Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament with Scripture, Subject, and Greek Word Indexes Hardcover – June 2, 1997

This excellent grammar of Biblical Greek serves the intermediate-to-advanced student. It does not provide “grammar” in the sense memorizing the various forms of the nouns or conjugating the verbs. You should know those before starting this book. You should also have some familiarity with the traditional terminology of Greek grammar as you would learn in a first-year Greek textbook.Instead Wallace emphasizes grammar at the level of a sentence or two, particularly the way that Greeks used the genitive case or the subjunctive mood or conditional sentences. Wallace gives us eighty pages on the article alone, which turns out to reveal far more than eighty pages on “the” in English would. He is good about labeling his examples as clear, ambiguous, or exegetically-significant on grammatical grounds, and moderately good about acknowledging when scholars coming from different theological backgrounds might see a text differently. Orthodox and Roman Catholic views rarely appear, however, so most of those differences appear within the Protestant tradition, and seem to me more focused on intra-Evangelical differences.That focus at the sentence level means that Wallace tells you very little about what’s going on at the paragraph or chapter level. He leans toward listing the meanings of transition words, such as the ubiquitous δε, instead of working through the choices that authors make as they string sentences together into a narrative or a theological argument. At the intermediate level, students should begin to think about the flow of a paragraph or longer text. This would help them see which words or phrases the author wishes to emphasize, what information is assumed in a discourse (flow of sentences) and what is considered new (topics and comments), and other such issues.I would have liked Wallace to spend more time on such matters. He does explain why he tries to avoid the issue, largely because pragmatics (speech act theory) is not as well developed as syntax. Even so, he sometimes must discuss cases where a sentence means something other than what it grammatically means. Wallace very appropriately uses the example of “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt 26:39), which is formally a first-class condition but really an expression of agony. I understand that Wallace has far fewer good studies to draw from than he has in the case of formal grammar, but students should be primed to think this way. Done well, it would remind the intermediate student not to assume the literal meaning of a sentence.Wallace has linguistics background, which helps him see Greek in terms of comparative linguistics. It seems that scholars could do much more work on Koine Greek in terms of broader linguistic issues. The field of Koine Greek is more likely to reference ancient Hebrew, which is completely unrelated to Greek, than it is Latin or other Indo-European languages. Books on Classical (Attic) Greek, in contrast, rely much more on comparisons with Latin and essentially never mention Hebrew.I read the book straight through and found it very straightforward. That said, I have some linguistics background, so others may find it challenging. I now use it as a reference book, though at some point I’ll re-read it as review. I find it an essential park of my Greek language library.

First and foremost, this is truly not a beginner grammar.Others have critiqued it for being too detailed. They say this makes it too cumbersome for most people (not everyone, but most) to read from start to finish. They might be on to something in saying that, as I agree with the cumbersome bit, but most definitely not with the "too detailed" critique as that is its very strength and the reason they love it themselves (albeit without knowing or willing to admit that).It is most suited as a reference grammar: the volume you turn to after reading other grammars to solidify your knowledge and understanding. This is an indispensable volume to have if you are serious about a well-grounded understanding of NT Greek. Period.It highlights and elucidates one's prior understanding of Greek grammar in a manner that leaves you with the feeling of missing out if it wasn't consulted.The best way (I think) to use this Grammar is to do topical studies with it and not to attempt to read the whole volume cover to cover. That way, you get the most value and learn a lot. Dr. Wallace has done excellent work communicating most lucidly certain nuances of the language that might have hardly been observed, thereby bringing (more) light to one's understanding in the regard in which this tome has been consulted.It is a MUST-HAVE for any serious student of NT Greek. Period.

*The* intermediate biblical Greek grammar. I don't agree with everything Wallace says, but he presents it well and his thoroughness means that he will be considered seriously by most Greek scholars for decades to come.

Professor Dan Wallace's "Greek Grammar" not only furnishes an overwhelming amount of information for students, but could also easily serve as a launching pad for multitudes of scholarly work. Unlike the introductory texts that tend to have fixed rules, such as the declension endings, tense formatives or the square of stops (I'm using Mounce's terminologies here) with very few exceptions, "Greek Grammar" is an intermediate text where in some cases, there is no black and white rule of interpretation that perfectly applies to certain difficult passages of the Scripture; for example, the nuance of a train of participles in Eph 5:19-21 (p.651), whether they imply result or manner, and several other cases Wallace places under the heading of "debatable texts."One of the most brilliant and theologically significant exegesis that I have studied in this text is the analysis of the anarthrous per-verbal predicate nominative "theos" in John 1:1 (p.256-270). Here Wallace shows that this "theos," citing the statistical analysis done by Harner and Dixon, is qualitative, not definite. So what's the big deal? It is a huge deal. An interpretation of definite theos might be the source of the error of Sabelianism or modalism. The error of treating the word as definite is a result of misapplication; the converse application to be exact, which is an invalid use of Colwell's rule. Moreover, even less excusable is the error of interpreting the word as indefinite such as what the New World translators did, that Wallace describes as more of an issue of theological bias toward Arianism (p.267). So the apostle John wasn't arbitrary when he placed an anarthrous pre-verbal predicate nominative theos in John 1:1. "The construction the evangelist chose to express this idea was the most concise way he could have stated that the Word was God and yet was distinct from the Father." (p.269).Studying enormous amount of linguistic information could be challenging. I believe Wallace was trying to be fair in citing the academic works of many grammarians; classical and modern, as evident by so many footnotes discussing the references he cited from, before coming up with his own conclusion about his analysis on proper uses of particular topic in discussion. But while it is useful to know others' point of view, it could be confusing as well. I guess the trade-off is if Wallace is trying to be concise by only teaching what he believes to be the proper rules of interpretation without citing many references, the students will not get much exposure on both the historical background such as the classical versus Koine Greek uses as well as the past and existing research findings. I actually prefer this approach. On the contrary, Wallace seems to choose to mingle references with the materials which often causes more distractions to me; a clear example of which is when he talks about the approach adopted by Goodwin versus Gildersleeve when working with conditional sentences (p.705-709).In addition, while doing a superb job for the majority of the text in citing many New Testament uses and explain them when claiming a certain application of a Greek part of speech, there are two sections where Wallace does not do or barely does this; when covering prepositions (p.364-389) and clauses (p.657-665) where he seems to breeze through the section without including many examples at all. A subject that I wished Wallace includes more as well is the speech act theory that has to do with the pragmatic view in exegesis as opposed to structural and semantic view. He barely touches upon this subject in conditional sentence section (p.703). I guess the speech act theory seems to be of a higher plane of exegesis beyond semantic, and is reserved for an advanced study.Despite seemingly complicated divisions of the chapters and sections where a topic may have three or four sub-divisions, Wallace provides a double summary of everything he has covered at the end of the text. First, it is called a syntax summary that consists of the basic categories with definition but without examples. Second, it is called "cheat sheet" that consists of description of categories only; no definition and no examples; intended as a handy reference for students when doing exegesis. To use the cheat sheet, I would caution that one should know first what the categories are about. The cheat sheet is of little or no use when students are trying to determine what category an accusative they are reading falls under if they don't know or remember what double accusative means listed under "Accusative" section.Studying this text is exhausting. It took me seven months to complete. Perhaps studying it in a classroom experience is richer and more rewarding; something that I don't have the privilege of. I wish. But one thing for sure, that though I have studied the text end-to-end, I am not done with it. My head is way too small to contain all the materials Wallace teaches. There is always a need to review and most importantly, this text is a valuable reference, a must-have for me personally, I should say, for New Testament exegesis.