Alford's Greek Testament

[Enoch]

For a long time Alford's Greek Testament has been a favorite of mine. It was written back when (I think) young men emerged with an education where they could read Latin & Greek & were familiar with the classics. IMHO, those old boys knew better what a Greek sentence meant than most today.

 

 

. When I want to know, "What's It All About, Alfy," I open Alford on a NT passage. It is succinct. If one does not agree w/ Alf, usually he succinctly lays out the options. I think it would be a valuable commentary module. It is public domain. Alf prints the Greek text at the top of the page & then comments on it. He decides the textual critical questions in making his Greek text & has a textual apparatus, however written w/ probably different symbols in part from the UBS. He runs an English translation piece by piece in the text of the commentary. Even tho it is out of date, I still value his introductions to the books.

 

The old boy was somewhat Arminian (you can lose your salvation) & premillennial. I don't recall him saying anything about pre-trib or post-trib. But whatever ur theology, I think he is very helpful.

 

Incidentally, I think as a whole, Alf is more helpful than its successor, which was named something like The Englishman's Greek Testament, depending somewhat on which scholar did the various books in EGT.

 

There is one problem w/ Alf. Sometimes he will comment like this, "The Medieval monk, Gizziwig, explained this passage perfectly." Then Alf will procede to just quote him in Latin. Thus Alf wud be of more benefit to those who aren't Latin scholars by having the Latin comments translated into American. Alf's multi-volume commentary on the NT was also published in a fat English language edition. It may be that some of the Latin comments are put into English in that English version. A preliminary module offering could have both the Greek NT & the English edition of it.

 

At any rate, I wud find Alf a great convenience.

 

Edited February 20, 2011 by Enoch

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Reviving this thread to see interest.

[David Padfield]

I "cut my teeth" on Alford's Greek Testament and would love to have it in Accordance.