Electronic Greek New Testament Resources

Not all pdfs are created equal, so I'll put an asterisk (*) next to those that work well on the kindle due to their size or layout.

Greek Texts


SBL Greek New Testament (Kindle) (Everything Else)
The SBL GNT is current eclectic text with an interested TC apparatus. It compares its reading with that of Wescott/Hort, NIV, RP (Byzantine), and Tregelles. If you want to know what the UBS4/NA27 reads just check the apparatus for NIV. When they UBS/NA disagrees with the NIV, SBLGNT will make a note referencing "NA."

UBS/NA, WH, Byz., etc.
This is tagged and parsed. Very nice.

German Bible Society
Has the BHS (Hebrew), UBS/NA, and the LXX (Ralfs) all online.

GNT, LXX, Apocrypha, and Early Church Writings (tagged and parsed)
It isn't the prettiest site in the world, but it sure has a lot of available resources. I have no idea which editions of the texts he's using, but the fact that he's tagged and parsed everything will make me overlook just about anything.

Greek Grammars


Basics of Biblical Greek Summary (Mounce)*
I've bookmarked all of the pages that have paradigms so I can quickly jump to the appropriate section and check my parsing. Mounce has provided us with a nice summary of his much-adored first-year grammar, but he left out participles... I mean, yeah, who would ever want a summary of everything they need to know about Greek participles?!

"Poor Man's Porter" - A summary of Stan Porter's Verbal Aspect of the Greek in the New Testament
NT scholar Rod Decker wrote this summary for his students. His site is well worth visiting.

Smyth's Greek Grammar for Colleges (Official 1920 edition)
Yes, official is in italics, because the book has paragraph markings, and this is the edition all of the other books will reference. You can find an OCR'd 1916 edition on archive.org, but the paragraph marks will be wrong.
*Update* I have recently read that 1920 is not the official version. Apparently there is a later version from the '50's that classifies as "official."

Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research (A. T. Robertson)*
This is the third edition with altered pagination. Check out my previous post for a look at the editions.

Syntax of Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek (Ernest De Witt Burton)*
I got the file from this site, but he didn't embed the Greek fonts into the pdf, so I did it for him.

A Grammar of Septuagint Greek (Conybeare) (PDF)* (Web Only)
I've read that this is more helpful for those who know Attic Greek, as that is what he compares LXX Greek to, but I figure a source has to be better than no source.

Parsing Helps


The many faces of λυω*
It's everyone's favorite verb in all of it's different conjugations. I have a hard copy of this folded up into my kindle case so I can review it when I'm translating.

Mounce's 8 Rules for Parsing a Verb

Funk's rules for Parsing a Verb

Textual Commentaries


Word Pictures of the New Testament by A. T. Robertson (Kindle File) (Web Only) (PDFs)
Note: only the Web Only link has the entire New Testament. The Kindle file and the pdfs cover 15 books of the NT.

The Expositor's Greek Testament (5 Vols)

Misselbrook's Greek NT Commentary
This site is a treasure-trove of information. Misselbrook is a Greek prof who has developed a 5yr plan to read through the entire GNT. In conjunction with that, he's written textual notes over each day's reading to help you get the most out of it. He has summarized many good commentaries and pointed out where the insight can be found in the grammar of the GNT. This is worth downloading.

Dr. Constable's Bible Study Notes (approx. 7k pages)
While not Greek-specific, and a little less technical, this is akin to Misselbrook's work, but it is over all 66 books of the Bible. He's a seminary prof who has made exegetical and expository notes for each book. The quality seems pretty high, although I haven't perused even a small sampling of the over 7,000 pages available.

Wieland Willker's Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels (approx. 2,600 pages)
Different than our previous commentaries, this is a Textual Criticism commentary that "discusses the 1500 most important textual variants of the Gospels, plus about 500 minor ones..." This is incredible. The commentary is available in 4 pdfs.

Greek Syntax Notes by Lee Irons
This is like a poor-man's Max and Mary. Irons has gone through the entire GNT and marked out those syntactical elements that are likely to cause the beginner problems and explain them. Very handy.

Lexicons


Liddel-Scott-Jones 8th Edition
This is not the Great-Scott! edition (the 9th), but it is close. The pdf is almost 200mb, so this is best used on your computer.

Liddel-Scott-Jones 9th Edition (Web Only)
You can search this with Perseus. This is the best, most complete, classical-Koine Greek lexicon available. (Of course NT scholars would want BDAG instead, but if you are looking at any Classical Greek at all, this is the lexicon to have).

If you know of other important Greek resources, please let me know!

Other Greek NT Resources

Constance Campbell's Blogged Intro to Verbal Aspect Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Benjamin Baxter writes a very helpful two-part series on Word Studies in the McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry: "The Meanings of Biblical Words," and "Hebrew and Greek Word-Study Fallacies"

Craig Noll writes "Biblical Meditation: A Forgotten Resource in Learning New Testament Greek?" His articles makes the case that it is beneficial both spiritually and pedagogically to memorize passages of the GNT.

Filología Neotestamentaria - Free Journal

I just found Filología Neotestamentaria the other day. It's a Spanish (English language) journal on New Testament textual studies. This is how they describe it:

[This] journal is the result of initiative taken at the Chair of Greek Philology of the Department of Antiquities of the University of Córdoba, Spain.Within its Scope lies every aspect of New Testament Greek philology, namely textual criticism, grammar, semantics, lexicography and eventually semiotics and its relationship with Classical or Hellenistic Greek. It is published in Córdoba (Spain) by EDICIONES EL ALMENDRO DE CÓRDOBA, SL once a year (September).

I'm not sure if this journal is still in production; the website only lists years 1994-2007, and I can't find any information on subscription.

The few issues I've looked at have been good, with scholarship by some of the "big names" in NT textual work.

Israel Antiquities Online

Thanks to BibleX for pointing this out, you can now view images from the Israel Antiquities Treasury online. This is a great way to "spice up" you bible study. I was amazed in college how helpful an understanding of archaeology and figurines was in interpreting scripture. It's not a night/day difference, but it really takes it from black'n'white to color.

A. T. Robertson's Grammar (3rd ed.)

For those of you hardcore Greek guys, A. T. Robertson's magisterial A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research is available on the three main bible programs and the third edition (greatly expanded) is available as a very nice pdf. If you want original pagination for citation purposes, you can use the 2nd edition from archive.org. The 4th, and final, version is what bibleworks has (and I assume the other programs as well). The difference between the 3rd and 4th is apparently quite small. Robertson says "The Fourth Edition is a reprint of the Third with the correction of a few errata that remained." (pg. xx)

If you are interested, read a few reviews off of amazon.com (the link to the fourth edition).

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Online

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were discovered by the archaeologists Grenfell and Hunt in Egypt. "The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and Latin documents, letters and literary works."¹ Many NT and OT mss were discovered at this time. There were, at it's completion, about 85 volumes published, some of which are available online.


Roger Pearse has linked to the first 14 volumes, with the 15th volume also available. Images of the papyri for vols 41-68 are now online, and it also includes an index to vols 1-68 (this means there is a short description of each papyri--very useful).


Papyri.info is a searchable papyri database that is not limited to just the P.Oxy. group. 


A list of OT and NT P.Oxy. documents. 


A closing word from A. T. Robertson from his book The Minister and His Greek New Testament:

But enough has been said to show how rich the papyri are for the student of the Greek new Testament. The best linguistic commentary on the Greek New Testament is the papyri of the first century A.D. and the Septuagint. It is now possible for any eager student to have both these privileges without having to sell his coat to get them. (last paragraph of Chapter II)

Sell your coat, nothing! With all of this available online, you won't even have to put it on.

Textual Commentary of the GNT Gospels

Wieland Willker has produced an incredibly helpful textual commentary on the Gospels of the Greek New Testament. Each Gospel has it's own pdf where Willker walks the reader through all of the disparate evidence for the textual variant and then he suggests a preferred reading. The best part about a commentary is that you don't have to trust the author's reading: all of the evidence is there for you to come to your own conclusion.

It looks like he's already updated it for 2012, and the full commentary comes out to approximately 2,600 pages and 2,000 variants.

You can look at the textual apparatus on your NA²⁷ to give you a quick idea of what is going on, but for the important variants, I would check out Willker's commentary.

Going further down the textual criticism rabbit hole, you can review all of the different papyri evidence for the GNT and then, if you so choose, look at the actual papyri images.

Discourse Analysis: A giant spotlight on what you haven't noticed when translating the GNT

Yesterday I was skimming through the blog bibleandtech.blogspot.com when I noticed he had written an article about my old Greek instructor, Steve Runge. Turns out, Steve has gone on, gotten his doctorate and is now working for Logos Bible Software.

Steve was a great teacher. I can still remember his opening lecture for first semester Greek. He was full of excitement and zeal when he told us everything he's learned from knowing Greek (including an increased appreciation for classical music!). I can only imagine how tough it was for him to go through the endings chart over and over when there was so much else he wanted to teach. I will tell you one thing about the guy: He pushed us. We were translating chunks of text straight out of the GNT by the end of our first semester (way ahead of the class taught by the other prof).

Steve... err... Dr. Runge has written a new book Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament. All of the reviews on Amazon are positively glowing. In fact, Daniel Wallace wrote the Forward. How's that for high praise? The only thing that would be even better is if Runge were honored through cheer and song like Wallace was.

So, what is discourse analysis you ask? Well, busy pastor/teacher, it is like a breath of fresh air to the grind of translating the text for your sermon prep. I know, I know, you say "Zack, I see the text glowing in front of me, I hover my mouse over the word, review the applicable parsing info, and then move on. What I do can hardly be called translation, why should I take the time to learn this?" Precisely because you spend so much time mouse-hovering over the text. I know what that is like. I struggle with those same crutches (please don't be made at me, Dr. Runge!!). Discourse analysis takes you out of the trenches and forces you to look at the text as a unit. For instance, if you are doing mouse-over-translation for Col. 1:3 you aren't going to ask the question "Why does Paul use the article in τω θεω when he didn't use it the past two times. You are too busy trying to decide if you have to translate that as "the God" or just "God." (Note: example taken from Levinsohn's very very good book Discourse Features of New Testament Greek - also worth the read). Discourse Analysis helps you see the big picture, it reveals ways the argument or narrative is turning that might not be readily apparent through a word-by-word translation. The best part is it helps you ask those simple questions (why the article?) that you never would have asked before.

I have assembled quite a few free resources on DA below, including excerpts from Runge's new book. Check them out, read the reviews, and ask yourself one question: Could my preaching benefit from this?

*UPDATE* If you want a quick overview of the importance of DA, read Steve's comments for the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament that he edited here.

Greek NT Discourse Analysis Resources:

"The Relevance of Greek Discourse Studies to Greek Exegesis" SILJOT 2(2) 2006 by Levinsohn
Analyzing Discourse: A Manual of Basic Concepts by Dooley and Levinsohn
Sel-Instruction Materials on Narrative Discourse Analysis by Levinsohn (170pp)*
"οτι  Recitativum in John's Gospel: A Stylistic or a Pragmatic Device" by Levinsohn (14pp)
Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament by Steve Runge (TOC, Preface, Chapter 1) (Excerpt on Instantaneous Imperfects) (Larger Excerpt from the book)*
Also see Runge's blog NT Discourse.
"A Brief Introduction to Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek" DBSJ 12 2007 by Nasselli 
"The Greek Verbal Network Viewed from a Probabilistic Standpoint: An Exercise in Hallidayan Linguistics" Filologia Neotestamentaria 14 2001 by Stanley Porter and Matthew O'Donnell


*Note: Whenever possible I have attempted to link to the webpage that hosts the file. In the few situations where I have located the file on a google search, but have been unable to find the original post/site I have linked directly to the file.

ICC Comentaries

I know this is old news, but I thought it should still be captured here.

The old International Critical Commentaries are available online now that the copyright has expired.

Why you would want them: If you are keen with the original languages, or you know enough to ask tough question that might not get answered in your typical commentary, then these scans will come in handy.

Commentary Leanings: Almost all of these are going to be pretty liberal. If you've ever been curious as to who had a better vocabulary, first or second Isaiah, or if you believe knowing how J and E used to pick on D and P in handwriting class will help you interpret the Pentateuch, then these commentaries will surely answer all of those questions.

Bummer Factor: These are not OCR'd, so you can't search within the PDF, but you can also download the "Full Text" through Archive.org. This is what I do: Download the scan because that is far nicer to read and cite from, but also download the full text. name it the same thing (except .pdf and .txt respectively) so that when you decide you need to use the recourse you can open the .txt file in Word or OpenOffice and do all of your searches there. That also allows you to copy and paste directly into your paper. It's an only slightly annoying way to get around the lack of OCR. *Update* almost all of the Archive.org pdfs have been OCR'ed, so download them there.

Update

Check out the list of OT commentaries and NT commentaries.