Neotestamentica

David L. Mathewson is associate professor of New Testament, and Elodie Ballantine Emig is instructor of New Testament Greek at Denver Seminary in the USA. The rationale for the book is to incorporate modern linguistic developments in an intermediate-level Greek grammar, to serve as an accessible textbook for students, professors, and pastors. As the authors say, “We have particularly endeavored to make accessible to students advances in the areas of verbal aspect theory, the voice system, conjunctions, as well as linguistic and discourse studies” (xvi). Part of their project is to keep grammatical labels and categories to a minimum and to expose students to a very broad spectrum of NT texts. This book is clearly also an act of piety. “As authors,” they write, “we are committed to the authority and inspiration of Scripture” (xviii–xix). They have produced this book as a labour of love for the Greek text of the NT, as well as its usage in translation and preaching within the church. So, inevitably, as you read the book, you are exposed to the theological sensibilities of North American evangelical Baptist Christianity as much as you are exposed to Greek grammar. Generally speaking, however, their views are balanced and nuanced.

All in all, thirteen chapters cover various aspects of Greek grammar in a systematic way. The authors are to be commended for writing in a way that students will easily follow and understand. Their explanations throughout are clear, concise, and facilitate easy learning. Each aspect of grammar is elucidated by multiple examples of quoted biblical text. Students will especially appreciate the authors’ efforts to keep labels and categories to a minimum. According to Mathewson and Emig, theological content must not be mined from individual words or grammatical contexts, but from the broader context of any text (e.g., xvii–xix, 16). Part of their [End Page 408] “minimalist” approach is that we need to distinguish “between the semantics (meaning) of a given grammatical unit and its pragmatic function in various contexts” (xxi). For example, when they discuss the five cases, without denying the usefulness of refined case labels, they prefer to keep it simple and insist that the different labels (e.g., to see τὴν πίστιν τοῦ θεοῦ variously as a subjective genitive, objective genitive, possessive genitive, or genitive of source) are not the meanings of the cases, “but reflect the different contextual realizations of the meanings of the case forms” (2). Language is something intuitive and does not follow set rules. This simplification of labels and categories the authors follow throughout the book, including, for example, verb tenses in which labels such as progressive present, iterative present, inceptive imperfect etcetera, are not utilised at all (117). Basically, for Mathewson and Emig, it is about fewer labels, but also to demonstrate that any grammatical unit can have multiple pragmatic applications depending on the context. Each aspect of grammar also ends off with a “For Practice” section in which a substantial portion of text is given.

One problem with the book is the authors’ undying commitment to “verbal aspect theory.” “For much of the twentieth century,” Mathewson and Emig write, in agreement with Stanley Porter and others, “grammarians of NT Greek understood Greek verb tenses to communicate two things: kind of action (known as Aktionsart) and the time of action (past, present, and future) in the indicative mood” (111–112, emphasis original). But according to verbal aspect theory, “the Greek verb tenses do not indicate the kind or even the time of action, but how the author chooses to conceive of or view the action. Aspect concerns the author’s perspective on an action” (112, emphasis original). The authors do acknowledge that not all grammarians agree with the basic tenets of verbal aspect theory.¹ Even so, for all intents and purposes, for the authors time is a non-issue in the Greek tenses. Time is primarily indicated by other...