The Family
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 49, No. 1 – Fall 2006
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By John H. Dobson. 3rd ed. with accents. CD-Rom. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005. xii + 384 pages. Hard- cover, $29.99.
“Start reading meaningful verses from the Greek New Testament after just ONE HOUR of study!” touts the front cover—sounding like a weight-loss ad: “lose thirty pounds in one week with no exercise!” Interestingly, the front covers of the first two editions both say: “Begin reading the Greek text in 10 days.” Evidently, this third edition is turbo charged.
Yet, “an innovative, original way to learn!” on the back cover is on target in describing this course by long-time Greek teacher, Rev. John H. Dobson. This is not your father’s Greek course! It is, however, reminiscent to this reviewer of a somewhat similar method in Greek Signals: The Door to the Greek New Testament (1978) by Lacoste Munn and Bruce Corley. At the heart of Dobson’s method is an attempt to get a student to learn meanings from Greek words in various forms through repetition, with morphological terms and concepts not introduced until late in the course. Innovative and different are not necessarily bad in learning Greek, and Dobson’s teaching approach evidently has merit and has born fruit.
Thousands of students have learned Greek by this method, including those whose first language is not English, and this book has survived into a third edition. It has been translated into five languages, and there are plans to translate it into Chinese and Urdu (ix).
Changes in the third edition include more readable English and Greek fonts as well as the addition of Greek accent marks. Dobson added more reading material and training exercises—the third edition is seventy- one pages longer than the second edition. The audio CD-ROM now contains more material, covering lessons one through twenty-one (ix).
Greek teachers who employ the classic method of teaching Greek— using ending charts and paradigms—can benefit from using exercises from this book as well as Dobson’s clever Word Fun sections, using puns or plays-on-words to introduce vocabulary words (39, 47). Dobson gives a good emphasis on translating the meaning of the Greek phrase or sentence rather than striving for a simple word-for-word correspondence (14, 31, 83). His humorous warning against a naïve rush to find root meanings in Greek words for preaching and teaching is well taken (282). His hints for teaching biblical languages are insightful and helpful (351–57), even if occasionally cheesy: “Measure your forward progress in smiles per hour” (351). Unfortunately, there is an unnecessary emphasis on the need for gender-neutral translation (55).
How well a teacher favors this innovative approach to teaching Greek will no doubt be tied to how one learned Greek originally and how tied the teacher is to the classical method of teaching Greek. There are fifty-two lessons, and there are no grammatical terms or concepts introduced until lessons thirty-one and thirty-three (180–83, 198–99)! Other radical differ- ences from the classical method include: (1) little or no homework is expected (descriptive page 2, xi), which seems a dubious way to learn, (2) no rote memory of vocabulary is suggested, and nowhere do vocabulary words appear in the traditional lexical form (such as: nominative form, genitive ending, and gender indicator for nouns), (3) morphological explanations are not fully given until the end of the book, and they are inadequate and sparse (Reference Grammar and Accents, pp. 335–50), (4) tables and charts are almost non-existent, and noun cases are given in an unusual order: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, and then dative (pp. 337, 339), and (5) the Index of Greek Words (typically a mini-lexicon in most Greek Grammars) is cumbersome: neither giving the typical lexical entries (such as giving the six principal parts of a verb) nor a helpful definition; instead, it gives page numbers to refer the student back to the word’s first appearance in the text (pp. 369–84). This reviewer uses the classical method in teaching Greek, and sees these differences as likely problematic; however, other teachers may find them refreshing, helpful, and effective. Surprising for a third edition: two descriptive pages prior to the cover page contain four grammatical errors and a preponderance of passive verbs.
