Con Campbell’s Advances in the Study of Greek – Book Notice (Gupta)

I’m going to level with you, I love teaching Greek, but real NT Greek buffs talk in such a strange technical language that I have nearly given up trying to follow the latest discussions. Thankfully – and mercifully – Constantine “Con” Campbell has come to the rescue with his new book Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for Reading the New Testament (Zondervan 2015).

Campbell introduces non-experts to the terminology and concepts that are debated and discussed in the study of NT Greek. For all intents and purposes, this is NT Greek Scholarship…For Dummies (like me). Campbell is the right person to write this because he is a great teacher and knows how to communicate things with helpful examples.

After a short overview of the history of Greek studies in the last 200 years (very insightful!), he covers subjects like linguistics, lexical semantics, deponency/middle voice, verbal aspect, idiolect/genre/register, discourse analysis, pronunciation, and methods and tips for teaching and learning Greek. The layout of the book is superb and Campbell offers just the right amount of information and then supplements with good bibliographies. This is not an intimidating book at all!

I am sure there are many like me who want to keep up with what is going on in Greek studies, but I often feel like the terminology is fuzzy and if I miss some of the core concepts, I simply can’t follow the debates and advances. So, I feel like I should bring Campbell’s book to SBL as a “cheat sheet”!

Definitely, all “armchair” Greek teachers like myself should have this book, and I note the added value that, in my scholarship, when I refer to Paul’s “idiolect,” I can turn back to Campbell’s book to make sure I am using the word/concept in a responsible way!