Here is the audio recording from our last class covering Mounce’s book. We reviewed the last two chapters of the book. This marks the end of our audio recordings for the time being. I might try to do some more one day, but for now the remaining members of my class as Concord are going to meet regularly to translate various passage of the New Testament Scriptures. I hope to continue to use this web site to post on the latest issues or topics that I am studying regarding Biblical Greek. Enjoy this last lecture and please post any questions or comments you have in the comments sections below.
The review is by C. Michael Robbins and it offers many highlights to the benefits of using this book as well as a few good suggestions for improving the second edition of the book, whenever it might be released.
The following summary description of the book is provided as well:
Description: Verbal aspect in the Greek language has been a topic of significant debate in recent scholarship. The majority of scholars now believe that an understanding of verbal aspect is even more important than verb tense (past, present, etc.). Until now, however, there have been no accessible textbooks, both in terms of level and price (most titles on the topic retail for more than $100). In this book, Constantine Campbell investigates the function of verbal aspect within the New Testament Greek narrative. He has done a marvelous job in this book of simplifying the concept without getting caught up using terms of linguistics that no one except those schooled in that field can understand. The book includes exercises, an answer key, glossary of key concepts, an appendix covering space and time, and an index to Scripture cited. Professors and students, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, will use this is as a supplemental text in both beginning and advanced Greek courses. Pastors that study the Greek text will also appreciate this resource as a supplement to their preaching and teaching.
If you are going to study New Testament Greek, I suggest you purchase this book along with your Greek Grammar.
I have mentioned the website BibleArc.com on this blog before, but since I referenced it, they have made a lot of improvements. The developer of BibleArc.com lists these as the major addition:
a “Share” section by which you can view others’ work, with Email Alerts
ability to Email Your Arc from the site
Instant Parsing of Greek words
the Old Testament in both English and Hebrew
LBLA (Spanish translation) added
Auto-Save option
Translucent Sticky Notes
new Tabs for easier viewing of your arc, notes, and comments
Rich Text Editor for propositions, sticky notes, and notes tab
Instant Search of your arcs
new Arc Graphics (for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) that are 10x faster and much more attractive
Recently Shared Arcs listed on the create page
If you are not familiar with arcing, it is described as “a graphical tool used to determine, document, and discuss the flow of thought in the Biblical text.” John Piper has a short booklet on biblical exegesis that explains arcing. You can also see Tom Schreiner’s book Interpreting the Pauline Epistles.
Also, Dr. Mounce posted a entry explaining the history behind his book that we use in our class. Here is an excerpt, but read the whole thing here.
I know this is a bit off topic, but someone asked the other day about the history behind my grammar and suggested that people might be curious. So for what it’s worth, here it is.
Rote memory has never been my strong suite. In high school I memorized tons of poetry and found it easy to do, but when it came to just individual words, well, I’m not wired that way. This made high school Latin especially difficult. What I discovered about myself, however, was that I like charts; and if I could lay things out visually in a way that made sense to me, paradigms and the such were much easier to learn. So I became the chart maker in Latin, and many of my fellow students adopted my charts in preference to our text.
I learn Greek at Western Kentucky University with a totally inductive text, reading the gospel of John. I enjoyed the exposure to the biblical text, but the lack of structure was the undoing of the class. Midway through the first semester we switched to Machen’s text and used both texts to get through the two semester class. And once again I started making charts.
Today we discussed the chapter in Mounce that covered the Greek imperative. The imperative is a non-indicative verb form that is used when making a command to another human (i.e. - Eat!) or when one is entreating God to do something (i.e. - “Give us this day…”). The Greek imperative only occurs in 2nd and 3rd person, present and aorist tenses. The main difference between the tenses for the imperative is that the present tense displays “continuous” action and the aorist tense displays “undefined” action.
As usual, the mp3 is linked below to this post. Please leave any questions or comments you have in the comments section below.
The audio from chapter 32 is embedded below in this post. This past Sunday we covered the Greek infinitive. The infinitive is a verbal noun and it’s different forms are indeclinable. The previous week we covered the Greek subjunctive, but unfortunately we didn’t have a recorder for the class. Please post any comments or questions you have below. Enjoy!
