However after that point it would be a good idea to buy a Greek New Testament, and especially to buy a readers edition so that you don't have to spend forever looking up words in a lexicon.
There are 2 new Reader's editions that are coming out soon, and without having actually seen a real copy of either one, here are my thoughts:
1st choice:
UBS Greek New Testament, A Reader's Edition.
Edited by Barbara Aland and Barclay M., Jr. Newman Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart ,
Forthcoming January 2008
732 pages, English and Greek
Flexible casebound
ISBN: 1-59856-285-1
ISBN13: 978-1-59856-285-9
Publisher: HendricksonThis won't be out until January 15th 2008, but I think it is worth waiting for.
The beauty of this one is that it contains the parsing for difficult verb forms.
Some would see this as cheating, but I see it as a way of getting people to start reading their Greek New Testaments as quickly as possible. I think that its good to get into the habit of reading the Greek Text even when you are not perfect at parsing, because by reading it you learn so much about how the language works.
Heres the blurb from the publishers:
A link for this can be found here:The Reader’s Edition combines the Bible text of the latest edition of the UBS4 Greek New Testament, edited by Barbara Aland, et. al., with an Onpage Greek-English Dictionary, compiled by Barclay M. Newman.
Features
• Running Dictionary providing translations of all vocabulary items occuring 30 times or less in the New Testament at the bottom of each page
• Translations given according to context
• Definitions of idiomatic word combinations
• Grammatical analysis of all difficult verb forms
• Reader-friendly layout enabling the reader to transfer easily from text to dictionary and vice versa
• An appendix providing translations of all vocabulary items occuring more than 30 times in the New Testament
• Including the maps from the UBS Greek New Testament
http://www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~UBSGREEKN
And it can be ordered in the UK here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/UBS-Greek-New-Testament-Readers/dp/1598562851/ref=sr_1_1/026-1058207-4592421?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194900803&sr=8-1
2nd choice:
A Reader's Greek New Testament: Burgundy, Italian Duo-tone (Leather Bound) 2nd edition: by Richard J. Goodrich (Author), Albert L. Lukaszewski (Editor)
Publisher: Zondervan
Some of you have seen my 1st edition version of this.
The 2nd edition which is not out yet should be even better than my one.
The really good thing about this book is the lovely burgundy leathery cover (not too sure if it's real leather). Normally when people see this New Testament they want to start learning Greek because it looks so nice!
However this book lacks the parsing helps that the Hendrickson one includes, so I have only put the Zondervan one down as a 2nd choice.
This one does not use a UBS text, but a an NIV Greek text.
It can be found on Amazon.com here:
http://www.amazon.com/Readers-Greek-New-Testament-Burgundy/dp/0310273781/ref=sr_1_2/103-8564024-6731026?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194901095&sr=1-2
As neither of these 2 books are out yet, there is not a lot I can say. I have not seen physical copies of these yet, so my recommendation of the first one might not be any good if it is badly made and will fall apart.
But I will be getting the UBS one (Hendrickson) one as soon as it comes out, and I will let you know what I think then.
In the meantime I would avoid buying any Greek New Testaments until both of these new ones are available. So start saving, budgeting, and praying.
Peace
D
