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Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament


Lorinda H. M. Hoover

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I was fortunate enough to be at my alma mater early this summer and was able to check out some books on Acts for a preaching series I'm doing. One of the books I found was Acts: A Handbook on the Greek Text. I've found it very helpful when I've had questions about syntax, etc. Turns out it's part of a series, although the series appears to not yet be finished.

 

I'd love to have this kind of resource available.

 

Lorinda

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This is one of the best sort of resources for which to have access in a tool like Accordance when you're doing language study. It ought to be high on the acquisitions priority list!

 

Of course I've slightly prejudiced, reasons for which you can see here (and also get a bit bigger look at the Baylor series):

 

http://www.ntresources.com/mark.htm

 

:)

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is one of the best sort of resources for which to have access in a tool like Accordance when you're doing language study. It ought to be high on the acquisitions priority list!

 

Of course I've slightly prejudiced, reasons for which you can see here (and also get a bit bigger look at the Baylor series):

 

http://www.ntresources.com/mark.htm

 

:)

 

I agree! I have the Handbook on Ephesians in this series- Quite helpful!!

 

Elliot T.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I used the handbook for the hebrew of Amos for my Hebrew 3 class and it was wonderful! Would love to get the series into Accordance.

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  • 2 years later...

I'd like to add my voice to those requesting this resource be acquired at your earliest convenience. Rod Decker is by no means the only outstanding Greek NT scholar working on a title--the list includes a number of marque names who have established benchmarks for scholarship generally, as well as in the areas of NT Greek linguistics. The sooner Accordance can incorporate this series into its offerings, the better.

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I have used the volume on the 1, 2, & 3 John and found it very helpful. I would love to have this series in Accordance.

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  • 1 year later...

Greetings!

 

I too would greatly appreciate and profit from Accordance adding the BHGNT series. This is the type of commentary series--one dedicated to grammar/syntax--that Accordance users would utilize often. Has there been any discussion on this from the Accordance team?

 

-Chance

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  • 4 months later...

I would like to see this series proposed as a module on accordance as well. It seems like one of the best ressource both to continue studying Greek with the Biblical text and for exegesis.

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Yes these would be nice to have, though the series is yet incomplete. It would also be a series which would be nice to be able to acquire piecemeal.

 

Thx

D

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I'm not sure there's quite another series like it. NIGTC comes close, but the detail of grammatical/syntactical discussion in the Baylor Handbooks tends to be greater. Individually available volumes is a good idea, Daniel.

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I'm not sure there's quite another series like it. NIGTC comes close, but the detail of grammatical/syntactical discussion in the Baylor Handbooks tends to be greater.

I've not seen a BHGNT in the flesh but they appear to be like the EGGNT but when I last looked at comparing them I got the impression Baylor might be the better of the two, but as I say I've not compared them. Have you, by any chance, Abram ?

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I'm sure it will vary from volume to volume, but in general the EGGNT seems more thorough. See this sample chapter on James, for example (PDF).

 

I've used Marry Harris's Colossians volume in EGGNT, and it's excellent, though I haven't compared it to Baylor's recently released Colossians.

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I have the James volume in EGGNT and it is certainly very detailed, but I've nothing to compare it to. I'll have to look at Baylor. And I would agree it's bound to vary a bit. The key thing I prefer in BHGNT is that I believe they preface the explanations with a complete printing of the passage where EGGNT doesn't. I assumed that was a feature of the series but I could be wrong. Now I remember. I looked at Amazon and they had a look inside on one 2Peter or 1 Peter I think. I think I'll have to get the BHGNT on James and compare them.

 

Thx

D

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Hi All,

 

I'll take the liberty of inserting an EGGNT BHGNT comparison in here. I would put it on the Acc product pages as a review but neither is yet an Acc product. I hope this is helpful to those looking at these sorts of works.

 

My copy of James BHGNT arrived yesterday and I spent some time comparing layout, content and basic orientation and a little of the commentary. The BHGNT is by A.K.M. Adam, the EGGNT by Chris A. Vlachos.

 

Most noticeable, and this relates to my age no doubt, the type is smaller in the Baylor, and it's is just small enough to be noticeably more tricky to read. Thankfully my arms are still long enough to get the type in focus. :) The EGGNT type is a bit larger. EGGNT uses a white page whereas BHGNT uses an off white which I usually prefer and with a larger type it would be very nice.

 

Neither volume is large but the EGGNT is 225 pages to 122 of the Baylor. This of course is compensated for by a somewhat denser layout in the Baylor.

 

Both series are clearly aimed at the same purpose - detailed discussion of the Greek text from a morphological and syntactical viewpoint. In this regard one point brought out explicitly in the BHGNT series introduction is worth commenting upon. Apparently there has been some scholarly discussion/argument over the issue of deponency. BHGNT. Finding the arguments in favor of dropping the label deponent convincing the BHGNT tends to treat and discuss them as middles. I've not studied these arguments so cannot comment on the merits of this, but "deponent" has an entry in the EGGNT grammar index while it does not in the BHGNT.

 

Introductory material differs also not unnaturally. The BHGNT/Adam introduction is very brief discussing provenance, style, and authorship very briefly. The one thing dealt with in some detail is the possible impact of Stoicism and thus understanding James and Hellenistic Judaism with an admixture of Stoicism. I'd have to work on that to make anything much of it. He goes on to discuss existing commentaries on James, older and more recent, naming a few for reference.

 

Vlachos by contrast spends a couple of pages on authorship theories, three quarters of a page on dating and about half a page on "occasion and purpose". He devotes a further page to recommended commentaries listing some five older and five more recent works.

 

Actually verse by verse coverage is attacked in a slightly different way in each.

BHGNT begins each chunk (usually a set of verses) with an English translation of the collection of verses. Following that is each verse in Greek followed by discussion of the text. The discussion tends to be taken word by word given morphological information in most cases. Short phrases are treated together as one expression but in general the BHGNT/Adam seems to break things up into smaller pieces than EGGNT/Vlachos does. It is not that EGGNT/Vlachos does not discuss the detail but the break down is generally to about the phrase level for the purpose of discussion. To me that makes pretty good sense. BHGNT/Adam is not really laid out in chapters but rather chunks of Greek verses with commentary follow one another. EGGNT/Vlachos by contrast treats each chunk as a chapter each with a heading such as ""Address and Greeting 1:1" or "The Testing of the Faith (1:2-18)" and so on. He then provides an introductory paragraph on a subset of the verses to be considered and then launches in to the verse by verse and phrase by phrase discussion. Most of these structural elements would established for the series.

 

The actual phrase by phrase, or word by word, analysis which is likely the reason you bought either work then follows. Here you will find morphological information, discussion of morphological possibilities where plausibly applicable alternatives exist, and syntactical discussions. You will want access to a decent syntax grammar for terminology and details on syntactical forms. Handily BHGNT/Adam includes a glossary at the back. Of course what each author chooses to discuss for any given verse and phrase varies. I've compared a few examples and they do not differ especially sharply but I've not done an exhaustive comparison. I should note also that one nice feature of EGGNT is that where a phrase may support various grammatical these are then listed with a translation of each, and if the author has an express opinion that is indicated. This is a big deal actually for someone trying to move beyond basic Greek and get to the point of understanding constructions in Greek as they read. That is not to say that BHGNT does not discuss alternatives but they are not called out so deliberately in this manner.

 

Finally, bibliography. In EGGNT every chapter closes with a "Further Study" section listing additional works to consult for more details on aspects of the verses just covered. By contrast BHGNT does not. There is a bibliography in the back which is some four pages, but is not annotated and is not in any particular way linked to verses considered at any point. Of course BHGNT/Adam does make references in text to works you should consult but again its not a structural feature of the series. And EGGNT/Vlachos has a very large number of references. I might add that these are mostly not grammatical references but commentaries or papers or works on aspects of the verses considered. But for example at the end of the section Jas 2:8-13 we have three subsections of further study, James and the Law(2:8), The Love Command (2:8) and Mercy (2:13) each listing some half dozen works.

 

Regarding applicability to Accordance I would say that given that they are verse based and that one might have the GNT text in parallel with this commentary, along with various English translations and lexica and grammars that either would be well suited to being an Acc tool. And apparent shortcomings such as having ready reference to the Greek as a whole chunk (EGGNT) would be remedied by that. In addition I could imagine bibliographical items linking to any existing Acc resources. Font sizes and so on will obviously be configurable in Acc.

 

So having done a somewhat cursory look at volumes from each series on the same book, I would tend to concur with Abram that EGGNT appears the more detailed and thorough. Grammatically you will get similar things from each I suspect though specific cases will vary. There is more reference and ancilliary material in EGGNT/Vlachos which may interest some people. Overall if I had to choose one series I would probably go with EGGNT but I'll probably cross check between these two volumes as I read James (which curiously isn't even what I'm studying right now) as they will no doubt highlight different things. It's certainly the case that one could learn much from either series.

 

And as an aside, the reason why I think that one would want to be able to buy these books on an individual basis is that once one has studied the text of one work a lot of what one has learned will transfer and the need for a similar work on another book written in a comparatively similar manner will be diminished. Of course given the variety of Greek in the NT one could benefit from having several which comment on different types of writing. In particular I am interested in the as yet unpublished volume on Hebrews where the Greek can be a challenge. I'll note also in passing that Baylor has a similar series for the OT Hebrew (BHHB) whereas at the moment I don't believe B&H do. And alas not all volumes yet exist - EGGNT on Hebrews not before 2016 I'm told.

 

Thx

D

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  • 2 months later...

Since the Baylor (i.e., BHGNT) series is available in Logos, is there any reason why it has not been made available for Accordance?

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  • 7 months later...

Yes, this would be great to have in Accordance.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I would by BOTH right away, when/if they become available in Accordance. These kind of commentaries are a great help.

 

In regards to BHs series, is it correct that only three volumes have been released?

 

They are not available in logos (yet), but since the Baylor ones are, it should be possible to have them soon, or?

 

Morten

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We are working on getting the Handbooks, but no word on when they might be available.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

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