What do you think?
Rate this book
The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament
"This book is a go-to reference for the instructor and a lifeline for the Greek student."
--Max Lee, North Park Theological Seminary
The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs is a learning aid especially for those transitioning from beginning courses in Greek to regular reading of the New Testament. This resource helps students learn those irregular Greek forms that are otherwise difficult to place; it's also perfect for pastors, biblical scholars, and anyone who learned Greek years ago and wants to improve their ease of reading the New Testament.
--Max Lee, North Park Theological Seminary
The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs is a learning aid especially for those transitioning from beginning courses in Greek to regular reading of the New Testament. This resource helps students learn those irregular Greek forms that are otherwise difficult to place; it's also perfect for pastors, biblical scholars, and anyone who learned Greek years ago and wants to improve their ease of reading the New Testament.
- GenresReference
80 pages, Paperback
Published September 26, 2017
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 15, 2017
In my opinion one of the best thing I got from my education in seminary was picking up the original languages of the Scriptures; other places such as the church might be better to prepare for other skillset for those entering the ministry but for most people the languages is probably the most helpful thing one can get in seminary that isn’t as easy to learn “on the job” or through self-study alone. However it is a skill that can easily be lost if one doesn’t engage in expository preaching or work with the biblical languages in other ways. It is with this perspective that I appreciate this new resource from Kregel Academic titled The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: AIDS for Readers of the Greek New Testament.
As the subtitle suggests this work is a helpful aid for readers of the Greek New Testament. For those who are familiar with resources on New Testament this work is similar to Bruce Metzger’s Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek except it kind of compliments that by building upon that and supplement that with a treatment on difficult and irregular Greek verbs. Like Metzger’s work part one of this book provides us a frequency list of difficult and irregular Greek verbs that is helpful for those who are trying to learn and expand their Greek vocabulary in order to read the New Testament. This list has breakdown of verbs grouped in 1000-200 times in the New Testament, then forms occurring 1990100 times in the New Testament, etc. Part two is another list that arranges alphabetically the irregular and difficult verbs plus with their compounds. This section is the largest portion of the book and one that most readers would find most helpful as it serves as a lexical and parsing guide for those verbs in Greek that is hard to decipher as to its lexical roots whether because of changes when letters elide with the principle parts and endings; or it is because of other morphological changes. I love how this work is small enough as a handbook and reference to have on hand while I’m studying the New Testament in the Greek.
The meat of the book is the two lists mentioned above but I recommend that readers also read the introduction, the “Note to instructors and interested students” to better understand how to use this resource. It is incredibly helpful reference and the two authors skillfully organized the material which is quite a feat for something that involves irregular and difficult verbs that by definition is not easy to arrange and organize. I also appreciated the book’s two appendix in which the first one gives us charts of conjugations of “eimi” which is a reference for readers to remember the basic. The second appendix is surely something I have to revisit again as it looks at the perfect and pluperfect indicative and optative mood which explains why words look different in those mood and in those principle parts.
Overall a great resource to have for the exegete. I recommend it and I believe the costs is worth it for years if not decades of it being a reference in one’s study and ministry.
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.
As the subtitle suggests this work is a helpful aid for readers of the Greek New Testament. For those who are familiar with resources on New Testament this work is similar to Bruce Metzger’s Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek except it kind of compliments that by building upon that and supplement that with a treatment on difficult and irregular Greek verbs. Like Metzger’s work part one of this book provides us a frequency list of difficult and irregular Greek verbs that is helpful for those who are trying to learn and expand their Greek vocabulary in order to read the New Testament. This list has breakdown of verbs grouped in 1000-200 times in the New Testament, then forms occurring 1990100 times in the New Testament, etc. Part two is another list that arranges alphabetically the irregular and difficult verbs plus with their compounds. This section is the largest portion of the book and one that most readers would find most helpful as it serves as a lexical and parsing guide for those verbs in Greek that is hard to decipher as to its lexical roots whether because of changes when letters elide with the principle parts and endings; or it is because of other morphological changes. I love how this work is small enough as a handbook and reference to have on hand while I’m studying the New Testament in the Greek.
The meat of the book is the two lists mentioned above but I recommend that readers also read the introduction, the “Note to instructors and interested students” to better understand how to use this resource. It is incredibly helpful reference and the two authors skillfully organized the material which is quite a feat for something that involves irregular and difficult verbs that by definition is not easy to arrange and organize. I also appreciated the book’s two appendix in which the first one gives us charts of conjugations of “eimi” which is a reference for readers to remember the basic. The second appendix is surely something I have to revisit again as it looks at the perfect and pluperfect indicative and optative mood which explains why words look different in those mood and in those principle parts.
Overall a great resource to have for the exegete. I recommend it and I believe the costs is worth it for years if not decades of it being a reference in one’s study and ministry.
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.
October 10, 2017
Whenever I review a resource on New Testament Greek, I begin with the admission: my Greek is terrible. In seminary I took two years of Hebrew and only learned enough Greek to scrape out an exegesis assignment. Greek was the language of philosophy. Hebrew was the language of poets and prophets. That is a huge difference.
But of course Greek is also the language of the New Testament, and despite my linguistic preference, the words of Jesus are coded in Koine. So when I preach through a New Testament passage, I find myself struggling through translating it (often with assistance from Bible Software with its virtual stack of lexicons). I am no expert. I do little more than play in the language, but I have picked up a few things along the way about Greek verbs and syntax and how the language functions.
I don't know much (♬but I know I love you . . . ♬) and to read New Testament Greek, I need help. All kinds of help. Kregel Academic publishes a number of student aids designed to help people like me who struggle with Greek. I previously reviewed The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek (2012) by Douglas Huffman. That book offered a nice beginners summary of Greek grammar, syntax and a good discussion of how to sentence diagram. Now a new 'Handy Guide' delves into deeper waters. The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament is designed to help us strugglers to wrestle through difficult vocabulary. Jon C. Laansma and Randal Gauthier have compiled a resource to help students of Greek move beyond the basics and begin reading.
This is a 'handy guide' and short. It is an 80 page paperback booklet which you can put inside the cover of Nestle-Aland28 to use as a reader-aid on the go. The booklet divides into two parts. Part I lists difficult and irregular verbs (difficult & irregular, from the perspective of beginners) in (usually) their indicative forms from most frequent (>200x) to least frequent (>10x), with a brief translation. Part II, provides an alphabetical list of verbs with their compounds (including forms that only appear once or twice in the New Testament)(27).
Laansma and Gauthier aim at enabling readers to identify the principle parts of various verb forms: (1) present & imperfect, (2)future active & middle, (3) aorist active and middle, (4) perfect and pluperfect active, (5) perfect and pluperfect middle and passive, (6) aorist and future passive). So if you locate a verb in the list (in its indicative, dictionary form), you will discover each of the six forms (or the forms that appear in the NT), with most common tenses in bold font. So when you encounter a strange form (to our eyes), their Part II gives us an at-a-glance reference to the verb forms.
This is pretty useful little book for students, working pastors or those struggling through reading the New Testament devotionally. I give this four stars. - ★★★★
Notice of Material connection, I received a copy of this book from Kregel Academic in exchange for my honest review.
But of course Greek is also the language of the New Testament, and despite my linguistic preference, the words of Jesus are coded in Koine. So when I preach through a New Testament passage, I find myself struggling through translating it (often with assistance from Bible Software with its virtual stack of lexicons). I am no expert. I do little more than play in the language, but I have picked up a few things along the way about Greek verbs and syntax and how the language functions.
I don't know much (♬but I know I love you . . . ♬) and to read New Testament Greek, I need help. All kinds of help. Kregel Academic publishes a number of student aids designed to help people like me who struggle with Greek. I previously reviewed The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek (2012) by Douglas Huffman. That book offered a nice beginners summary of Greek grammar, syntax and a good discussion of how to sentence diagram. Now a new 'Handy Guide' delves into deeper waters. The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament is designed to help us strugglers to wrestle through difficult vocabulary. Jon C. Laansma and Randal Gauthier have compiled a resource to help students of Greek move beyond the basics and begin reading.
This is a 'handy guide' and short. It is an 80 page paperback booklet which you can put inside the cover of Nestle-Aland28 to use as a reader-aid on the go. The booklet divides into two parts. Part I lists difficult and irregular verbs (difficult & irregular, from the perspective of beginners) in (usually) their indicative forms from most frequent (>200x) to least frequent (>10x), with a brief translation. Part II, provides an alphabetical list of verbs with their compounds (including forms that only appear once or twice in the New Testament)(27).
Laansma and Gauthier aim at enabling readers to identify the principle parts of various verb forms: (1) present & imperfect, (2)future active & middle, (3) aorist active and middle, (4) perfect and pluperfect active, (5) perfect and pluperfect middle and passive, (6) aorist and future passive). So if you locate a verb in the list (in its indicative, dictionary form), you will discover each of the six forms (or the forms that appear in the NT), with most common tenses in bold font. So when you encounter a strange form (to our eyes), their Part II gives us an at-a-glance reference to the verb forms.
This is pretty useful little book for students, working pastors or those struggling through reading the New Testament devotionally. I give this four stars. - ★★★★
Notice of Material connection, I received a copy of this book from Kregel Academic in exchange for my honest review.
November 1, 2017
There are few aspects of New Testament Greek more problematic for students and professors than difficult and irregular verbs. Not only are they challenging to identify and memorize for students, but they are largely avoided or underemphasized in the classroom. What has been needed for some time is a concise resource that students and professors can use as a supplement to the traditional Greek grammar. The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament by Jon C. Laansma and Randall X. Gauthier offers this much-needed reference tool in a brief and useful package.
The goal of The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs is to provide readers with a vocabulary assistance not found in other resources. The book is divided into two major sections: (1) a frequency list of difficult and irregular principal parts and (2) an alphabetical list of verbs with their compounds. There are also two appendixes, including paradigms of εἰμί and ἵημι in the present and imperfect forms and more. The organization of the volume is superb and the layout is similar to the previous volume in the series—The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek by Douglas S. Huffman.
The most useful part of The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs is the frequency list. This allows readers to quickly familiarize themselves with the most frequently difficult and irregular verbs found in the New Testament, thus foraging a well-traveled path to future mastery of the language. The alphabetical list is equally useful, but more so for potential reference than memorization. The only deficiency is the lack of New Testament examples or verse references. While likely outside the scope of the editor’s intention, it would have been a welcomed addition to have verse references and examples to connect the reader back to the Greek New Testament.
The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament by Jon C. Laansma and Randall X. Gauthier is an essential resource that needs to be in the hands of every student of the Greek New Testament. It will be a go-to reference for both students and professors for the foreseeable future and will be used often. It couldn’t be more strongly recommended!
The goal of The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs is to provide readers with a vocabulary assistance not found in other resources. The book is divided into two major sections: (1) a frequency list of difficult and irregular principal parts and (2) an alphabetical list of verbs with their compounds. There are also two appendixes, including paradigms of εἰμί and ἵημι in the present and imperfect forms and more. The organization of the volume is superb and the layout is similar to the previous volume in the series—The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek by Douglas S. Huffman.
The most useful part of The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs is the frequency list. This allows readers to quickly familiarize themselves with the most frequently difficult and irregular verbs found in the New Testament, thus foraging a well-traveled path to future mastery of the language. The alphabetical list is equally useful, but more so for potential reference than memorization. The only deficiency is the lack of New Testament examples or verse references. While likely outside the scope of the editor’s intention, it would have been a welcomed addition to have verse references and examples to connect the reader back to the Greek New Testament.
The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament by Jon C. Laansma and Randall X. Gauthier is an essential resource that needs to be in the hands of every student of the Greek New Testament. It will be a go-to reference for both students and professors for the foreseeable future and will be used often. It couldn’t be more strongly recommended!
November 7, 2017
Though I'm still a beginner in learning Koine Greek, I still like to snap up any Koine Greek language resource that I can when any becomes available to review - especially since my sisters are more advanced (and more faithful in) in the study of Greek than I am. I like to find various language resources to use as Christmas presents for them and my dad (a pastor). In The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs: Aids for Readers of the Greek New Testament is an excellent idea!
Upon receiving the book, I began having doubts as to whether I should actually have requested to review it, I became afraid that it was rather over my head - my fault because I have not kept up with my Koine Greek. But in studying the book more closely, it proves to have great potential as an extremely valuable resource in New Testament reading, and one that I will definitely give to one of my more advanced family members for Christmas.
This book compiles a list of difficult and irregular Greek verb principal parts, and also has a list of the verbs with their compounds (frequency of NT occurrence of each compound verb also noted). This listing of how many times each individual verb appears in the New Testament makes it easier to better prioritize the verbs that are being committed to memory. If a verb occurs a lot in the New Testament it makes sense to learn it at the beginning of study rather than at an advanced stage of Greek. As the authors put explain, "What good is it to know that trecho is glossed I run if what one actually sees while reading is edramen?"(I made an attempt at transliterating the Greek words they mention as I don't want to figure out how to get the Greek font). Laansma and Gauthier look to remedy that problem for Koine Greek learners who are moving out of the beginners stage of Greek and who frequently practice their Greek by actually reading large portions of the New Testament (instead of mere isolated verses).
I recommend this book highly for those learning Koine Greek!
Many thanks to the folks at Kregel Academic for sending me a free review copy of this book to review (My review did not have to be favorable).
Upon receiving the book, I began having doubts as to whether I should actually have requested to review it, I became afraid that it was rather over my head - my fault because I have not kept up with my Koine Greek. But in studying the book more closely, it proves to have great potential as an extremely valuable resource in New Testament reading, and one that I will definitely give to one of my more advanced family members for Christmas.
This book compiles a list of difficult and irregular Greek verb principal parts, and also has a list of the verbs with their compounds (frequency of NT occurrence of each compound verb also noted). This listing of how many times each individual verb appears in the New Testament makes it easier to better prioritize the verbs that are being committed to memory. If a verb occurs a lot in the New Testament it makes sense to learn it at the beginning of study rather than at an advanced stage of Greek. As the authors put explain, "What good is it to know that trecho is glossed I run if what one actually sees while reading is edramen?"(I made an attempt at transliterating the Greek words they mention as I don't want to figure out how to get the Greek font). Laansma and Gauthier look to remedy that problem for Koine Greek learners who are moving out of the beginners stage of Greek and who frequently practice their Greek by actually reading large portions of the New Testament (instead of mere isolated verses).
I recommend this book highly for those learning Koine Greek!
Many thanks to the folks at Kregel Academic for sending me a free review copy of this book to review (My review did not have to be favorable).
June 1, 2026
Excellent resource. Does what it claims to set out to do.
Grateful for my time studying under Laansma. He's a godly man with a love for Scripture. His classes kept me sane through some of the rougher patches of my time at Wheaton. I owe a lot to him.
Grateful for my time studying under Laansma. He's a godly man with a love for Scripture. His classes kept me sane through some of the rougher patches of my time at Wheaton. I owe a lot to him.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews