The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek is not intended for
beginner-level Greek learners, but as clearly stated in the introduction, for
second-year or beyond Greek students.
The book basically lays out “handy” charts for grammatical and usage
references, i.e. syntax, conjugation, phrase diagramming, etc.
Huffman has composed a basic but accessible reference book
that would be a great accompaniment to a full-sized textbook, but I think it
would also be a useful tool for anyone studying Greek whether in school or
out. I found his inclusion of a Select
Bibliography in Greek studies particular helpful in finding other works that
could be used alongside the handbook.
All that said, I do have some critiques in terms of layout
that might be addressed in future editions:
There’s very little that separates chapters and
sections. The entire book is printed in
orange and black. So if you’re hoping to
quickly turn to and recognize a section that you’re studying, you’ll have to first
take the time to look in the table of contents and find the page number.
It seems to me if a press was going to take the resources to
print in color, it could have changed up the colors for each section. Tabs would have been a useful addition too,
and maybe even a spiral binding so that the book can sit open flat in the
section that you’re studying. For an
example of a great pocket style grammar manual (English not Greek) see Diana
Hacker’s “A Pocket Style Manual”.
Also, I didn’t really see the logic in the organization
within the three main sections. Why go
from nouns, to adjectives, to adverbs, to articles, to pronouns, to
prepositions, to verbs? It seems a
little more logical to group parts of speech in the sense that they affect one
another, for example adverbs affect verbs but they’re several pages away from
one another.
Overall, I think this was a great first edition, but I’d
love to see a little better approachability in future editions. There’s not much here that makes it a “quick”
reference, just a lighter reference than carrying around a textbook.
The publisher provided a copy of this text in exchange for
an honest review. All opinions are my
own.
