Learning Greek All Over Again

It is high time, my gentle snowflakes, that I made mention of what is, in my estimation, one the more important bibliographical events of the decade just ended for students of Biblical Greek: the publication of our friend Steve Runge’s Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2010).

Readers interested in getting a taste of what this truly groundbreaking grammar brings to the table may wish to peruse the 60-page sample that Steve has made available on his website.

Now it is no secret to frequent readers of this blog that the illustrious Steven Edward Runge, D. Litt., is not only the acclaimed author of the aforementioned work—he is also a devoted reader of The Voice of Stefan, and indeed, the gentlest of all my snowflakes. We may therefore be assured not only of his superior scholarly abilities, but also of his exceptionally good taste.

It is entirely in keeping with his well-earned reputation as a gentleman and a scholar that, cognizant of the feverish eagerness with which I anticipated its publication, Steve should have decided to send along an inscribed copy of his Discourse Grammar. For this, I am profoundly grateful. I have taken the liberty to reproduce below his manuscript inscription for your edification:

Beautiful, isn’t it? Far be it from me to point out, as I have so many other times, that I myself am no snowflake at all—gentle, noble, or otherwise; the gentlest of all my snowflakes simply can do no wrong.

Be that as it may, readers may have noticed that I have chosen some exceptionally ornate language to describe Steve’s Descriptive Grammar, and given my widely documented aversion to sycophantic blurbery, I feel that I must offer a personal word of justification for this.

My study of Greek, which for nearly 20 years has commanded my attention in a variety of settings, has been chiefly informed thus far by the more conventional historical and diachronic approaches common to grammars everywhere. As a result, I seem to be aware of a good bit of information on the history of the language, and can read, with various degrees of ease, a great deal of literature from the archaic to the late Byzantine periods. This is all very good, but I have long been aware, on the one hand, of the significant contribution that modern linguistics can make (and has made!) to the study of the Greek language, and on the other, of my woefully inadequate background on the subject in spite of some programmatic reading in the field. Particularly vexing has been to read time and again about the great promise of discourse analysis for the study of Greek grammar and the practice of exegesis, but to have precious little in the way of publications that corroborate and elucidate this claim. It is on this score that Steve Runge has bravely gone where few others have dared to venture, and as a result has offered us a substantial work that goes a very long way towards resolving this lamentable bibliographical deficit. For this, we all surely stand in his debt.

I have spent the better part of a month with the Discourse Grammar, and not infrequently, while reading one section or another, I have felt like I am learning Greek all over again. This is a wonderful and even exciting prospect, and I cannot help but to wholeheartedly recommend this book to every serious student of Biblical Greek.