Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament

by Daniel B. Wallace

Depth, accuracy, relevancy and up-to-date presentation make this intermediate Greek grammar the finest available. Written by a world-class authority on textual criticism, it links grammar and exegesis to provide today's second-year Greek student with solid exegetical and linguistic foundations.

Genres: Reference, Language, Theology, New Testament, Nonfiction, Religion, Christian

797 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

Wallace was earned his B.A.(1975) from Biola University, and his Th.M. (1979) and Ph.D. (1995) in New Testament studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. He also pursued postdoctoral studies in a variety of places, including in Cambridge at Tyndale House, Christ's College, Clare College, and Westminster College, and in Germany at the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, University of Tübingen, and the Bavarian State Library. Wallace, along with DTS colleague Darrell L. Bock, has been an outspoken critic of the alleged "popular culture" quest to discredit conservative evangelical views of Jesus—including the writings of Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman.

Reviews

[нєνєℓ ¢ανα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent approach and great performance. One of the best for learning a language and mixing with exegesis and hermeneutics alike!

[Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without a doubt, this is a book for referencing rather than reading cover-to-cover. Still, there's plenty of intriguing exegetical nuggets to reward the efforts of the idiot (read: me) who wants to curl up by the fire and read a 700+ page book on syntax.

[Hunter Hebenstreit · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible resource for study of the Greek New Testament, I can’t imagine having my third semester of Greek without it. Used in Greek 3 at Westminster Theological Seminary.

[Faith Key]

thank you wallace. i dont know how to rate a syntax book with regard to stars.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. Sometimes Wallace was wont to making extra categories for usage of the four cases (more for me to memorize!), but on the whole this is an extremely well researched and robust intermediate Greek grammer. Wallace corrects several incorrect presuppositions that have held us back in exegesis for decades (imperatives, conditional class sentences, etc.) and always provides pertinent examples from the NT, with debated texts and gracious commentary, for you to get your hands on. Learned a wealth of information from this book, and, obviously, it will continue to serve as an excellent resource/reference book.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exhaustive resource for anyone learning, or who knows Koine Greek. The genius of Wallace is that his book is so very well organized. There are charts, diagrams, and the tables of contents are laid out in such a way that it makes for easy reference when doing exegesis. He also provides a plethora of examples, and the indices in the back are extremely helpful. A must have for Greek students!

[Shep · Rating 5 out of 5]

An invaluable resource for the serious Greek student. This book presents syntax in a clear, accessible manner, enabling the Greek student to go beyond wooden word meanings in translation and into a more accurate, in depth understanding of the text. Highly recommended.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars because it is essential for Greek exegesis. I'll use it the rest of my life. Clearly written, entertaining at times, plenty of examples.

[Matthew Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phew! We're back once again with a textbook review. This book is the hardest course I have ever taken; intermediate Greek is no joke. What Wallace has produced here is an incredibly detailed and analytical look at the grammar and syntax of the New Testament. Every category has multiple examples, and chapters even delve into ongoing research and debates by Greek scholars. This book will sit on my shelf as a reference for future study, and I will find myself referring to it regularly. This is my first outing with Greek at this advanced level, so unfortunately, I have nothing with which to compare this book other than more simple grammar textbooks. I'm looking forward to more study in this area to compare and revisit this review.

The strengths of this book are the multiple examples, syntactical, structural, and semantic categories, and thoroughly researched categories. Even a brief read will highlight the overlap and difficulty in defining certain categories, but perhaps this is the nature of the fluidity of language. I would caution against diving straight into this from a beginner grammar. Having studied Greek for several years, I still felt out of my depth in this book. It's a very steep learning curve and requires you to have mastered the fundamentals and have a concrete understanding of vocabulary at least up to 50x, if not beyond. This is a textbook to teach you how to identify the subjunctive or the structure of a relative clause. Instead, the focus is on the semantic meanings of such constructions and the syntactical clues that allow one to conclude such a semantic meaning.

I would also recommend the workbook which I have reviewed separately. Although it is very challenging, it will help sharpen your New Testament exegetical skills and highlight, as I said above, that these categories often overlap and can be difficult to discern.

[Thomas Vidal · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s hard to write a review of a reference grammar; so, I’ll just tell you the things that I think make this book phenomenal. For anybody looking at this book, you likely already know that it is the canonical book used for teaching intermediate and advanced New Testament Greek. It has reached that status, I believe because of the following:

1. It is, not surprising a reference grammar, comprehensive. It covers the ground of NT Greek Grammar exhaustively.

2. Wallace is a great writer who explains things precisely. He works hard to be rigorously accurate.

3. It is vey well organized; so, you can jump right to material you need via the table of contents, indices.

4. It is chock full of Scriptural examples to illustrate the various points.

5. Where grammarians and linguists may have disagreements among themselves as to how to interpret a particular construction, Wallace points that out.

6. When work through a passage you are interested in translating, because of the sheer number of examples, you can almost certainly find that passage addressed in Wallace.

7. His selected bibliographies at the top of each chapter are excellent resources to dig deeper into the grammatical issues under consideration.

8. He’s of course, respectful of the text, which comes across clearly.

9. The grammatical summary section at the end of the book makes for a great starting checklist to build one’s own syntax notebook as one works with the Biblical text, or any other early Christian literature.

[Caleb]

Great read. Succinct, thought-provoking, well organized, and very helpful when getting into the nuts and bolts of Greek exegesis. My main complaint with regards to learning Greek is the overall philosophy of learning it. We spend a lot more time on grammar and exegesis than we do on getting used to "the feel" of Greek. Understanding the small details is good, but it tends to take students away from being in the text. Having learned other languages in the past, I can say that both are important to having a good grasp of any language. You have to know the small details, but they don't mean near as much to you until you can FEEL those small differences. It's more of the idea of absorbing a language through extensive reading and repetitive input, as opposed to learning rules and memorizing words to help you read a sentence. This grammar is a great book, but it would be even better if I had spent two solid years reading the Greek New Testament before I read it. Fortunately, this book isn't going anywhere and I can read it again whenever I want.

[RT · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very helpful textbook for intermediate Greek Grammar.
Wallace provides a relatively clear explanation of a grammatical understanding of the Greek language in the New Testament. To be sure, there are some portions where Wallace perhaps speaks as a true grammarian and linguist, and therefore complicates the discussion more than needed.
Perhaps one a the greatest strengths of this Grammar is the sample texts he gives when pointing to a specific discussion of grammar as to show what to look for in the New Testament. The format is also helpful to skim through the book to find what you’re looking for quickly. However, there’s a lot of wasted space in the book not used (but this does provide room for note taking!).

Overall, Wallace supplies the serious Bible student a great aid in their studies of God’s Word.

[Ethan McCarter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Organized, essential text for the Greek student moving out of 1st year studies. Well laid out, helpful examples and charts, and great information. It is a dry, tedious book yes, it is a book on grammar after all, but essential for the Greek exegete. You'll want the book for sure! But, perhaps not for light reading by the casual reader.

[Drew Van Gorder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read through this book during seminary to help me develop my understanding of the the finer nuances contained in the Greek language. It's extremely thorough and does an extensive look into the genitive case which I needed particularly when doing my independent studies in the New Testament.

[Isaac · Rating 5 out of 5]

A priceless treasure. I wish that there was an equivalent resource for Biblical Hebrew.

[Oliverboss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging.

[Joe Dunnwald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful if you are learning Greek!

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very useful reference work and quite readable.

[Michael Beck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still use it weekly to do exegesis. If you know the basics of Biblical Greek and exegete passages regularly, this is a must have.

[Stephen Buerger · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to say I "really liked it," but it well done.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great grammar book with lots of helpful examples and discussion.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent Greek grammar resource

[John Weis · Rating 5 out of 5]

2022-2024

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was always glad to walk into a seminar where Wallace was present, loved hearing his informed comments on any subject! So I always consult this text when digging into an exegetical question...

[Arthur George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be excellent, just what's needed for second year (and beyond) Biblical Greek at the university level. The book assumes that the reader/student already knows all the grammatical forms (not rehashing any of it) and goes from there. The focus is on how the grammatical forms (and some vocabulary such as prepositions) are used to give texts their precise meanings, so that a reader can properly interpret the biblical texts. Thus, with nouns, adjectives, and pronouns, much attention is devoted to the various categories of uses/meanings that each case (nominative, genitive,dative, etc.) can have. Similarly, for verbs the book has much detail on the nuances of tense, aspect, mood, and voice. The discussion on the uses of participles was especially helpful. The long discussion about the use of articles is also very useful, as are those regarding the various meanings that each single preposition and conjunction can have. Each of the discussions has ample examples from biblical passages illustrating the points under discussion, which is one of the best features of the book. In sum, this book is an essential investment for any serious advanced student of Biblical Greek. But it is not the kind of book that you can just read through. I found that I had to take in bite-sized chunks, just a few pages each day, and in conjunction with other aspects of my Greek study, in order to be able to absorb it well. Especially useful in parallel was translating whole chapters in the New Testament and identifying how the points that professor Wallace makes are reflected in each sentence, something I won't stop doing just because I've finished the book.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent reference and resource book. The book is laid out as a series of outlines making it easy and convenient for reference purposes. Each chapter starts with an outline of the chapter, highlighting the key terms and phrases for that chapter, and then at the conclusion of the book there is a more detailed outline of the entire book. This final outline provides a short explanation of all the key terms and phrases used in the book, so it is very useful for a person wanting a quick refresher on syntax. The user has been kept in mind during the creation of this book, with great effect.

The amount of research that has gone into this book is astounding. Mr. Wallace deserves a lifetime achievement award for doing and compiling a tremendous amount of research. His research is both historic and original, and in addition to his own research he provides an extensive bibliography for each chapter in case the reader/user of this book wants to do more self-study on any particular syntactical area of Biblical Greek.

The use of this book will give the reader a better understanding of the semantic range of translations, helping make sense of the wide range of translations available. In effect, it peels back the Biblical translation to see the undergirding meaning of the foundation upon which the translation is built.

Though sometimes tedious, the writing style is clear, and Mr. Wallace writes succinctly. This helps the reader make better sense of sometimes dense syntactical concepts. In short, this book is well worth the purchase price and gives the Biblical Greek student a wealth of information and understanding.

[Jesse Atkinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, a helpful book, but there are quite a few problems from which it suffers. Wallace does not do the best job of defining his terms at the beginning of the book, which can lead to some confusion further on. Also, he seems to enjoy multiplying categories that are, quite frankly, unnecessary. Also, there is on one or two occasions blatantly incorrect information concerning his (diachronic) view of the Greek language as it was used outside of the Koine period (e.g., in his discussion of the subjunctive mood he asserts that the infinitive was the more common way of showing purpose in classical Greek, which is simply not true).

All of this aside, however, the information in Wallace is generally reliable and helpfully explained (especially his section on Colwell's rule), and his use of scriptural examples for semantic and structural categories, along with his discussion of certain, exegetically important passages, is also very useful. As stated above, it is overall a helpful book and a fine aid for understanding biblical Greek.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have never picked up a book on biblical Greek, read "Basics of Biblical Greek" by William Mounce first. But this is the grammar book I go back to again and again. If I could only choose one Greek grammar I would be hard pressed to choose between Mounce and this book by Wallace, but this text would likely win out.

If you have not found the Scripture index in the back that allows you to look for a specific verse and find the page where the exegetical issues are discussed you have been missing out. The text is well laid out and as easy to understand as Greek grammar can be, but the real beauty of this work is Wallace's discussion of theological issues at stake in key passages which he uses as examples. Once you've read Mounce this should be the next book on your list. It is one of the few language textbooks that has not been left in peace to collect dust on my shelf once the course is over.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the grammer that I used during my intro exegetical sequence in Seminary. In many ways it is very helpful, which is why I gave it 4 stars. However, it has some strong weaknesses. I would prefer a verbal aspect theory approach to tenses, which this does not follow. It also has a tendency to create too many categories. For example (I'm guessing because the book is not in front of me at the moment), that he has something like 54 different uses of the genitive case. I think that is overkill. However, those things being said, it has been helpful and I still consult it quite often as a resource.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may catch some flack from Greek students, and I really must acknowledge that I am a mediocre Greek student. And I get that Wallace is the “who’s who” when it comes to intermediate Greek grammars, but this book felt like a bit of an information dump compared to other intermediate Greek grammars I have read. I’m sure it’s worth having as a reference book, but boy, oh boy, Wallace really loves talking about the Greek language.

It’s also worth noting that some might argue the grammar is slightly dated. Wallace spends a fair amount of time discussing deponency. Whether deponency is a feature of the Greek language or not something I care to understand, but Greek nerds should take note.