I have studied Attic and Homeric Greek for years and can testify that most of the teaching texts go in for obtuse explanations, little review, and pretty difficult and pedantic exercises. I expected the same as I was looking at Koine Greek texts. I was delighted to find a different pictiure when I looked at Kubo's text. After the inital price shock for a paperback (which, by the way, should be covered with contact paper quickly) I found clear explanations, illustrations through use of rewritten passages of Scripture, additional practice sentences, orderly paradigms - in short, everything a beginner needs to know in order to gain a solid ability to read the New Testament in Greek. It is also a great preparation for the Reader's Greek-English Lexicon. Give the man five stars!

I think this is simply a must have for those learning Greek. Vocabulary is quite a stumbling block for those wanting to read NT Greek, and it seems most grammers don't ephesize it. There are about 5500 different words in the NT (and I'm guessing 3000 of those appear less then 5 times and 2000 probably only once or twice). That's alot of vocab to learn before you have a fluent reading of the text.

Kubo lets you continue to practice your Greek without spending 90% of your time in BAGD, by offering the more rare words inline with the text. It still takes time to have your eyes leave the text to find Kubo's definition but it beats a lexicon in a second.

Still, I reccommend you spend time learning vocab on the side and at least try to get 95% of the word occurances of the NT memorized, which is only about 1800 words. Its do-able for any serious student. Many of those words are cognents and still more are common words with different prepositions placed in front, often with an expected meaning.

The only reason I don't give this book five stars is that the Book quality (at least mine) was fairly poor. The book itself doesn't lay open flat, so you have to hold it open underneath; the pages or dark and sometimes hard to read; and my edition with the dusk jacket is simply ugly when the dusk jacket is removed, which is exactly what I do when I use it. This edition above is quite an improvement on looks but I don't know if it will lay open flat for you.

If you have spent a year studying the grammer of the Greek NT, I don't know of any other book that is more valuable for your continued Greek reading.

Sakae Kubo's A Reader's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament is a great addition to the bookshelf for any student of the Greek New Testament. There is a trinity of divisions: the appendix in the back lists 301 words that occur more than 50 times in the GNT, a good section to learn first, or as the author suggests, copy it out so you don't have to keep paging back to it. Next, each book of the NT is given a special vocabulary list of words that occur more than five times in that book. Finally, verse by verse, are word lists for vocabulary in that verse, unless the word appears in the previous verse. Thus, one way to approach the GNT would be to master those 301 words first, then as you are ready to begin a book, learn the special vocabulary for that book. Finally, as you begin to read that book, you will only need to refer to the verse by verse section. That should keep you from paging back from one section to another.

The only disappointment for me was the lack of Appendix II, mentioned in the original Preface of the 1967 edition. Appendix I has now, evidently, become the only appendix, so you won't get that list of apparently difficult verbal forms. Still, the inclusion of two frequency numbers for each word entry, one for the frequency of the word in the particular book, and the other, for the frequency of the word in the complete GNT, is a plus. All in all, I can see why one would want this book and the Trenchard vocabulary book, too. I certainly am glad I bought this book, but I do agree with another reviewer who said that a spiral bound edition would be even more useful. I'll add my two cents to that by saying not only spiral bound, but with tabs to introduce each section and book, wow, now that would rate a 5! In the meantime, I'll just get out my PostIt colored flags and use those until that edition comes out.

Kubo's remarkably helpful reading tool gives verse-by-verse definitions for the less common words in the Greek New Testament.

Following the order of the NT canon, Kubo lists words appearing fewer than 50 times in the order they appear in each verse, giving the lexical form followed by a simple definition. Words which are characteristic of a given book (i.e., occurring 5 or more times in the book but fewer than 50 times in the entire NT) are listed with definitions at the beginning of each book, while words occurring 50+ times in the NT are listed in an appendix.

The best way to use the book is first to memorize all the words which occur 50 or more times in the NT (a good foundational NT vocabulary), then follow Kubo verse by verse for definitions of the words you don't know.

Once you have a working knowledge of NT Greek grammar and vocabulary, Kubo's book makes reading the New Testament quick and relatively painless. I recommend the book to any student of the Greek NT.