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Reader's Editions of the New Testament

Posted: March 6th, 2012, 7:25 pm
by Jonathan Robie
I've seen these Reader's Editions of the Greek New Testament:
  • Barclay Newman's, excerpt here
  • Goodrich and Lukaszewski's, excerpt here
Are there others worth considering? Anyone have feedback on these?

Re: Reader's Editions of the New Testament

Posted: March 7th, 2012, 4:25 am
by Eeli Kaikkonen
I have the Barclay's one (officially "The UBS Greek New Testament, A Reader's Edition"). I'm very happy with it. It's very similar to the Zondervan (Goodrich and Lukaszewski's) version, but in reviews which I read before making the decision I found out that the UBS version is a bit better. The ink bleeds through in the Zondervan version (due to "thinline" paper) and the font isn't very good. The UBS version has a "leftover" dictionary as an appendix which is good enough for occasional checking out while reading the text. Remember to check out the latest edition which has short textual notes. They are no good for actual textual criticism, but may be handy for e.g. Bible study groups where you have to quickly see whether different translations are due to textual differences. The UBS footnotes may be easier to locate than Zondervan's because they are in two columns instead of continuous rows.

There's still room for improvement. People who are eager to learn the vocabulary would appreciate if the footnotes would include information about word frequency so that they could begin memorizing with more common words. It would be better to have appendix with tables for paradigms of some common words rather than include them in the footnotes (seriously, if someone doesn't know the participle of ειμι by heart, how can s/he read Greek at all?). The tables could then be referenced from the text like footnotes are.

These are designed to help with quick continuous reading and should be judged based on that. Both are good; I decided that the UBS version is a bit better.

Re: Reader's Editions of the New Testament

Posted: March 7th, 2012, 10:15 am
by Stephen Carlson
I don't use Reader's Editions but looking at the samples, the notes seems more cleanly laid out in the first (UBS) one. Otherwise, they seem about equivalent.

Stephen

Re: Reader's Editions of the New Testament

Posted: March 8th, 2012, 10:27 pm
by ZackSkrip
I ordered the Zondervan Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible last week (should be here any day now!!). Ultimately, I bought that one because I wanted both the Hebrew and the Greek together and it is the only Reader's edition that does that. (I'm not cool enough to use the BS-UT edition.)

I've spent... too long reading every review I can find of the RGNT and every comparison I can find of the UBS and RGNT editions. Here is what I've decided:

Pros for Zondervan
Looks like a bible. You won't be that guy who brings that red or blue book with you. Actually you will be that guy, but no one will know it!
Cheaper

Pros for UBS
UBS text (UBS readings are footnoted in the other, not as big of a deal as everyone makes it out to be)
Better lexicon
Some say the font is better
Provides Parsing

All in all I'm happy with the choice I made, especially after I read all of the available introductory material through the amazon "lookinside" feature. I'm really excited to force myself to use the original languages almost exclusively (at least that's my current plan). Having a standard looking black bible will make that easy and not horribly obvious.

For a good comparison review check this out:
http://homepage.mac.com/rmansfield/this ... f-646.html

Finally, for those Byz. Text lovers, don't forget the R&P reader which glosses all words used 50x or less, instead of 30x or less as the other two do.
http://www.amazon.com/Greek-New-Testame ... d_sim_b_33