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

Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. By Daniel B. Wallace. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996, xxxii + 797 pp., $39.99.

Daniel Wallace has invested here an enormous amount of labor, all of it marked by an obvious love for the NT and its language, for students, and for exegesis. Though not intended to be read cover to cover (certainly not at one sitting!), this volume, even when read cover to cover, maintains an upbeat enthusiasm for its subject, a subject that easily could (and in other treatments does) foster tedium and pedantry. Designed as a classroom teaching text (with instructions to teachers, pp. xviii-xix), it will probably function most often as a reference tool. Numerous nearly verbatim repetitions (e.g. pp. 64, v, and 79, n. 21; pp. 88 and 103-104 on 1 Tim 1:17; pp. 113, n. 111 and 117, n. 125; pp. 499-500 and 556-557-to list a few) enable one to dip in almost anywhere and find cogent information.

Justifying the book as a secondary grammar specializing in exegesis, Wallace provides from the NT hundreds of example texts (all given both in Greek and in English). Many of them are by intention either ambiguous or exegetically significant, and many of these are discussed further, some at considerable length, and frequently with insight and helpfulness. The subtle contrast between the aorist and imperfect of (ex)erchomai at John 4:30, for example, gives point and power to Jesus' call to his disciples to lift up their eyes, for the approaching Samaritans are white for the harvest (p. 545).

Charts and graphs, statistics, "user-friendly" definitions, the development of contextually based semantic situations for a multitude of syntactical categories-all these contribute to the book's practicality for both teacher and student alike. Typical of the many diagrams is one illustrating the use of the article (p. 231) or that depicting the ambiguity in the semantic overlap of purpose and result participles (p. 638). A simple scheme of marginal symbols highlights material appropriate to lower, intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency. The treatment of the various syntactical phenomena is organized with priority on structural rather than semantic categories, since most users will come to the book with decoding rather than encoding questions. The some 700 pages of discussion are condensed into a handy summary nearly 40 pages in length, followed by a five-page "cheat sheet" outlining in order the syntactical categories and subcategories covered. A Scripture index concludes the book. The various individual sections provide useful, up-to-date bibliographies of mostly English-language resources, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of footnotes nuance the discussion.

Fully 90% of the space is devoted to the syntax of words and phrases (pp. 31-655), and only 70 pages to the syntax of the clause. The reason: Basic categories of clause structure are treated in the earlier material. Under words and phrases, Wallace divides the subjects into subsections for nouns and nominals (pp. 31-389) and for verbs and verbals (pp. 390-655). The material on nouns and nominals is treated under the rubrics of the cases (after a useful discussion of the relative merits of the five-case and the eight-case systems, he adopts the former [pp. 31-35]), the article, adjectives, pronouns and prepositions. Verbs and verbals are handled under person and number, voice, mood, tense (dealing here all too briefly with the hot issue of verbal aspect [pp. 499-504]), the infinitive and the participle. The larger text-grammatical view offered by some forms of discourse analysis is, disappointingly, not considered-though this is probably wise, as Wallace himself argues (p. xv), since it is a topic that deserves (soon!) its own full-length NT-based treatment.

Among the book's many strengths, a few may be singled out for special mention. (1) Many of the syntactical categories are analyzed not only in terms of form and function, but also in terms of their patterns of usage. We learn, for instance, that the "instantaneous imperfect" is virtually restricted to the verb elegen in narrative literature (p. 542); that a participle of means" is frequently used with vague, general, abstract, or metaphorical finite verbs," since it explains the verb (p. 629); or that prepositions with accusative or dative nouns are usually used adverbially, whereas those with genitive nouns are more naturally adjectival (p. 357). Such information enhances the reader's understanding of the category under consideration. (2) Wallace's treatment of the verbal system is current with the recent advances in the understanding of verbal aspect promoted by S. E. Porter, B. M. Fanning and others. In fact the book is dedicated in part to Fanning. Yet Wallace is critical in his use of these advances, and quotes with approval M. Silva's warning against overly rigid theories (p. 511, n. 45). Repeatedly, moreover, Wallace lays emphasis on the fact that mood and aspect (in particular) represent the speaker's or writer's portrayal or representation of reality rather than reality itself (e.g. pp. 443-445, 503-504). Nevertheless, the multiplicity of types of presents, imperfects, aorists, etc., is as bewildering as ever. (3) Under the treatment of the article, there is an extensive and very helpful discussion of Colwell's rule and the Granville Sharp rule, together with advice for applying them responsibly in exegesis (pp. 256-290). (4) Pertinent warnings may be found throughout: Against overinterpretation of prepositions (pp. 359-360), gender (p. 338), or any grammatical category (p. 515, n. 5); against confusing conditional sentences with their converse or reverse (pp. 685-686); or against reading one's theology into the syntax (e.g. p. 574).