]: The Muslims devote the month of Ramadan to reading the Qur'an. This seems like an excellent habit to me, so for the past several Lents I have decided to make my Lenten resolution to read a portion of the Greek New Testament. The first time I tried it my goal was to read the entire New Testament, but I found that this task was beyond me. Since during Lent 2025 I read Kurt Aland's synopsis of the Four Gospels. I felt it would be a good idea for this Lent to read the remainder of the New Testament, starting with Acts. Then I decided since I was pretty familiar with the gospels anyway, I should purpose to read the whole New Testament, even if this project extended beyond the end of Lent.

I found Acts to be pretty rough going, and I probably didn’t read it as carefully as I should have. I read it in just three days, because I was anxious about finishing my project. In addition, I found that my Greek was pretty rusty. I hadn’t done much serious Greek reading since last Lent. So one byproduct of this project is that I have committed to read a portion of the Greek New Testament at least a couple of times a week so that my Greek does not lapse. I will start with the Pastoral Letters because I found them surprisingly rough.

Reading the letters of Paul recalled to my mind a book I read a few years back: *Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography* by Douglas A. Campbell. One thing I remember about this book was his conclusion that all the letters of Paul (except for the Pastorals) are genuine. I found this surprising because at that time I was pretty convinced that Ephesians was pseudepigraphic. However, reading through the letters of Paul this time, I am not as convinced that supposed stylistic differences matter all that much. It seemed to me that 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians had some pretty major stylistic differences, and no one I know of doubts that these letters were both written by Paul (although the integrity of 2 Corinthians has been questioned).

One thing I have found in my Greek reading is that (naturally) the more familiar with the text in English you are, the easier the Greek is to read. Perhaps the reason I had trouble with the Pastorals (and Acts and Hebrews) is that I am not as familiar with the English versions. This year I have decided to read the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments in English. Then, perhaps, I will be able to tackle the Greek Old Testament, of which I have only read bits and pieces in Greek.

[Leah Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I use this when I go to church. It has the translation of the least used words on the bottom of each page for quick reference. It is a great way to keep the pastor (or his translation) in check. Unfortunately it only gives the most common use of the word and does not offer a more in depth explanation.