David Alan Black and Benjamin L. Merkle, eds. <i>Linguistics and New Testament Greek: Key Issues in the Current Debate</i>

This edited volume is the result of a conference held at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in April 2019. The aim of the conference, and the book, is to acquaint students with current critical issues in New Testament Greek studies. The book succeeds in introducing the major issues surrounding Greek in New Testament studies today.In the preface, David Alan Black, coeditor and conference co-organizer with Benjamin Merkle, provides the current scenario of biblical Greek studies, identifying several problematic areas, including apprehension of new models and continued disagreements in subjects like verbal aspect and Greek pronunciation. In spite of these problems, Black sees much positivity and more agreements than the often-highlighted disagreements, such as the increasing acceptance of modern linguistics and models of understanding the Greek language.The first chapter is by Stanley Porter on linguistic schools that have had some sort of impact, advertently or inadvertently, on Greek language studies. It is an apt first chapter in establishing key schools and methodologies that underlie the variety of approaches to Greek. He observes that identifying one’s linguistic framework when approaching Greek studies is far more important than the student may realize, especially since every approach to Greek betrays some sort of an underlying framework.Constantine Campbell, in the second chapter, addresses one of the most commonly discussed and hotly debated topics in Greek studies, verbal aspect and tense. After tracing a brief history of aspect in Koine Greek, including a discussion on Aktionsart, Campbell identifies some of the major commonalities and differences among Koine Greek scholars regarding aspect. For instance, most agree that aspect is the dominant category of the Greek verb; the debate is whether or not tense is also an applicable category.The third chapter is on the perfect tense-form by Michael Aubrey. He begins the chapter by problematizing the complexities of learning Greek grammar, especially for first- and second-year Greek students, and offers an approach to “equip students with the tools to evaluate alternative approaches on their own” (p. 56). Two important concepts for Aubrey in his approach are event structure and transitivity, although it is unclear how some of the categories are to be determined, such as high vs. low transitivity. There also seems to be a conflation between lexical stativity and aspectual stativity in the explanation of stativity.Chapter 4 is on the middle voice by Jonathan Pennington, who explains the challenge against deponency as a category. His autobiographical survey in the beginning of the chapter is helpful to see the journey by which he came to see the illegitimacy of deponency, arguing that the function of the middle voice grammaticalizes subject-affectedness or involvement.Chapter 5 is by Steven Levinsohn on discourse analysis. While acknowledging various approaches to linguistics (and thus discourse analysis), Levinsohn admits to using a Prague School approach. The chapter focuses on discourse structure, including analysis of constituent order, conjunctions, and the perfect tense-form, stating that the meaning of these elements should be distinguished from their “overtones,” although it is unclear exactly how the reader is to identify these overtones. Furthermore, while admitting to a Prague School approach, Levinsohn’s approach also reflects a typological approach, as he states that “New Testament Greek discourse studies can benefit greatly from advances made by linguists who are looking at discourse features in other languages (and especially if the language concerned is also aspect-prominent)” (p. 110; italics mine).Chapter 6 is on constituent order in Greek by Steven Runge, who tackles the long-debated question of word order. After providing a brief survey of the main views, he agrees with most traditional grammarians’ understanding of VO or VS as the default word order. He introduces Levinsohn’s Natural Information Flow (NIF), which identifies elements of a sentence that is established versus new (some may term this Given vs. New). Utilizing Levinsohn’s “default ordering principles,” Runge spends the bulk of the chapter providing illustrations of these principles, or examples of violations of these principles.Chapter 7 is on living language approaches by Michael Halcomb. After distinguishing between living and dead languages, the bulk of the chapter is a survey of various approaches to learning languages throughout modern history, both dead and living. Halcomb concludes by describing his early negative experiences in learning Greek and lamenting the decline of interest by students in taking Hebrew and Greek courses, attributing the decline to a lack of pedagogical relevance for students today. He argues that a “more holistic and embodied approach is needed” (p. 166; italics original), but there is no identification of what this approach might entail.Related to this is chapter 8 on Greek pronunciation, a topic that can generate some strong opinions on some online forums. Randall Buth advocates for the importance of Greek pronunciation as critical to the process of reading (however, as a counterexample, speed reading maximizes comprehension while minimizing pronunciation). He states that reconstructing a phonemic analysis of Koine Greek is possible (p. 174), despite naysayers, and spends the rest of the chapter illustrating this reconstruction, identifying various spelling variations that seem to overlap in pronunciation. However, even if these assumptions are correct—there are a number of potential reasons for spelling variations, not just pronunciation overlap—it is still unclear how Greek pronunciation is useful for interpreting the New Testament.Chapter 9 is on electronic tools for the study of New Testament Greek by Thomas Hudgins, perhaps a less controversial topic from the previous two chapters. Hudgins provides online resources for Greek study in the following four categories: (1) language acquisition, (2) textual criticism, (3) lexical analysis, and (4) syntactical analysis. He admits that by the time of the book’s publication, there may be more resources available online, but these suggestions will nonetheless be good starting points for some time.Chapter 10 addresses the question of the existence of an ideal Greek grammar by Robert Plummer, structured by two caveats and six essentials. The first caveat is that there is no ideal grammar, so one should accept whatever is available. The second is that one must not be “locked in” to whatever they have been accustomed to. However, in finding the “ideal” Greek grammar, Plummer suggests finding one that: (1) promotes spiritual nourishment, (2) incorporates mnemonic devices, (3) is written clearly and simply, (4) is accurate, (5) has an online portal of supporting resources, and (6) is written by growing disciples of Christ. It is, however, unclear how some of these can be determined. For example, how does a student determine whether or not a grammar is accurate, or whether or not a particular author is a growing disciple of Christ?The final chapter is on the relationship between biblical exegesis and linguistics by Nicholas Ellis. He begins by problematizing the gap between so-called biblical linguists and Bible translators, with the biblical exegetes apparently stuck between these two opposing guilds, like a child of divorce (p. 240). He accuses Stanley Porter of linguistic hegemony and a quasi-monopoly, while also stating that his approach (systemic functional linguistics) is utilized by a small group. Ellis laments linguistic tribalism within biblical studies but also argues that cognitive linguistics is his preferred approach. The chapter ends with identifying some practical contributions from the history of linguistics.The volume concludes with a reflective postscript by Benjamin Merkle, focusing on three main issues: linguistic schools, verbal aspect, and pedagogy. Regarding linguistic schools, Merkle states that a single school approach, as Porter holds, has its merits, but an eclectic model is preferred. Regarding verbal aspect, he notes the areas of agreement and disagreement, and concludes against Porter’s views. Regarding Greek pedagogy, he advocates for the living language approach, even for a dead language such as Koine Greek. It seems odd that the postscript of a multi-contributor volume such as this contains the coeditor’s own opinions rather than a more neutral evaluation and summary of the issues.This volume is helpful overall in being acquainted with Greek linguistics, but as might be expected in an edited book the chapters are uneven and unbalanced, with some chapters being more helpful than others. One example of an imbalance is the apparent differences in register among the chapters. Most of the chapters are written in a scholarly register; however, Aubrey’s chapter, for example, is quite colloquial, with the frequent use of “you” throughout the chapter, with the apparent assumption that the reader is a confused, struggling, amateur Greek student. There is also the palpable observation that some of the chapters seem adversely biased against one particular contributor to the volume, which, on one hand, could be interpreted as inadvertent flattery, but, on the other, suspicious. There are probably also some areas of Greek linguistics that could have been addressed, such as the case system, other types of discourse analysis (i.e., register analysis), syntax, lexicography, and Jesus’s use of Greek, among other areas. Despite these critiques, the volume provides sufficient exposure to some of the main issues that arise in Greek linguistics, which fulfills the editors’ stated goal.

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