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| Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar | 
 enlarge | Author: William D. Mounce
Publisher: Zondervan
Category: Book
List Price: $41.99
Buy New: $22.69
You Save: $19.30 (46%)
New (51) Used (24) from $18.48
Avg. Customer Rating:  72 reviews
Sales Rank: 7753
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0310250870
Dewey Decimal Number: 487.4
UPC: 025986250874
EAN: 9780310250876
Publication Date: August 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Basics of Bibilical Greek (Grammar) by Mounce is Terrific! June 1, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Basics of Biblical Greek (BBG) by William Mounce has been touted as the most popular introductory Greek grammar currently out there, and I can only say that it is very easy to understand why.
In a word, this grammar is revolutionary in its technique for making the student able to understand the Koine (Common) Greek of the ancient world. No, by revolutionary I don't mean gimmicky, and I don't mean to suggest that it is one of those watered-down, "don't want to make the student feel dumb," touchy-feely kind of methodologies for language instruction. It's a very serious system designed, not to "make learning Greek easy," but to push to student into the morphology and the "Rules" that govern Greek grammar, rather than relying solely on rote.
This method, this strategy of focusing on the mechanics of how the Greek verbs and nouns and participles each are put together, and how the roots so govern verbs that there really isn't much "irregular" about the Greek language at all, greatly facilitates rapid learning as much as it does deep and permanent learning. Mounce shows you how the words were constructed by the Greeks, and once you know that, the rote learning just fills in the gaps. You'll be able to recognize and parse a word whose definition you might never have even memorized, and from the context you might even be able to translate the word successfully--in a pinch--without a lexicon handy. That is why I call it revolutionary.
It isn't easy, but anyone who tells you that learning Greek can be easy is misleading you. Studying Greek is hard. Harder than Latin. In fact, anyone first delving into Greek grammar, especially if you're an adult who is teaching himself, in a word, sucks. It's slog, there's no denying it. It's going to require dedication, devotion, discipline, time, and tenacity. Period. But is anything worthwhile ever easy? If you're resolved to learn this wonderful, beautiful, expressive, deep language, Mounce's BBG is your key to minimizing the inevitable slog and maximizing the fruit gained from your efforts.
Through his new method, you will also retain your knowledge of Greek long after the "pure rote" crowd has lost much of their Greek through atrophy. And that is because the "rules" Mounce will teach you will stick in your memory longer, and picking up a Greek NT some time after, God forbid, you've left it alone for a long time, you will probably find you remember so much more having focused on the rules rather than the almost infinite number of paradigms Greek has in its quiver.
I offer my unqualified praise and my unending thanks to Professor Mounce for making me able to read much of the New Testament in Greek. It's now up to others to instruct me in intermediate Greek, and find I am weighing into intermediate Koine (and now introductory Attic as well) well-prepared indeed by this revolution in Greek instruction.
The CD-ROM included inside the back cover is also wonderful. It is a chapter by chapter series of lectures (the audio was recorded right in his class, in most instances), with visuals included, and it really supplements the book study well. Also on the CD-ROM are small programs that you can install on your computer that will help you learn how to parse nouns and verbs and participles, and also to memorize NT vocabulary. These also were invaluable aids to driving Greek deep into my grey matter.
Let the reader note, however, that although with the Grammar and the CD-ROM you get a great arsenal for the coming fight, you should also pick up Mounce's vocabulary cards, his "Get an A" plastic thingy (I called it the cheat sheet...it's basically a couple pages of plastic with much of the grammar summarized for quick reference), and the Workbook and the Graded Reader as well. All are reasonably priced. If you do, and you stick with it, and review review review, you will, even if you work full time, be largely literate in NT Greek in one year.
Review is important for autodidacts especially, because you'll inevitably memorize less vigorously as you go than your classroom-counterparts who face real tests and quizzes, so repetitition is even more important for us self-taught types...I'm currently on my third run through this introductory grammar, just by way of review, even as I now study intermediate Koine and venture into Attic.
On a side note, guard your psyche against discouragement as you proceed. Allowing yourself to become discouraged will sink your ship like nothing else, so when you (inevitably!) start to become discouraged by the ever present thoughts: I LEARNED THIS, WHY DO I KEEP FORGETTING IT, or WHY CAN'T I READ THIS YET!?, just chill out and remind yourself that it isn't by chance that people happened upon the expression "It's all Greek to me!" Greek is hard. It's not for the lily-livered. But you know what? It's not THAT hard. It wants to scare you off. Don't let it. Patience and tenacity will pay off, and with Mounce's instruction you are going to tame that beast, and you too will be able to read the Greek Bible!
Finally, I also recommend you pick up the Zondervan Reader's Greek New Testament (also on Amazon). It is only $20, and it will really help you transition from grammar and carefully-chosen texts to the chaotic world of just picking up and reading your Greek New Testament. See my review, and the reviews of many others, on the page for this item. Zerwick's Grammatical Analysis is another "training wheel" you might want to look into once you're getting salty from Mounce's BBG. Did I mention the vocab cards? They're a must! And get Metzger's Lexical Aids, too.
There, now one hundred bucks or so and one year later you'll be reading the New Testament in Greek! A year and a few bucks well spent!
Pardon my undeniable verboseness.
 Unique Presentation of Material March 16, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Unlike most traditional Greek grammars, Mounce organizes the material based on his teaching experience, putting in nouns first and gradually introducing everything else. This gives the student a sense of rapid progress since by the 6th chapter the student knows a vocabulary which, in one form or other comprises over 35% of the the word count in the NT. He also introduces the student to passages whose meanings, for one reason or another, turn on the careful interpretaion of the Greek, thus giving practical experience to the student and reinforcing the value learning Greek. I found the accompaning CD useful, but students in an actual Greek course would probably be wildly enthusiastic. If I were going to teach Greek, I would certainly consider it.
 Okay for what it is, but some serious flaws February 19, 2007
25 out of 30 found this review helpful
The goal of the book is very clear in the introduction: it is not designed to teach ancient Greek thoroughly, but rather to give students enough Greek to pick their way through some basic New Testament passages. At least in the context in which I learned and taught with this book, the "basic" nature of this text was underemphasized. One can certainly move on to further study, and many do, but they have a lot of relearning to do if they start with Mounce.
So caveat emptor: This book is a great choice if you want a minimal approach that uses a lot of "hand holding" along the way, but it is not appropriate if you really want to learn ancient Greek. Some examples:
1. It completely and consciously ignores accentuation (except for a few words in which the difference can only be determined by accent). The problem with this is that accentuation is actually pretty important for moving to an intermediate understanding of the language. Basic principles of accenting are easy enough to learn and there really is no excuse for at least having an overview of the system (at least for verbs). Ignoring them builds a handicap into one's learning.
2. It does not introduce very much vocabulary (350 words, >50 occurrences). Vocabulary is the absolute gateway into a language. It does not matter how much grammar and syntax one understands if she doesn't know the meaning of the word she is looking at. In modern education, there is such a de-emphasis on memorization and, in my experience, there is often the attitude that one does not need to memorize vocabulary because words can always be looked up. This is very true, but the more one has to run to a dictionary (or even mouse over a word in BibleWorks), the less likely one is to keep trying. Simply put, the more words you recognize on the page, the more fun reading Greek is and, more importantly, the less frustrating it is. In my view, the vocabulary should roughly double in an introductory course to get down to 30 occurrences. Even for one who is at the "beginner" level, knowing as much vocabulary as possible is absolutely critical.
3. It uses a system of diagnostics rather than paradigms for teaching declension and conjugation. Rather than having students memorize paradigms, Mounce teaches the "building blocks" of verbs and nouns. This is potentially valuable, but it reinforces the idea of language as a simple engineering exercise and does not facilitate true learning of Greek. It drives home the idea that each form is to be taken apart and analyzed. Now, I do need to keep in mind the audience of this text. Students using BBG are not learning Greek to be ancient Greek scholars, and so in some ways this approach of "language as decoding" is not all bad for this purpose. I am just very wary of it overall and so I have a hard time recommending it for any audience.
4. It introduces the entire noun system and declensions (chapters 1-14) before getting to verbs, participles, etc. (chapters 15-35). Mounce states that he does this because it is easier to handle nouns before moving to verbs. I disagree. I understand putting off the more difficult aspects of verb study until later chapters, but to present essentially nothing of verbs for so long (a good couple months in a semester) is handicapping one's learning. As a result, he has to gloss just about every single verb in the exercises for the first 14 chapters. I just don't see how this is valuable. He should at least introduce the present tense and then just give present tense verbs for a while.
5. The workbook contains very few drills and no English to Greek (except in one or two chapters on prepositions, I think, or maybe pronouns). Drilling is a critical component of learning a language and students tied to the workbook in this text series have almost none of it. Each chapter has 10 parsing drills where a student decodes a form, 5-6 "warm-up" exercises of made-up phrases and then a good number of true sentences from the GNT. But there are no drills that force the student to really understand and get comfortable with the forms and grammar. And of course the focus should not be on composing Greek, but doing SOME Greek composition is, in my view, irreplaceable in cementing forms, grammar and syntax. And this is NOT just for advanced students. I have found in teaching this material that often students who struggle the most benefit greatly from Greek "composition." At minimum, this mean transforming Greek nouns and verbs into the requested case or tense. I have had numerous students who just didn't get the concept of case until we did some English to Greek exercises and they saw that case does what word order does in English.
So, after all of these complaints, why do I yet give it three stars? Because, simply put, I realize my own bias towards a rigorous study of Greek and I probably don't take into account the needs of students who are getting just enough Greek to get through a commentary or whatever. Many, many people have successfully learned Greek from this book, and at the end of the day, who am I to knock it?
I would simply caution those who have a choice of textbooks to be very aware of the limitations of this book. For a better introduction to ancient Greek, even for New Testament studies, see Mastronarde's Introduction to Attic Greek or even Athenaze. If you are able in your studies, I believe it is far more valuable to start with Attic Greek and then move to the New Testament.
Essential companion to the text February 6, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
After purchasing Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, I saw some reviews on Amazon recommended the workbook - and, it has been a tremendous aid so far. Working through examples provides much better retention than just passivly reading the text. And, I've found the answer key online to be a great help for reviewing my answers to see if I was on the right track. If you get the text, you really should get the workbook -
Great Book January 3, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Mounce has set this book up to make it easy (if that is possible) to learn Greek. Give it a try and you'll love it.
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