Product Description

Want to be able to read meaningful verses from the Greek New Testament after just one hour of study? In this comprehensive and helpful guide, John Dobson uses a highly effective teaching method to introduce readers to New Testament Greek. The third edition includes accented Greek and updated information. The book is accompanied by an audio CD-ROM.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177568 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780801031069
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
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About the Author
John H. Dobson (B.D., University of London) was known around the world for his infectious enthusiasm for the biblical languages. Thousands of students have benefited from his teaching in colleges and universities. He taught Greek and Hebrew effectively in many different countries and settings.

Customer Reviews

Good intro or companion to a Greek grammar
For Christmas I asked for and received this book and the NT Greek grammar by Mounce at the same time, thinking that they would complement each other. So far, my expectation has been completely fulfilled!

The good points of this book are:

1. It provides lots of practice with reading Greek sentences. Lots of practice is the only way to become fluent in any language, and this book provides it. To me this is the book's primary good point (but see #4 below).

2. As the other reviews say, it gets you into the language right away with few technical details

3. It is highly inductive, meaning it doesn't go thru lists of paradigms and rules, but gets you right into reading the text.

4. This book has the only really good explanation of preposition usage I've seen. They all - including Mounce - show the little boxes with arrows: eis, en, ex, hypo, etc. This is useful as far as it goes. But this book does something I've never seen: it gives multiple examples from the New Testament for each possible meaning of each preposition. For example, most books say "en" means "in, with, or by"; but this book gives you actual NT examples of "en" meaning each of these. Wonderful!

The bad points are:

1. It is highly inductive. I don't think this kind of learning style suits me as an adult at all. True, the deductive method is different from how we learned language as children. Proponents of inductive learning (such as Prof. Harris in his sometimes interesting alternative Latin grammar) always point this out and state without proof that everybody knows the inductive method is superior. And for children, they're probably right. However, we *were* children then. I think it a fairly well-established fact that children learn differently from adults: and the classical schooling model has been based on this fact for 25 centuries. As a result, based both on reason and my own experience, I don't believe that a purely inductive method is the proper framework for adults to learn in; but then I have not surveyed all adults nor performed a controlled experiment on them all. What I think I can say with certainty is that it's not the right framework for *ME* to learn in, and I doubt I'm alone.

2. Going further than most NT grammars (even Mounce to some extent) that don't really explain accentuation rules, this book ignores accents altogether! (It doesn't even print them in the text.) I am still "coasting" on the accentuation rules I learned early and very thoroughly from Hansen and Quinn's Attic Greek book (H&Q does at least one thing right), and I find they really do help. Without even accents printed in the text, I question whether you can get good consistent accent placement, making it much more difficult to talk to others or probably even to remember the words yourself. I naturally find myself using Latin-like accent rules, which is sometimes correct (i.e. present tense of many verbs) but usually goes horribly wrong for nouns and adjectives. Since I have Mounce's grammar also, everytime I find a new word in Dobson's book, I write in the accent. It's a good test for my own understanding, but it shouldn't be necessary.

I believe these problems would make this book not work for me as a stand-alone way of learning Greek. But for somebody who is using another grammar such as Mounce and using this book as a side reading source that gives you lots of practice and another point of view, this book is very useful.

An Excellent Supplement to a Traditional Grammar
Let me state up front: I am extremely skeptical that one can adequately learn Biblical Greek inductively. With that caveat, this is the best inductive grammar that I have ever seen.

For those who have used previous editions of Dobson's grammar, the third edition offers significant improvements. Some of the noteworthy features include:

1. The book is unusually well printed and a delight to read. If you have ever tried to read books created with inadequate Greek or Hebrew fonts, you will appreciate how important a feature this is - particularly in a grammar for beginners.
2. The book is essentially error free. This is one of the benefits of a third edition, but it is a meaningful benefit. There are few things more frustrating to a new student than trying to figure out why he or she is wrong when it is the text that is in error.
3. Dobson does a superb job of selecting exercises throughout the work. He keeps introducing minor variations so that students don't become lazy knowing what the answer "should be" in this section. This ringing of changes is the genious of inductive language study, and Dobson is a master in this art.
4. Dobson has added simple, brief, grammatical explanations throughout the book that will help students relate what they are learning to traditional deductive grammars.

My concerns:

1. In trying to create excitement about learning Biblical Greek, Dobson implies that the student is becoming more competent than anyone could become through one year of language study. Would you hire someone with only 1 year of German to teach German literature at a University? Of course not! But I fear that students reading only this work could wrongly think that they are ready to criticise the scholars who do the incredibly demanding work of creating quality Bible translations. Mastering Greek is worth the effort - but we should not underestimate the amount of effort and discipline required.
2. To gain an adequate facility with Greek, a student will need to move on to "second year" grammars such as Dana and Mantey or Wallace's "Biblical Greek Beyond the Basics". If the student hasn't worked through a deductive grammar, it will be almost impossible for him or her to grapple with these more advanced works which are necessary for sound exegesis.

So how can I give this book 5 stars?

1. It is the best inductive grammar you can find and just plain fun to read.
2. Dobson's superb selection of material makes this grammar one of the best "readers" available for New Testament Greek. Most students (myself included), need a great deal of practice to achieve proficiency in the language. This book goes a long way toward providing that practice.

My advice: Work through a traditional grammar such as David Alan Black's "Learn to Read New Testament Greek" or Mounce's "The Basics of Biblical Greek". When you are done, turn to Dobson for some delightful practice and continued learning.

perfect for beginners
I tried several beginner's books on NT Greek before discovering this one, and I loved it. This is the one that made it all fun. After 5 years of study, I still enjoy thumbing through it.

The accompanying tape is just OK, but good for gaining elementary oral fluency. I believe the pronuciation presented here is not generally considered correct but is still the pedagogical standard.