Rating: 
Summary: Machen's Magnum Opus!
Review: Have used Machen's New Testament Greek for Beginners, both as student and as teacher, and there is no other text that can come close to the balance between quality and ease of understanding. While Machen was an Evangleical Bulldog in his time, for both theology and education, I am convinced he will be remembered most through this text by those who love Greek!
Rating:
Summary: Great beginners book
Review: I am a Lutheran pastor. Forty years ago I used Machen as the first year text by which I learned New Testament Greek. Over the years, I have used this text to teach a few interested persons New Testament Greek one-on-one. I tried another text once, but its arrangement of subjects seemed out of place. For me, the great feature of Machen is the numerous exercise sentences at the end of each chapter. Too many first year texts provide the students with too few exercise sentences by which they can practice what they have learned. It is not really a book for self-study. But, with the help of a teacher who has studied New Testament Greek, it is simply the best book available after its nearly 80 years in print. That alone speaks much in its behalf.
Rating:
Summary: Its longevity testifies to its worth.
Review: I am a Lutheran pastor. Forty years ago I used Machen as the first year text by which I learned New Testament Greek. Over the years, I have used this text to teach a few interested persons New Testament Greek one-on-one. I tried another text once, but its arrangement of subjects seemed out of place. For me, the great feature of Machen is the numerous exercise sentences at the end of each chapter. Too many first year texts provide the students with too few exercise sentences by which they can practice what they have learned. It is not really a book for self-study. But, with the help of a teacher who has studied New Testament Greek, it is simply the best book available after its nearly 80 years in print. That alone speaks much in its behalf.
Rating:
Summary: unsurpassed and timeless classic
Review: I have used this book as a classbook, to teach Greek, since the late 1980's. Just as important, it has been a concise, reliable, and lucid reference, far exceeding any other grammatical reference books in my entire library. I continue to add new Greek references and study books, but this is the one I keep coming back to.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid text, nothing fancy
Review: I learned NT Greek from Machen's text in an intensive 4-week course. The text is old-school, but thorough. If you can handle having paradigms tossed at you in an entirely businesslike manner, and you can get someone to explain the subtleties of participles, then this is text can be a fast introduction. A word of warning: Machen follows the classical tradition of teaching grammar by aphorism in the exercises at the end of each chapter. The exercises tend to reflect Machen's worldview: that of an embattled evangelical feeling marginalized in an increasingly modernistic denomination. Example: "If you do not receive our testimony, you will not be saved."
Rating:
Summary: Solid text, nothing fancy
Review: I learned NT Greek from Machen's text in an intensive 4-week course. The text is old-school, but thorough. If you can handle having paradigms tossed at you in an entirely businesslike manner, and you can get someone to explain the subtleties of participles, then this is text can be a fast introduction. A word of warning: Machen follows the classical tradition of teaching grammar by aphorism in the exercises at the end of each chapter. The exercises tend to reflect Machen's worldview: that of an embattled evangelical feeling marginalized in an increasingly modernistic denomination. Example: "If you do not receive our testimony, you will not be saved."
Rating: 
Summary: Great introductory Book!
Review: I picked up a used copy of this little book (13th printing 1957) and have thoroughly enjoyed using it! It is concise, to the point and effective! recently I was in a Christian bookstore looking at interlinear Greek NT books and the owner of the store and I had a lengthy conversation in which he too highly recommended this book. He had used it to teach NT Greek for 20 years!
Rating:
Summary: Great for the Knowing Beginner
Review: I spent two semesters in college going through this book in a Classroom setting and found this work entirely helpful for the understanding of New Testament Greek. The method by which Machen divided up his Chapters allows the student to begin understanding (and writing) Greek sentences after only a few lessons whereas some grammars will go over every single Noun Ending and Rule before moving on to the Verbs and it could be fifteen lessons before the Student is able to understand even a basic sentence. There are a few problems with the text and those are mainly involving the way in which he describes some of the more difficult concepts. Without a knowledgeable person explaining Participles to the student, the novice would be hard-pressed to understand the complexity of the Participle in Greek and would flounder through Machen's descriptions of them. If the solitary student is trying to brush up on his Greek or has already learned one or more languages then he or she will have a much easier time grasping the more difficult concepts because they would be used to going through a grammar and learning ideas about a foreign language. The Lexicon in the Back (with the principle parts) is also a very helpful tool for the beginning student so the student does not have to flip through every single lesson trying to find the definition of a word given previously while working on a later lesson. Once the student has completely finished using Machen's book he or she will be able to, armed with only this grammar and a Lexicon, tackle a significant majority of the passages in the New Testament. While there are obviously some more difficult passages in the New Testament (Hebrews, etc) that will be a struggle for the beginning student this work will provide him or her with a very solid foundation to work from and will be an invaluable tool for the rest of the student's time spent in Greek.
Rating:
Summary: Great for the Knowing Beginner
Review: I spent two semesters in college going through this book in a Classroom setting and found this work entirely helpful for the understanding of New Testament Greek. The method by which Machen divided up his Chapters allows the student to begin understanding (and writing) Greek sentences after only a few lessons whereas some grammars will go over every single Noun Ending and Rule before moving on to the Verbs and it could be fifteen lessons before the Student is able to understand even a basic sentence. There are a few problems with the text and those are mainly involving the way in which he describes some of the more difficult concepts. Without a knowledgeable person explaining Participles to the student, the novice would be hard-pressed to understand the complexity of the Participle in Greek and would flounder through Machen's descriptions of them. If the solitary student is trying to brush up on his Greek or has already learned one or more languages then he or she will have a much easier time grasping the more difficult concepts because they would be used to going through a grammar and learning ideas about a foreign language. The Lexicon in the Back (with the principle parts) is also a very helpful tool for the beginning student so the student does not have to flip through every single lesson trying to find the definition of a word given previously while working on a later lesson. Once the student has completely finished using Machen's book he or she will be able to, armed with only this grammar and a Lexicon, tackle a significant majority of the passages in the New Testament. While there are obviously some more difficult passages in the New Testament (Hebrews, etc) that will be a struggle for the beginning student this work will provide him or her with a very solid foundation to work from and will be an invaluable tool for the rest of the student's time spent in Greek.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best.
Review: I studied Greek for over five years, but when I think Greek, the image of Machen's little blue book always comes to mind. It was as if our class lived and breathed with Machen, so much so that we called it "baby Greek." Machen is simply the best place to start learning Greek. I would recommend no other.
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