Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; 4th Revised edition
The key feature of this brand new Greek New Testament edition is the running dictionary which replaces the textual variants. Ideal for beginners, the more experienced and all people want to read Greek NT but need help.

This book almost exemplifies the maxim, "For they preach, but do not practice." It promises great things -- and fulfills them minimally if at all.

The book consists of three basic parts (aside from the dictionary at the end, which is a separate issue): The main text, the textual notes, and the notes on the meaning of the text.

There is no issue about the first of these. It is the United Bible Societies' Greek text. This is the text everyone uses these days. It may not deserve that status, but one can hardly quibble with printing the standard text.

But it's worth looking at the real United Bible Societies edition, which is actually two books. One is the Greek text with variant readings from manuscripts; the other is a commentary volume (mostly written by Bruce M. Metzger) explaining why the editors chose each reading they did. When I read the blurb for this edition, describing it as the "Reader's Edition with Textual Notes," and as a one volume edition, I assumed that the text, textual apparatus, and notes had all been combined in one volume -- and went out and ordered it.

Wrong. There are no notes. Not textual notes -- that is, explanation of why one reading is better than another. There is an incredibly minimal textual apparatus -- a list of readings and which manuscripts contain them. And I do mean incredibly minimal. Let's start with a statement of fact: There are thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament, and they don't agree. To print a Greek text, one must somehow decide which readings of which manuscripts are to be adopted and which are to be rejected. That means you have to know the readings of those manuscripts. The Nestle-Aland "hand" edition lists many thousands of places where the manuscripts differ. The proper UBS text lists hundreds upon hundreds. I don't know how many the Reader's Edition includes, but I tested Galatians, and it listed only two. That is not enough. And the manuscripts cited are't adequate, either. The gospels don't include the vital manuscripts 1 13 579 892 1582; the Acts and Paul ignore the crucial 1175 1881; the Catholic Epistles fail to show the excellent 1241; the Apocalypse has few witnesses of any type; there are no witnesses of the Byzantine text-type anywhere. This apparatus is a complete waste; if you want to do any serious study of the text, you have to get another book.

The other apparatus, which helps to understand uncommon words, is better -- for rare words (those found fewer than a few dozen times), it gives the grammatical form and a (very minimal) definition. The grammatical explanations are fine (although this same information is available, for every word, in Friberg & Friberg, Analytical Greek New Testament). The definitions are another matter. They're simply too short. One I remember glossed some word as a verb, "order." Is that "order" as in "command" or "arrange"? It doesn't say. So you're still looking up the word. This happens far too often. And what about words with multiple meanings? Sometimes they are given (e.g. in John 3, where the meaning of ἄνωθεν -- which means both "again" and "from above" -- is vital to the whole discussion of being "born again"), but usually they are not. By supplying only one meaning, this edition will inherently bias a translator.

To be fair, I'd probably be more impressed if I hadn't been so deeply disappointed by those textual notes, which aren't worth the space they use. If they'd cut those out, they could save a couple of sheets of paper and not waste money on royalties for someone who didn't really do anything useful. But, still, the glossing could be better, too.

It's really sad. I like the idea of this edition. My Greek is far from perfect; I could use an edition like this. But it needs a real critical apparatus (enough notes, with enough manuscripts), and the definitions of the words need to be more robust. If that means slightly smaller print, so be it. As it is, this book still leaves you with the problem of carrying around two or three other books. So why not carry the two or three other books and forget this one? ( )

I just got this in the mail. It is presently (March 2015) on sale at CBD for $10. It is a nice, readable size and very easy to use. I've already started reading in Acts.

So far, I have found to be the easiest to use of the "reader edition" Greek New Testaments.

I found this review helpful: https://rdtwot.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/ubs-greek-new-testament-a-readers-editio... ( )

The goal of many NT Greek students is to be able to read out of the Greek NT. This may be the only way proficiency in the language will be realized. The task of reading Greek is made much more difficult the more often one has to hunt down a lexicon to look up a definition for an unfamiliar word. Unfortunately, for most people, the lexicon is needed often enough to push them away from even attempting to read the Greek NT for themselves.

Barclay Newman's The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's Edition aims to make reading the Greek NT attainable by any Greek student. The New Testament is presented with footnotes for all the difficult words. Every word appearing 30 times or less in the NT will have a definition listed at the bottom of the page. All words appearing more than 30 times are defined in the back of the book in a small Greek-English dictionary. Along with the definitions at the bottom of the page, the words are parsed, and the gender of the word is noted.

It's been several years since I've formally studied Greek. Yet I found this New Testament allowed me to work my way through many passages. I hope to start using it more and more and reinforce the Greek learning I have left!

The softcover version I have is quite nice. It appears quite durable, and has a smooth feel. The paper is almost as thin as you'd find in a typical Bible. It is a compact size which makes it convenient for tucking in your Bible case, or for bringing it along with your English Bible to church. The typesetting is clear, and the format of the footnotes includes the Greek word so as to make it easier to identify which footnote you are looking for. I think the size of the footnotes and the text is just right, not too large or too small.

This handy resource will benefit any who have studied or are interested in studying NT Greek. I can't recommend this tool enough.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Hendrickson Publishers for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

An expanded version of this review is available at CrossFocusedReviews.com, where you can find book excerpts, giveaways, promotional offers, audio reviews and more. ( )

This edition is, for me, a true "readers" edition. Having studied a fair bit of Koine Greek over the years I have never developed sufficient fluency to simply read the NT in Greek, although this has long been a desire of mine.

I was very happy to find Zondervan's "A Reader's Greek New Testament" (2003 edition) and used it with profit for a year or so. However, this UBS version, produced along similar lines is, I believe, a superior work for a number of reasons.

1. The text is easier to read (and Zondervan's latest edition is even harder to read!)
2. The columnar arrangement of the vocab at the bottom of pages makes entries much easier to find.
3. The presence of parsing information in the vocab, while a danger to the lazy, does, with discipline, allow for quick confirmation/correction of your own conclusions.
4. The addition of a brief lexicon of words occurring more than 30x in the NT at the end of the volume (definitions as per Newman's lexicon in the standard UBS edition).

As a result, regular reading in the Greek NT is an actual fact of life now, rather than a struggle - and I attribute much of this to the UBS edition's strengths.

I agree with Alex's review that OT citations would be ideal, but I've found I can live without them - and the idea of penciling them in as I go is a good one.

As to format, there's no doubt the Zondervan edition is a lovely thing to hold and use with its soft leather cover. The UBS is in a far more pedestrian hardback format, slightly larger pages and 2-3 times thicker, but in the end it's not a beauty competition. I'm finding it more helpful, and that's what counts for me.