J. Harold Greenlee (1918–2015)

"Concise" isn't the half of it.

It's valid to ask how long a grammar should be. A. T. Robertson, for instance, produced a book that is 1400 pages long -- and, for all I know, has never been read from cover to cover since the time it was printed. It's simply too long and complicated for someone to learn from.

But a grammar that is too short isn't much use either, because it's just a bunch of rules, not an explanation. English and Greek have many differences -- particularly in the way verbs work; English has no aorists, no optatives. There is no English dual number (although it was effectively dying in Greek as well). For that matter, Greek does far more with actual grammar than does English; English uses primarily word order.

So any grammar must strike a balance. And this book really is, I think, too concise. As a reference, it is good. Everything is highly organized, with outlines and bullet points all over the place. If it has what you need, you can go right to it, look it up, and you're done. But you have to know what you're looking for. If you don't, it's no help. So buy this as a supplement to a longer grammar, but don't expect to learn Greek just from this book.… (meer)

Sometimes, boring is good.

This little book on textual criticism -- the art of reconstructing a lost original from badly copied later manuscripts -- is a simple, straightforward read. But it is, quite simply, too short. New Testament textual criticism is a vast field. You need to know a lot about the manuscripts. You need to know about the early translations ("version") in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and other languages. You need to know about early authors who quote the Bible. You need to know the rules of criticism. You need to know about earlier attempts to reconstruct the New Testament text, and what they have taught us.

And this book just doesn't have room for it all. You get a brief outline of why we need textual criticism, and brief hints about the materials (not all of them accurate, particularly given what has been kicked up by computer analysis since Greenlee's time), and a few rules of thumb. But there is much more to be said. And this book doesn't do it. By all means, get it if you're willing to read other books as well. But if you're only going to own one book on textual criticism, this surely won't be enough to meet your needs.… (meer)

This is short book is very helpful, introducing the work of the textual critic for the layman. Ten chapters on topics ranging from the physical nature of ancient books and their production, through the major manuscript sources for the New Testament and the methods used to determine the original readings from the many (almost entirely minor) variations in the copies we have.

One really nice feature of the book is the numerous "worked examples" of these methods. Another is the bibliography, which drew my attention to the work of Omanson in making a more readable version of Metzger's NT Textual Commentary for the less initiated.

Greenlee concludes that the copies we have allow us to be sure that the manuscripts we know are true to the originals and can be considered the very word of God.… (meer)