This week’s Featured Resource is Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People, by Constantine Campbell.
Overview
Constantine Campbell is a lead contributor on the latest discussions concerning verbal aspect theory and has put his knowledge of the language to good use with his most recent book on Union with Christ. Not only is Dr. Campbell worth noting because he is a highly proficient Greek scholar and professor, but he is also jazz musician who knows the value of practice and hard work and uses these insights to inform his approach to maintaining your knowledge of the language. With excellent reviews from Craig L. Blomberg, J. I. Packer, Daniel B. Wallace, and my personal Greek hero: Kenneth Berding, there’s no going wrong with this helpful little resource.
Dr. Campbell’s book is a total of 90 pages and seeks to inform former students and future pastors/scholars/laymen how not to let their hours of hard work and preparation go to waste. The book provides encouragement and accessible guidance on how to take the plunge to get back into the routine of studying and reading the New Testament in its original language in a way that not only acknowledges the difficulty of maintaining your Greek, but also the benefit and payoff it has for those who desire to immerse themselves in a deeper study of the Bible. Though this book is particularly designed for students of Koine Greek, an added bonus is that the basic strategies provided can be applied to any biblical language.
Contents
The tools and habits promoted in this book can be enforced early on. However, since it is geared toward maintaining your Greek and not so much learning the language, it is designed for those who have at least the first year of Greek down.
The book begins with an encouraging introductory chapter on the importance of why Greek makes a difference and is followed by 10 chapters of basic strategies. These include tips like: why you should burn your interlinear, how to better learn and maintain vocabulary, and how to use those Bible software tools wisely.
Each chapter is divided up into two sections. The first includes Dr. Campbell’s portion and the second includes blog responses to the chapter and Dr. Campbell’s responses to these posts. Though this may sound like a peculiar approach, it is rather helpful as you will often find questions and comments that have been raised during your reading of the chapter.
The last few pages of the book also contains a list of helpful resources for general studies in Greek, reading Greek, vocabulary training, and parsing software.
Much of what the book is saying isn’t rocket science, but it is helpful to have all of the tips in one place and communicated in a tone that demonstrates the usefulness of regaining and retaining your knowledge of the language. The best part about it is that it is short and sweet and you finish it encouraged and not bogged down by guilt or intimidated by the work ahead. By the encouragement of Dr. Campbell: “Keep your Greek for your own understanding of God’s Word”; “Keep your Greek for the sake of others.”