Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics by Daniel B. Wallace
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Book Reviews of Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics
Book Review: Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent book. I finished the basic book by Mounce last year and this book picks right up with the next step needed for sound growth.Book Review: New book!
Summary: 5 Stars
I chose the one because it was new and the price was the lowest when I looked into this item. I am pleased.Book Review: Good materials
Summary: 5 Stars
This book arrived in a timely manner and was in good shape--exactly what we expected.Book Review: You got to have it! One of the best grammars.
Summary: 5 Stars
A clear presentation of greek grammatical categories.Book Review: A Text Book with an Overwhelming Amount of Information
Summary: 4 Stars
Professor Dan Wallace's "Greek Grammar" not only furnishes an overwhelming amount of information for students, but could also easily serve as a launching pad for multitudes of scholarly work. Unlike the introductory texts that tend to have fixed rules, such as the declension endings, tense formatives or the square of stops (I'm using Mounce's terminologies here) with very few exceptions, "Greek Grammar" is an intermediate text where in some cases, there is no black and white rule of interpretation that perfectly applies to certain difficult passages of the Scripture; for example, the nuance of a train of participles in Eph 5:19-21 (p.651), whether they imply result or manner, and several other cases Wallace places under the heading of "debatable texts."
One of the most brilliant and theologically significant exegesis that I have studied in this text is the analysis of the anarthrous per-verbal predicate nominative "theos" in John 1:1 (p.256-270). Here Wallace shows that this "theos," citing the statistical analysis done by Harner and Dixon, is qualitative, not definite. So what's the big deal? It is a huge deal. An interpretation of definite theos might be the source of the error of Sabelianism or modalism. The error of treating the word as definite is a result of misapplication; the converse application to be exact, which is an invalid use of Colwell's rule. Moreover, even less excusable is the error of interpreting the word as indefinite such as what the New World translators did, that Wallace describes as more of an issue of theological bias toward Arianism (p.267). So the apostle John wasn't arbitrary when he placed an anarthrous pre-verbal predicate nominative theos in John 1:1. "The construction the evangelist chose to express this idea was the most concise way he could have stated that the Word was God and yet was distinct from the Father." (p.269).
Studying enormous amount of linguistic information could be challenging. I believe Wallace was trying to be fair in citing the academic works of many grammarians; classical and modern, as evident by so many footnotes discussing the references he cited from, before coming up with his own conclusion about his analysis on proper uses of particular topic in discussion. But while it is useful to know others' point of view, it could be confusing as well. I guess the trade-off is if Wallace is trying to be concise by only teaching what he believes to be the proper rules of interpretation without citing many references, the students will not get much exposure on both the historical background such as the classical versus Koine Greek uses as well as the past and existing research findings. I actually prefer this approach. On the contrary, Wallace seems to choose to mingle references with the materials which often causes more distractions to me; a clear example of which is when he talks about the approach adopted by Goodwin versus Gildersleeve when working with conditional sentences (p.705-709).
In addition, while doing a superb job for the majority of the text in citing many New Testament uses and explain them when claiming a certain application of a Greek part of speech, there are two sections where Wallace does not do or barely does this; when covering prepositions (p.364-389) and clauses (p.657-665) where he seems to breeze through the section without including many examples at all. A subject that I wished Wallace includes more as well is the speech act theory that has to do with the pragmatic view in exegesis as opposed to structural and semantic view. He barely touches upon this subject in conditional sentence section (p.703). I guess the speech act theory seems to be of a higher plane of exegesis beyond semantic, and is reserved for an advanced study.
Despite seemingly complicated divisions of the chapters and sections where a topic may have three or four sub-divisions, Wallace provides a double summary of everything he has covered at the end of the text. First, it is called a syntax summary that consists of the basic categories with definition but without examples. Second, it is called "cheat sheet" that consists of description of categories only; no definition and no examples; intended as a handy reference for students when doing exegesis. To use the cheat sheet, I would caution that one should know first what the categories are about. The cheat sheet is of little or no use when students are trying to determine what category an accusative they are reading falls under if they don't know or remember what double accusative means listed under "Accusative" section.
Studying this text is exhausting. It took me seven months to complete. Perhaps studying it in a classroom experience is richer and more rewarding; something that I don't have the privilege of. I wish. But one thing for sure, that though I have studied the text end-to-end, I am not done with it. My head is way too small to contain all the materials Wallace teaches. There is always a need to review and most importantly, this text is a valuable reference, a must-have for me personally, I should say, for New Testament exegesis.