Members will be happy to hear that Funk's grammar will be available as a print book in about one month. Carl Conrad and I have been proofreading the Greek, and others, the rest of the grammar. . Here is part of an e-mail from Char Matejovski, Robert Funk's wife, who is leading the republication of the grammar:
We anticipate going to press in about two weeks, just after you've finished this pass through the proofs. We should have books within a month of that date.
This is great news, and a great gift to students of NT Greek. Funk's book, "A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek" is the best Hellenistic Greek primer (a beginning/intermediate grammar) ever produced. It is based on an inductive reading of passages. Funk's BIGHG has been out of print for about 40 years. Funk had also translated and brought into English the book "Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch", originally published in 1896, by Blass. The translation/upgrade of Blass' work by Funk is still the most advanced definitive grammar of Biblical Greek: Blass' grammar focused on the difference of Biblical (Hellenistic Greek) from Attic Greek. Funk's English translation of Blass' grammar is titled "A Grammar of the Greek New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature." It is a translation and revision of the ninth-tenth German edition and incorporates the supplementary notes of A. Debrunner.
Funk, in the 1970's was one of the mover-shakers in this arena. Nowadays, we, as a community, really ask to ask ourselves who would be the best scholar(s) today to rewrite BDF. There was a project in the 1990's, which proposed to rewrite BDF, or make a new Hellenistic grammar. You can read a little about that project at
http://greek-language.com/grklinguist/?p=685. (I would love to see a Hellenistic Greek grammar having the format and detail of Smyth's 'A Greek Grammar", which is the standard English school/college grammar of ancient Greek.
Modern linguistics has changed the study of ancient Greek. Funk was part of that paradigmatic change; Today, Funk would not be using the same linguistic jargon were he alive. His Hellenistic grammar focuses on the sentence;. Nowadays, (40 years later), we are focused on the paragraph, and 'Discourse Analysis' is the latest rage. So we need to be thankful, and build on his understanding and contributions. And I recommend anyone who is really interested in the best Koine Grammar, to purchase the rewrite of Funk's BIGHG from Polebridge Press. Details will be available soon.