Differences Between the Second and Third Edition of BBG

While there have been many significant changes to BBG, the basic information and approach is the same. If you like BBG, you will love the new edition. If you haven't looked at BBG in a while, doing so will be well worth your time.

Most obvious changes

1. Cosmetically, the book is significantly different. It is a larger size, and the pages lie open. Shades of blue are used throughout the grammar to break the discussion into manageable pieces and in the paradigms to separate forms into their morphemes. The margin gives you places to keep notes.
2. The Professor is throughout. Sometimes he encourages you to write notes, or shares a tidbit of more technical knowledge, or sometimes he will just say something rather bizarre.
3. And then there is the fun Professor. He wants to teach you how to say things in Greek, phrase like "Where is the bathroom," counting to ten so you can play football in class, and lots of other wild and crazy stuff.
4. Each section has a two page overview, giving students a bird's eye view of what is coming. Eventually there will be hour long lectures corresponding to each section.
5. Almost every chapter now has a Halftime Review.
6. Most chapters have an Exegesis section at the end. This information is generally reserved for second year Greek, but it is an encouragement to see how the grammar of the chapter is fine tuned and applied in exegesis.
7. Chapter 20 has been simplified and clarified.
8. Chapter 35 has been split in half; there was just too much information. Chapter 35 now covers the nonindicative of διδωμι, and Chapter 36 is the old Chapter 35. There also is a lengthened discussion of conditional sentences in Chapter 35, and a discussion of the definite article in Chapter 36.

More subtle changes

1. Bill has tightened up his English style a bit. You will find it is clearer and a little easier to follow.
2. Modern Greek pronunciation has been included as an alternative.
3. Everything you need to know about a vocabulary word is now included in the text and not in the footnotes. All footnotes throughout the grammar are now optional.
4. The vocabulary statistics have been adjusted in light of the corrected database in Accordance.
5. The Workbook Summary section at the end of every chapter gives you a place to write down what you have learned in the workbook for that chapter.
6. Many of the examples throughout the grammar have been changed to biblical texts instead of made-up ones.
7. All the tense forms of a verb are included when the vocabulary term is introduced, even though the students doesn't know what they mean. The same is true of the genitive and article with nouns. This way students don't have to go back and write the forms back in.
8. The paradigms in the back of the grammar have been reorganized.
9. Worked hard to be consistent on the root of a word.

Specific changes to the grammar

1. Chapter 3. xsi is now spelled xi.
2. Chapters 19-20. Bill wasn't precise in a few places on the use of "root" and "Stem." Those have all been fixed.
3. Chapter 25. The discussion of the middle has been nuanced a bit to allow for some of the scholarly discussion going on about the accuracy of this discussion.
4. Chapter 36. There was no vocabulary, so I added 15 theologically significant words.
5. The Lexicon now includes the chapter numbers for the vocabulary words.

Specific changes to the workbook

1. Exercise 9. Parsing 9. New form: πρωτη
2. Exercise 13. Translation 10. ψυχη defined as "soul"
3. Exercise 16. Parsing 2. New form: ακουει
4. Exercise 18. Parsing 1. New form: πιστευεται
5. Exercise 21. Parsing 6. New form: εξεβαλλες
6. Exercise 22. Translation 6. New sentence (was #8 from chapter 23)
7. Exercise 23. Parsing 7. New form: προσηυξατο
8. Exercise 23. Translation 8. New sentence
9. Exercise 24. Warmup α. New warmup
10. Exercise 24. Warmup δ. New warmup
11. Exercise 24. Warmup η. New warmup
12. Exercise 25. Parsing 1 and 2. Switched order
13. Exercise 25. Translation 8. κρισις defined as "judgment"
14. Exercise 29. Parsing 4. New form: ποιησαν (was # 7)
15. Exercise 30. Parsing 1 and 2. Switched order
16. Exercise 32. Parsing 1, 2, and 4. Switched order
17. Exercises for Chapters 34 and 35 use many of the old exercises, but many new added