Getting from elementary grammar to the point where you can comfortably read the Greek New Testament — that’s the goal, but how to get there is not always clear to students. The most important resolution one can make is to regularly pick up a text and read. There is no substitute for regular reading, but there are some tools specifically designed to assist your regular reading.

This week Accordance has released the nine published volumes of B&H Academic’s Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament. These nine volumes cover ten books of the GNT, and more are on the way.

• Matthew (2017) – Charles L. Quarles
• Luke (2016) – Alan J. Thompson
• John (2015) – Murray J. Harris
• Romans (2017) – John D. Harvey
• Ephesians (2016) – Benjamin L. Merkle
• Philippians (2015) – Joseph H. Hellerman
• Colossians and Philemon (1991 Eerdmans, 2010 B&H) – Murray J. Harris
• James (2013) – Chris A. Vlachos
• 1 Peter (2014) – Greg W. Forbes

The first time I read through the GNT I found Zerwick’s grammatical analysis very helpful, and these volumes are a more expansive, multivolume treatment of the same issues.

Exegetical Issues

What sort of questions do these commentaries answer? The primary purpose is to answer the questions raised by close reading and exegesis. Take a look at 1 Peter 1:18:

εἰδότες ὅτι οὐ φθαρτοῖς, ἀργυρίῳ ἢ χρυσίῳ, ἐλυτρώθητε ἐκ τῆς ματαίας ὑμῶν ἀναστροφῆς πατροπαραδότου,

As you look at 1 Peter 1:18, you might recognize εἰδότες as adverbial but wonder about the exact adverbial nuance. You expect it is causal, but before you say this to your class or write it in your exegetical paper or preach it from the pulpit you want to hear what someone else thinks. Forbes’ EGGNT volume speaks directly to this question. In the screen shot below you can see EGGNT in parallel with the Tyndale House Greek New Testament:

In the section of the commentary I highlighted, you will also notice that page numbers are included, which makes it easy to cite EGGNT in papers and notes. I’ll discuss another grammatical issue related to participles in the “extensive linking” section below, but let’s take a look at a broader issue the series tackles.

Interpretive Issues Directly Related to Greek

Let’s look at another example from Matthew 1:1:

Βίβλος γενέσεως Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ υἱοῦ Δαυεὶδ υἱοῦ Ἁβραάμ.

You might have heard that the first two words of Matthew are taken in several different ways by interpreters. What exactly does γένεσις (genesis) mean here? Quarles’ EGGNT volume discusses the range of meanings for βίβλος and γένεσις within scripture and outside scripture, and he then explains the meaning he finds most probable with the passage itself.

Not every interpretive issue is directly related to the Greek language, but this one is and Quarles does an appropriately thorough job speaking to the issue. Of course, you could could write an entire article on this issue or even a dissertation, but in a resource like this you want an overview of the issue and an informed opinion explained. That’s exactly what you get.

Extensive linking to other Greek Resources

I was really happy to see how thoroughly Accordance has added hyperlinks to other resources. In Quarles’ discussion of βίβλος you can see below that both the LSJ reference and the BDAG reference are linked (I’ve highlighted them to clearly point them out):

The linking is not limited to lexicons. The usual suspects are linked — scripture references, extra-biblical texts offered by Accordance, abbreviations — and especially noteworthy are the hyperlinked grammar sections.

If you turn to EGGNT for help with grammar and you want to research the issue further, you’ll be really happy to see that Accordance has tagged every reference to grammars like BDF, Robertson, and Wallace’s syntax.

Other Features

The features listed above are the ones I think are most important, but here are a few more features included in EGGNT.

Parsing

In the last picture above, as Quarles discusses Matthew 1:18 you will notice that each Greek word mentioned is parsed. Since you are accessing the text in Accordance this feature might seem redundant, but it is sometimes helpful to have another opinion in addition to the tagged Greek texts in Accordance.

Word/Phrase Function

You can also see that just within the one paragraph pictured above there are references to a participle functioning temporally, a dative serving as an indirect object, the function of a prepositional phrase, a note on the absence of a definite article, and reference is made to the way certain constructions function in classical Greek. So the series covers bigger picture grammatical concerns like the function of participle clauses, the minutia of parsing, and the way in which individual words and phrases function within clauses.

Intro Issues, Structure, Further Study

While introductory issues are not the focus of the series, each volume does discuss issues like authorship, setting, date, and structure. In the Matthew volume, Quarles closes the volume’s introduction with a list of recommended commentaries, but at the end of each passage there are also references to resources for further study of the particular passage just discussed. The last section of each passage has a homiletical outline, noting the general movement of each passage and how one might begin thinking about moving from text to sermon.

Conclusion

These commentaries are not designed to be advanced discussions of Greek grammar for specialists. They are for students. The goal is to fill in what is lacking when trying to move from elementary grammar to regular reading, teaching, and preaching. They serve this purpose well, and Accordance has done a great job tagging and linking these resources, making them much more useful and helpful to have digitally than in print. These are not the sort of book you are going to read from cover to cover. They are best purchased as digital resources you can access wherever and whenever your questions arise. I think Accordance is the best platform for such purchases.

The nine volume series is currently on sale for 50% off. Accordance’s normal list price is $199. This week you can get the series for $99.90.

If you have previously purchased these resources with another software, checkout Accordance’s crossgrade program. If you agree to keep the copy you purchased in another software, you can get the Accordance edition for $49.75.

Accordance has just released the first fully tagged edition of The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (THGNT) to appear in any Bible software. I’ve been reading the print edition since November, and I received early access to Accordance’s digital edition. In this post, I’ll explain what THGNT is, describe some of this edition’s unique features, and share some thoughts on how Accordance has created an electronic edition worthy of the thoughtfulness and care that went into the print edition of THGNT.

What is Tyndale House?

In my mind, it is a magical place where scholars go to study in an environment filled with rare and abundant resources — every book you could ever want and a host of brilliant people with which to drink tea and discuss your research. Here’s how they describe the initiative:

Tyndale House is a study centre focusing on advancing understanding of the Bible. Between forty and fifty scholars study here on a daily basis. Many PhD students from Cambridge University as well as other universities base themselves at Tyndale House during their studies and leading biblical scholars in all parts of the world have been formed at Tyndale House.

What is THGNT?

THGNT is a beautiful, affordable new edition of the Greek New Testament produced by Dirk Jongkind and an editorial team connected to Tyndale House.

Those three things alone — beautiful, affordable, and produced by a world class team of scholars — justify its existence. The font is beautiful, the apparatus is minimal but sufficiently helpful, and the text itself fills the pages in a single column format that makes reading immersive. To top things off it comes with a slip case and Smyth-sewn binding, all for about $25 at Amazon.

Aesthetics aside, the preface describes it this way:

This edition, based on a thorough revision of the great nineteenth-century edition of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, aims to present the New Testament books in the earliest form in which they are well attested. To do this it uses careful analysis of the scribal habits and typical transmission errors of individual manuscripts to establish which readings are likely to be prior.

As you read through this edition you will encounter words that are spelled a bit differently. We are accustomed to the spelling standardizations of other modern editions, but the editors of THGNT are committed to presenting the text as it is preserved in the earliest manuscripts. This means you will find forms like γείνομαι, instead of γίνομαι.

The commitment to following the tendencies of the early manuscripts leads to two other significant features. The editors break the text into paragraphs in a unique way, and they have ordered the NT books in a way different than modern editions. In THGNT, the books are ordered Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline corpus, and Revelation. This means that after the Gospels and Acts, you encounter James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude, and then Romans and the Pauline literature, followed by Revelation. As a matter of fact, the next edition in the Nestle-Aland series might order the books in a similar way.

There are other differences, and all these are explained in the book’s introduction found at the back of the book. These guys are serious about the reading experience. There is no hundred page introduction before you hit Matthew 1:1. When you open the cover, you see a title page, a table of contents, a one and a half page preface, and then you find ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ.

The Accordance Edition

Since mid November, I have tried to switch my daily NT reading from NA28 to the THGNT. One problem I have encountered is that so much of my daily reading happens outside my office. It might be by a fire pit with friends, while I’m waiting in line at a barber shop or coffee shop, or while students are taking a quiz. In these moments, I’ve had to fall back to electronic editions of NA28. Accordance has solved this problem with their release of the first fully tagged edition of THGNT.

Accordance has done a great job of enhancing the text with morphological tagging, adding links to all the manuscript sigla and numbers, and making the text accessible on the go. The morphological tagging allows you to easily see grammatical information about each word, search the text for all forms of a word, or jump quickly to lexicons in your library, like LSJ or BDAG.

Preserving the Paragraph Style

One of the coolest features of this digital edition is that Accordance persevered the print text’s unique way of presenting paragraph breaks. THGNT uses ekthesis, rather than indentation, to mark the first line of each paragraph. You can see an example of this in the pictures of the print edition above or at the bottom of this page. Accordance was able to implement a version of ekthesis in their digital edition without sacrificing too much space on smaller digital screens. Here’s a pic of THGNT beside NA28 on an iPhone:

Night Mode & Searching

The iOS app night mode is great in low light reading environments. Whether I’m on an iPad or iPhone, when I encounter a word that seems rare and want to see every occurrence in THGHT, all I have to do is long hold on the word, click search, and then select lexeme.

Here’s a picture of the search results for διοδεύω on an iPhone:

Apparatus with All Front and Back Matter

The Accordance edition includes two separate modules: the tagged text and the apparatus. In addition to the verse-by-verse listing of variant readings, the apparatus module also contains the full text of the preface and an introduction detailing the editions unique features.

Moving from THGNT to Mss Images

In the Witnesses section of the Introduction, clicking on a manuscript number takes you to the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforshung Virtual Manuscript Room. This website allows you to view high resolution images of the many NT manuscripts. Here is a video that shows moving from the text of THGNT on my iPad, to the witness section of the apparatus, to the INTF website, and to images of P10. The video has no sound if that’s a concern for you:

In the video, I started in the THGNT text of Romans 1 and noticed a mention of P10 in the apparatus:

At this point, I opened the Apparatus module and navigated to the Witnesses section:

Clicking on P10 in the Witnesses section takes me to the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room:

This website provides more information about the manuscript, but if you click on the pages tab you will see a link to images of P10:

Finally, clicking the manuscript twice will open a beautiful, high-res image of P10:

THGNT & the Accordance Internal Web Browser

I primarily use iOS products, but the Accordance desktop app provides additional features. You can use Accordance’s new internal web browser to move from the linked apparatus to manuscript images with just a few clicks:

Here is a picture of THGNT in the desktop app and the internal web browser:

Comparing Texts

On the desktop app, you can use the compare text feature to find differences between THGNT and NA28.

Finally, Accordance has preserved one of the key benefits of the print edition: affordability. The retail price of Accordance’s electronic edition matches the retail price of the print volume, and for the time being you can buy THGNT in Accordance for the introductory price of $19.90.

Conclusion

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience provided by the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, both in print and in Accordance. The Accordance edition is morphologically tagged and searchable. It preserves the unique paragraph style of the print edition, and the apparatus links allow users to see many high-res images of the manuscripts themselves. Finally, it is affordable. THGNT presents a text that allows readers to step a little closer to early manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, and in light of the features described above, I think editors and readers of the print volume will be pleased with Accordance’s electronic edition. I certainly am.

For more information on THGNT, visit https://www.thegreeknewtestament.com.

For more information on interesting variants found in THGNT, visit the THGNT blog.

Accordance THGNT product page: regular price $39.90, sale price $19.90

Whether you are in Boston or not, for the next twenty-four hours you can pick up two new Accordance Greek resources at an introductory discount. These are a part of their SBL/ETS sale. The best part: both are very affordable!

Gregory of Nyssa’s Great Catechism

The Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity states that Nyssa wrote The Great Catechism around AD 385 and describes it as “a work of his maturity … a doctrinal summa for teachers who needed a system in their instructions” (vol. 2, p. 184).

This type of resource is great for those of us who are more interested in digging through lexicons and working through texts in original languages but are aware that we should be reading more theology (at least a little, right?). Here, you get early Christian theology in Greek!

Along with the Greek text, the Accordance module comes with an English translation and notes containing a few cross references to scripture and other portions of the catechism.

Check it out here.

Whitacre’s Patristic Greek Reader

This is the one I’m most excited about because I tend to spend more time in biblical and classical Greek. Having this reader’s text in Accordance allows me to get a taste of post-NT Greek during down moments when I’m out and about.

In the Accordance module, the reader’s notes are accessible via verse reference hyperlinks. For example, in the second picture below, by clicking 1:3 the notes for that verse appear in the information window. You can click the hyperlink in the top right of the information window to jump to the notes section, which is something you might want to do ocassionally because all the resources Whitacre mentions, like BDAG or LSJ or Wallace’s Greek Grammar, are hyperlinked. You can navigate to them in your Accordance library with a click (if you own them, of course).

Another great feature of the reader is that the texts are arranged from easy to more difficult. The reader is designed to help students with one year of NT Greek study move into more difficult texts.

I’ll post more thoughts as I’m able to spend some time with these resources.

Check it out here.