The Greek New Testament, 4th Revised Edition (Greek Edition) ebook

This edition I purchased from Amazon is the German Bible Society's 15th printing of the Greek New Testament (with dictionary) - 2010. This is the same text as the Nestle Aland 27th edition, and also the UBS3. But, the significant change is that it has a much upgraded textual and punctuation apparatus.

Regarding the textual apparatus upgrade: The certainty of the textual variants varies significantly from the UBS3. This is because the vast amount of research that has been done on the manuscripts has made translators more certain of the preferred readings. There are still many variants though where scholars differ widely in opinion as to the correct reading. However, there are no passages in the New Testament that cause us to question Christian faith and practice. We can be thankful to God that of the 20,000 lines of text in the Greek New Testament, only 40 are in doubt.

Regarding the punctuation apparatus upgrade: This edition has a complete revision of the punctuation apparatus. It has been revised to indicate different levels of 'segmentation' in the text; namely Paragraph break / no paragraph break; sub paragraph; section / no section; and major section. This now avoids a lot of the confusion brought about by different manuscripts identifying breaks with different punctuation marks.

This edition was particularly helpful as it provides a 205 page Greek-English dictionary at the back. A further helpful addition is a 15 page dictionary list (not exhaustive) of English words which have multiple Greek meanings. Alongside the Greek words are brief English explanations of the nuances they provide the reader of the Greek New Testament. This 2010 edition of the Greek New Testament is a worthy addition to any biblical scholar's bookshelf.

Worth it for the critical apparatus alone. Obviously not as up to date as the 5th edition, but I wanted to save a bit of money for now. For those unaware, the primary difference between this and the NA28 (or rather the NA27 would be the contemporaneous edition with this UBS4 I believe), speaking with regard to the apparatus only, is that this gives much deeper insight into the witnesses for a particular reading/variant, where the NA apparatus gives a shallower view into the evidence pile for a particular reading. The trade off is that the NA treats far more variants (perhaps all known ones--I'm not sure on that point), which scoops up many trivial and, frankly, unimportant and inconsequential variants. The UBS apparatus, by contrast, treats only those variants that are at least in some sense significant or material. So UBS trades away insignificant variants for deeper dives into the more important variants, and NA makes the opposite trade, giving away depth of view for a broader view that captures more or all variants.

I have the edition of UBS4 that I bought in 1994. This version is supposed to be the same edition but the text is different in several ways and it is a big improvement. First, the Greek text (the letters) remains the same, but the critical apparatus has been revised and in some cases changed completely (eg Rom 16:7) with an accompanying change in the accents! Second, the dictionary has been completely revised, expanded and improved. Third, a dictionary of words with very similar meanings is included - this is great value and should be studied by every student of koine Greek thoroughly.

This volume THE standard text for every modern Bible translation (except the NKJV) and is essential for anyone wanting familiarity with the NT text and its variants, which are all listed in the critical apparatus.

Highly recommended!

Well, after all, it IS the New Testament! Who can review negatively?? But, still, I think this is a nice edition. I liked the introduction, which was clear and informative, and I like the footnotes, which are a big help.

The inclusion of a dictionary in the back is wonderful (this is a Koine Greek edition). Previously, I had to juggle a couple of books. I've always had a problem with being too compulsive (look up meaning, even when I already know it, just in case there is a nuance I might miss). But, somehow, having the dictionary right there, has freed me from some of the constant word searching.

I like the size of the text, itself, too. It is very readable, and pleasant.

The quality of print and binding is fairly decent, though I ordered the vinyl-bound version and have some doubts as to how well it will hold up to frequent use. The Greek text is clear, large, and readable, even though (like some others here) I am not too fond of the italic font used in the main text. I on the whole prefer the bold-face font used to indicate quoted passages from the Old Testament. However, I have found that even as a beginning reader of Greek one tends to prefer certain fonts, particularly those one learned Greek with or those found in older Greek texts. However, the font is certainly readable, and I have definitely seen much worse.

As I am no scholar of the New Testament or of biblical textual criticism, I cannot comment much on the critical apparatus given, though it appears at least to provide a great deal of information, if perhaps presented under a somewhat off-putting code of Blackface and Hebrew letters, subscripts, superscripts, and etc. Hopefully in the future I will be able to make use of this apparatus, though as presented (certainly to save space) it appears a bit daunting.

The addition of the general dictionary will be of some use to the beginner, but only as a starting point or as a general gloss. A knowledge of verb forms and noun/adjective declensions is a must, as is the use of a good lexicon, since you will most certainly find yourself searching in vain in this book's dictionary for some irregular verb form. However, the dictionary is handy in a pinch.

On the whole, the quality of the book and its capacity as a general reader rates four stars in my opinion, minus one star for the unorthodox font and potentially weak binding.