New Testament Greek Vocabulary
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New Testament Greek Vocabulary Customer Reviews
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Good, but Not without Flaws
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Zondervan's The New Testament Greek Vocabulary package contains a vocabulary guide booklet and two audio CDs read by Jonathan T. Pennington. Its very simple, but effective, concept is to divide words into frequency groups of relatively the same size (about 40 words in each group). The booklet is a print version of the CD word lists, giving the Greek word and the English equivalent.
The obvious advantage of this tool is that one can work on their vocabulary under non-conventional circumstances. For example, many people have long commutes which make for a great opportunity to absorb new vocabulary words. Some types of work also allow for listening to CDs and not being distracted by them. Students can listen to the CDs while studying at home or in the library with headphones while following along with the booklet to complement what they hear with what they see. In the booklet is a large enough gap between the Greek and the English so that one can easily cover up the answers while trying to test themselves.
Unlike many of the popular language CDs available today, Pennington's work focuses strictly on vocabulary. There is no discussion of syntax, except in circumstances which distinguish a preposition's meaning based on its object's case. There are no situational, pre-constructed sentences to learn, such as, pothen ei su; ("Where are you from?"). A language's vocabulary words are the building blocks, and the mortar is its syntax. The mortar should be found in works like Mounce and Wallace, but one should not forsake the very important task of learning the vocabulary.
I presume that the majority of people using this tool are those first learning New Testament Greek. I found it odd that one of the first statements on the CD is, "This program is designed to help you master the vocabulary of KoinA Greek." Learning all the words contained in this package would not make one a master of the Greek New Testament's vocabulary, let alone "KoinA Greek" as the CD claims. It is important to make accurate claims about the language one is learning and the vocabulary in this program only focuses on the vocabulary of a collection of writings found within the wider body of KoinA Greek.
Also, there are certain problems related to learning a language from a CD. The alpha and the omicron are often indistinguishable. When the author says "ay" is it referring to e? ("if") or ? ("or," "either")? Especially if the student is learning new words, the best thing to do is to listen to the audio while following along with the book--at least for the first time.
All in all, the work is well-created. It is intriguing, however, that Zondervan can take two CDs and a little booklet that take relatively a short amount of preparation work (compared to a book) and charge $22.99 for it. In a perfect world this type of a product would come standard with the introductory grammars, but now I am asking too much. What also would be helpful is if Pennington produced a version for the less-common words of the Greek New Testament. Nonetheless, I would recommend the current version to anyone desiring to solidify their vocabulary of the Greek New Testament. |
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New Testament Greek Vocabulary Books In Print, Audio Books.