Greek New Testament (With Dictionary)

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Book
Review: The first thing I must commend this book on is its durability. I have had this book for over a year now--in hot weather, cold weather, rain and wind--yet it has held up marvelously well in that time. I've had some bonded leather Bibles that have done much worse than this one.

Secondly, I must say that this book automatically scores a full five stars because it is the word of my God. Yet, I have had some ask me why I would want to go through the "trouble" of learning Greek?

My answer is the Bible is wonderfully understandable in its translations. I believe also that most translations are wonderfully reliable (though all translations, intentionally or not, have their own added "spin").

The true joy (for me at least) in reading the original (I know, I know...these too are copies, not the "real" originals) Greek texts is in getting to know the authors a little better. The translations do not allow you to experience the impeccable grammar of Luke (or Mark's rather poor grammar), the Hebrew-isms of James, the staggering vocabulary of Paul, or the weird way John phrases things. The Greek does.

These joys, combined with the fact that these words have life in them, is the reason that I give this book, out of all the books I have reviewed--or ever will review, my highest recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Greek NT
Review: This by far is my favorite Greek New Testament. The binding works great for laying the NT on a desk. The pages are great for writing on or highlighting. The letters are easy to read and spaced evenly to help the reader read better and still leaves enough room to write on the page if necessary. The dictionary is sufficient for study although I recommend a Lexicon to go with this Greek NT.

Overall I would highly recommend this edition of the Greek New Testament!

Rating:
Summary: Frustratingly, 4th edition leaves you missing the 3rd
Review: This Greek New Testament (UBS4) uses the same text as the earlier 3rd edition (1975, corr. ed. 1983). The presentation of this text differs in two respects, neither of which is unambiguously an improvement:

1. A different font is used for the text itself. Not just a different font, but a repellently ugly font that has not much resemblance to any font with which a quality edition of a Greek text has ever been published before. Yes, ever. The geniuses at the United Bible Societies are the first people (going back to Erasmus' publication of a NT edition in 1516) who thought that a hideous, spindly, faux-italic computer font would be a better choice than ANY of the established Greek fonts that heretofore have been used in the printing of ancient texts. I hope you'll forgive my emotion on this point, but, as a scholar of (Classical) Greek with a library full of Greek texts published by Oxford, Teubner, etc., I am just flabbergasted to see such disregard for tradition as this. The UBS4 font choice is analogous to printing an English Bible in one of those goofy "Calypso" or "Horror Movie" fonts that come with Windows. The UBS3 (1975) and its corrected edition (1983) are both presented in an attractive, standard typeface that would be suitable for a printed edition of any ancient text.

(As an aside: the Nestle-Aland "Novum Testamentum Graece," in some ways the more conventional current scholarly edition of the NT, is also marred by its odd, cramped way of indicating textual variations. Again, Nestle and Aland's innovation of intruding a million squiggles, squares, circles, etc., into a text, is not an improvement over the traditional apparatus criticus--it's just an awkward space-saver. This is a major reason why anyone who wants a clean, accurate, up-to-date Greek text of the NT may want to choose UBS3 over Nestle-Aland.)

2. The other difference is in the selection and presentation of material in the critical apparatus. Here, I'm sure there were sound scholarly reasons. Note that in the UBS Greek Bibles (as opposed to the Nestle-Aland "Novum Testamentum Graece") the point of the apparatus criticus is not to present the larger manuscript tradition and variations synoptically, but to focus in on only those textual variations that might affect the translation of a passage. For these passages, the apparatus indicates a committee's judgment (indicated with a letter scale: A, B, C, D) on the different possible readings and punctuations. Unfortunately, here too the revisions are not definitely an improvement. As Edward Hobbs, a distinguished Professor of Religion at Wellesley College, wrote on a popular Biblical Greek email list, "I also prefer UBS3 or UBS3c, since the evaluations have not undergone the 'grade-inflation' of UBS4. (Slightly different method used to describe the A,B,C,D grades, but the committee membership changed over the years to a more-traditional-in-some-ways and more-clones-of-Aland-in-other-ways group.)" The upshot of this is, the range of information and opinion you get from the apparatus in UBS3 is not obsolete and not inferior to what UBS4 offers.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent portable copy of the Greek NT
Review: This small book is nevertheless very well designed. First, the print is large and very readable. No question about whether you're looking at rough or a smooth breathing marks, for example.

Second, the textual apparatus is rather daunting but fascinating. It really lets you see why certain words are included or excluded from certain translations based on the original text. It also has a good intro listing the various sources used in the apparatus; to those who have little or no background in textual criticism this is invaluable to understanding what you're looking at and, in general, the unprecedented range of manuscript evidence for the New Testament. If you think the New Testament is the product of the fourth century church, you'll think again after reading through the apparatus (which is why no reputable scholar holds that opinion).

Finally, the dictionary in the back is quite good for its small size, separately listing many of the principal parts of verbs. One of the toughest parts of reading the Greek NT (especially for a student of Greek like myself) has to be parsing verbs you don't recognize, and this makes the task much easier.

Rating:
Summary: interesting
Review: This was an interesting book. Has a lot to do with the new testament and god. It is also about the greek new testament.

Rating:
Summary: Not what many would expect.
Review: When I bought my N-A edition of the NT I knew exactly what I was getting and that is why I bought it. At the same time, this is not just a NT in Greek like the Byzantine Majority Text or the Textus Receptus (Which is excellent), but it is a critical edition with nealry half of the page (the bottom half of course) being dedicated to variant readings and anything else which catches the eyes of N-A. Most of the variant readings, like 99.98% of them are so minimal and minute that one has to ask, "Is this even a variant reading in the true sense of the word? What is the point of showing this to everyone?" and it can be extremely hard to read.

At the same time, there is a plethera of different texts within this one text and if you want to compare the Textus Receptus with the Codex Sinaticus then you can do that.

Sadly, though, the Codex Sinaticus, for all the buzz 'scholars' make about it, it was really just a parchment that monks had learned to write on from centuries ago, it couldn't be used because they had been learning on it and mistakes had been made, but it couldn't be thrown away because it contained the words of Christ, so it was used as a lid of sorts over pots containing honey until a German 'scholar' found them, was extatic, and was given them by the monks, even though he thought he scammed them.

I don't think I would recommend this to just anyone. For example, a person who doesn't have a good background in textual criticism or a person of another religion, might read it and think that the NT is jsut a mess that has been compiled over centires and we are completely lost as to what it 'originally' said when it is actually the complete opposite that is true. Make sure you know a lot before you read this. I gave it 4 stars because of the use I bought it for, but as far a general Koine Greek NT for anyone, I would give it only 2 stars.