Book Review: The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek

The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek: Grammar, Syntax, and Diagramming. By Douglas S. Huffman. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications. pp. 112. 2012. ($16.99 Paperback)

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4.5 Stars

I took two back-to-back semesters of New Testament Greek in 2012 and have found that keeping up with it is not as easy as I had hoped. The books are big and thick, and remembering all those tenses, irregular verbs, and grammar is a little daunting at times.

I recently had a chance to read and use The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek by Douglas S. Huffman, which turned out to live up to its name: I found it very handy. It covers pretty much everything that was covered in my two semesters of Greek, from grammar and syntax to diagramming, which turned out to cover more methods than I studied in class.

The book is definitely aimed at people who are into their second semester of Greek and beyond. Personally, I would have liked to have had it with me while I was studying for my tests and preparing for translation. The small size and easy-to-understand notes make refreshing my memory a lot easier than trying to browse through my couple-hundred page grammar textbook.

Although it seems somewhat paradoxical to state it, the little book is very thorough. Huffman outlines many of the uses of the various tenses, which comes in “handy” when trying to determine the way a given word or phrase should be rendered that uses the genitive or dative case.

My lone criticism of the book is its color scheme (see picture to the right). The book uses an orange theme for all of its charts, but the background and font colors do not always contrast well enough for easy viewing. I have nothing against using an orange color theme, but it would have been more beneficial to this reader to have more contrast in the charts. Despite this flaw, I would highly recommend this book for anyone studying New Testament Greek or brushing up on the language.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.