Title: Linguistics and New Testament Greek:
Key Issues in the Current Debate
Editors: David Alan Black & Benjamin L. Merkle
Genre: Linguistics / Biblical Studies
Pages: 288
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Future Publication Date: 11/2/2020 – Thank you to the editors and publisher for a free eARC through NetGalley. This is no way affects the content of the review.

When I was in seminary (10+ years ago), my favorite professor/mentor was Dr. Rod Decker who taught most of the Koiné Greek classes. He kept us up to date on the latest goings on in the world of New Testament Greek linguistics, because getting the most out of learning the biblical languages takes more than memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations. This collection of scholarly essays provides that kind of help for the intermediate Koiné Greek student (or pastor who is trying to keep current).

This book does require some knowledge of the subject matter and academic jargon. For example, expect sentences like, “This, Barber rightly argues, encapsulates the basic polarity between the active and middle voices, and it does so in categories that manifestly entail a difference in transitivity.” These essays come from presentations at a conference, so their overall tone is slightly more conversational that normal for an academic work, but they are still fairly dry overall.

Most of the chapters relate to one of three topics: linguistic theories, verbal tense/aspect, and the best way to teach/learn New Testament Greek. The authors are not all in agreement on some of the issues (e.g. the aspect of the perfect/pluperfect tense), so you get to see some scholarly interaction in those cases. I thoroughly enjoyed dipping back into the academic world, and picked up at least a few things that should prove helpful in my personal study. I would highly recommend this book to those with some knowledge of Koiné.