Book Description
To represent the past century of Korean fiction, this definitive collection extends beyond familiar writers, challenges cultural norms, and crosses political borders. By including stories from neglected female, North Korean, and wôlbuk writers (those who migrated to the North after 1945 and whose works were widely banned in South Korea) and by bringing politically engaged works together with experimental ones, this anthology articulates the ruptures and resolutions that have marked the peninsula.
From sketches of desperate peasants in straitened circumstances to fast-moving, visceral tales of contemporary South Korea, the works in this collection bear witness to the dramatic transformations and events in twentieth-century Korean history, including Japanese colonial rule, civil war, and economic modernization in the South. The writers explore these developments through a variety of literary and political lenses, revealing with precision and poignancy their impact on Korean society and the lives of ordinary Koreans. This anthology includes an introduction, which synthesizes the key developments in modern Korean literature, and a comprehensive bibliography of Korean fiction in translation.
Average customer rating:
- a great selection of korean modern novels
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The Rainy Spell and Other Korean Stories (East Gate Book)
Manufacturer: M.E. Sharpe
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0765601397 |
Customer Reviews:
a great selection of korean modern novels.......2000-02-18
this collection surely contains quintessential works in Korean modern literature, thanks to a very committed translator! especially the title work "the rainy spell" epitomizes a vivid reality of korean situation after the civil war. also, it would be interesting to read this work from the perspective of ideology allegorized in family relation, esp. mother/son relationship. in one of the two families, (s)mothering son seems to be responsible for the devastated and deviant youth who "wrongly" seeks his way in communism (to be exact, in playing partisan). this portrait replicates the distorted image of communism sustained by capitalist ideology, which is ironically approved by the ostensible reconciliation through the tradtional shamanism at the end (when the prodigal son returns home in the body of a snake). but remember, this is only one way to read it. by and large, the tragedy that swirls all over the korean peninsula is bittersweetly chrystalized in a small house which is temporarily crowded by two families and again finitely confined by the rainy season. this story of ominous density and suffocating humidity is told, but beautifully, from first person perspective of a boy who is awkwardly situated in the middle of feud.
Customer Reviews:
A hidden gem of short stories.......2000-03-28
I had come across this gem of short stories while taking a break from a classical Chinese literature class during my Master's studies. First, I commend Bruce Fulton for his poetic translations. Having read some of the stories in Korean, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the translations.
The book is comprised of Korean "award winners" of the 1980's who happen to be females. The topics range widely but the theme that runs its course throughout all the stories are of frustration and despair brought on by the oppressive and traditional dictates of Korean society. All the antagonists view and form their identity in relation to men and also to their roles as mothers and wives. If their characters seem feeble, it is only because the authors are bold in exposing the societal ills that lie beneath the much censored nation.
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Korean Literature: Its Classical Heritage and Modern Breakthroughs (Anthology of Korean Studies, Vol. 4) (Anthology of Korean Studies, 4)
Manufacturer: Hollym International Corporation
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1565911768
Release Date: 2003-11-03 |
Product Description
Vol. 4 of Anthology of Korean Studies Series. This volume, Korean Literature: Its Classical Heritage and Modern Breakthroughs, consists of 24 articles that are still considered valuable in the field as academic articles or critical essays that have appeared in the Korea Journal over the past 40 years. The articles were carefully selected under the guidance of Professor Hwang Jong-yon. The present volume is divided into five major themes. Part I includes an explanation of the historical and critical bases for understanding modernity as expressed in Korean literature. Part II consists of major reviews of representative writers and their works over the past 100 years of Korean modern literature. Part III is a compilation of explanatory writings that facilitate readers' comprehension of traditional literary genres--from pansori to Korean poetry in Chinese--and their aesthetics and ideology, which have influenced both the creation and critique of contemporary Korean literature. Part IV critically evaluates the literatures of both North and South Korea after the Korean War. The final section approaches Korean literature from an international perspective in examining the literature of Korean immigrants living abroad. In recent days, both researchers and general readers outside Korea have taken an increasing interest in Korean literature. Accordingly, translations of and writings about Korean literature have been increasingly produced. We hope this volume can serve as a textbook and reference manual for scholars, students, and anyone else interested in Korean literature.
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Postwar Korean Short Stories: An Anthology
Manufacturer: Univ of Hawaii Pr
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0824808339 |
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Part of the Modern Korean Short Stories Series, the short story "Weathered Blossom" illustrates elders in love, but also discerns the substance of love, and distance between reality and feeling of love. The lady believes that love is beautiful only with lust, as it is the only way to be blinded. Thus she realizes elders in love can not be anything but a charming facade then humbly accepts reality. However, to say her lustless love is not beautiful is incorrect, as she humbly accepts the limitation of age and reality.
-Lee Nam-ho, Literary Critic and Professor at Korea University
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The Golden Phoenix: Seven Contemporary Korean Short Stories
Manufacturer: Lynne Rienner Publishers
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ASIN: 089410862X |
Book Description
In
City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer has reinvented the literature of the fantastic. You hold in your hands an invitation to a place unlike any you’ve ever visited–an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians.
City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading–and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he’s made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago.…
By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and “eyewitness” reports invokes a universe within a puzzlebox where you can lose–and find–yourself again.
Customer Reviews:
Many novels in one; expertly woven.......2007-07-09
I bought this online because none of the local libraries had it, and it was recommended to me by someone who knew my tastes well. _City_ is one of a number of amazing experimental (I rather hope I may be forgiven for using that term) novels that seem to shred a number of different-but-related stories and then reassemble them into a work greater than the sum of the parts. I have been trying to come up with a term for these novels -- perhaps someone already has -- "story collage" comes to mind, as well as "synergistic novel", and a few sillier ones.
I am pleased to live in a time where there is so much innovation. Vandermeer works his craft with exceeding skill.
Like Trying to Read Kafka on Drugs.......2007-02-04
The only comment to make about the effect of drugs on this book (which has major information about Squids) is that all through the stories there are references to 'Grey Caps' who are a race of 'sentient' mushrooms.
The "Madman" referred to in the title has to be VanderMeer (VM). This book is a compendium of all VMs previous 'Ambergris' stories. If you find a hardcopy, you can start by reading the story on the outside cover. Then though the main stories are at the beginning the true story is contained in all the esoterica and errata that fill out the book.
VM has created his own Tolkienesque world all contained in one book. The 'History' section is replete with over 120 footnotes, making it look like a scholarly work. The included bibliography for Ambergris is in itself worth taking the time to read. At the end of the book, VM has written his own descriptions of the the history of the fonts used in the book.
Most interesting to me was the 'Strange Story of X' which reads like a medical dossier of a psychotic. The 'Patient' thinks he has been writing about his world called 'Ambergris', but has come to realize that it is a world he created. Now that he is 'better' he wants to be released. Comes to the truth, he is in Ambergris and the 'real world'(Chicago, Dallas,etc) that he now believes in is the 'created' one.
There is way to much in this book to discuss in a review. Best you can do is read it for yourself, and hope in the end you don't start seeing fungi walking around in your dreams (if they really are dreams).
Vandermeer is Astonishing.......2006-11-24
and the Ambergris stories are not to be missed. This isn't another half-baked "fantasy" novel based on the tired JJR Tolkien/Dungeons and Dragons model, it is beautifully crafted literature designed to entrance the reader.
Vandermeer deserves to be at the top of every bestseller list. Put down your copy of "The Davinci Code" or the latest S. King crap-o-rama and fall into Ambergris. You'll be glad you did.
Buy this book!.......2006-08-27
I'm not much of a review writer, but in the case of Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen I feel that I do need to say something.
Ambergris lives. Jeff makes his city come alive in ways that I don't feel any other author could have managed.
City of Saints and Madmen is an amazing work of art. Jeff managed to do what very few authors accomplish and that is to make simple words paint a vibrant and living mosaic for the reader to enjoy.
Enjoyable.......2006-07-11
I looked for this book for a long time after reading about it in some reviews. Nobody had it and I didn't want to pay for the hardcover. I wish I'd bought the hardcover. It's not a perfect book. There are sections that I just could not read because they were too boring, but about two thirds of the book, the stories in that part are amazing. I fell in love with books and authors that play with the reader in university and this book does that to some extent. It's beautifully written, economical in its prose despite that, and the parts that aren't boring (the whole history of Ambergris, for instance) are difficult to put down. I really enjoyed the whole group of short pieces about Mr X. I'd liken this collection to something like a cross between Italo Calvino and Mervyn Peake.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on September 22, 2002. The length of the article is 326 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Jeff VanderMeer. City of Saints & Madmen.(Book Review)
Author: Brian Evenson
Publication:
The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2002
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: 22
Issue: 3
Page: 148(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
- Great place to start investigating this smart science fiction writer
- The Quintessence of Sterlingism
- Stellar collection of stories from cyberpunk's visionary
- An uneven collection
- Excellent collection of cyberpunk stories
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A Good Old-Fashioned Future
Bruce Sterling
Manufacturer: Spectra
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ASIN: 0553576429
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Amazon.com
A Good Old-fashioned Future is a paperback collection of seven short stories by former cyberpunk guru turned sociocultural prognosticator Bruce Sterling. Most of the works here come with impressive pedigrees, ranging from a Hugo Award for "Bicycle Repairman" to Hugo nominations for "Maneki Neko" and "Taklamakan." Another piece, "Big Jelly," was cowritten by Sterling's fellow cyberpunk alum, Rudy Rucker.
These stories have a lot in common. They all take place in the near future, and most are action-oriented, involving colorful characters such as secret agents, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Mafioso's, and revolutionaries. But they are also personal tales that tend to focus on individuals rather than ideas, which makes them hit home more often than standard SF fare. The best of the bunch is probably "Taklamakan," a high-concept piece about two freelance spies sent to a central Asian desert called Taklamakan, where the Asian Sphere is doing some sort of secret research into space flight. "Bicycle Repairman" is set in the same world, but instead of in an Asian desert it takes place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the spies in this story aren't the good guys. It's a less successful piece than "Taklamakan" but also a good read.
Not all of the stories in this collection have the edgy, this-is-what-tomorrow-will-be-like quality that typifies Sterling's best work. But even when Sterling isn't at his best he's entertaining, and A Good Old-Fashioned Future is certainly that. --Craig E. Engler
Book Description
From the subversive to the antic, the uproarious to the disturbing, the stories of Bruce Sterling are restless, energy-filled journeys through a world running on empty--the visionary work of one of our most imaginative and insightful modern writers.
They live as strangers in strange lands. In worlds that have fallen--or should have. They wage battles in wars already lost and become heroes--and sometimes martyrs--in their last-ditch efforts to preserve the dignity and individuality of humanity.
A hack Indian filmmaker takes the pulse of a wounded and declining civilization--21st-century Britain. A pair of swashbuckling Silicon Valley entrepreneurs join forces to make a commercial killing--in organic underground slime and computer-generated jellyfish. A man in a Japanese city takes orders from a talking cat while pursuing a drama of danger and adventure that has become the very essence of his life.
From "The Littlest Jackal", a darkly hilarious thriller of mercs and gunrunners set in Finland, to a stark vision of a post-atomic netherworld in his haunting tale "Taklamakan", Bruce Sterling once again breaks boundaries, breaks icons, and breaks rules to unleash the most dangerously provocative and intelligent science fiction being written today.
Customer Reviews:
Great place to start investigating this smart science fiction writer.......2007-01-10
This was the first Bruce Sterling I've read, fiction or non-fiction, and I definitely plan to read more. Sterling is ostensibly a cyberpunk author, which (I think) means that his stories feature marginal characters (e.g., terrorists, bicycle repairing squatters, skyscraper climbers, neuter industrial spies, etc.) in gritty, if not necessarily grim, near-future circumstances. Whatever subgenre of science fiction he belongs to, Sterling is a literate, intelligent writer who sees the line between science and science fiction growing ever hazier and whose speculative extrapolations are all the more frightening and engaging because they are so close to the contemporary reality. (For example, in aptly titled story "Sacred Cow," Anglo-Americans and Western Europeans have been decimated by the slow plague of "mad cow" disease---a chilling possibility---leaving Bollywood to take up the cinematic slack---another chilling possibility!) Other reviewers have commented on the unevenness of the stories in this collection, and I concur with that assessment; a few of the stories are definitely not as interesting as others, but luckily the number of these weaker stories is low. In short, this is a great place to start investigating a smart science fiction writer whose reputation will probably be hard to tarnish.
The Quintessence of Sterlingism.......2004-10-25
A Good Old-Fashioned Future, (...), is an anthology of seven stellar stories authored by Austin, Texas novelist and seer Bruce Sterling. These yarns were originally published in magazines -- such as Asimov's, Hayakawa's Science Fiction Magazine, Omni, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, -- that were sold between 1993 and 1998. And with the exception of one tale, they are all interlaced in some form or another, whether by scheme or character.
My favorite story in this collection is "Big Jelly," a collaboration Sterling hatched with his close friend Rudy Rucker of Freeware fame. "Big Jelly," is an anecdotal account of the unintended consequences that result from a second-chance meeting between Tug Mesoglea, a gay San Jose computer programmer, and Revel Pullen, a straight Texas oil billionaire that dabbles in venture capitalism on the side. While not the longest story in AGOFF, "Big Jelly" does seem to have the most going on, conceptually. Also note the glib sense of humor, as in the initials of the story, and the backward names, "gut" and "lever." Lever Pullen... hehe. Coincidentally this is the one story that has little in common with the others. The other stories seem to take place anywhere from 30 and 70 years from now. Based on the quality of this story, I'd love to see a whole novel from this pair. Would that be too much to ask for? After all, Bruce did collaborate once before on The Difference Engine with William Gibson. What do you say Bruce?
My second favorite parable in this group is "Deep Eddy," a forty-seven page recounting of Edward Dertouzas's pleasure trip from the metropolis of Chattanooga, Tennessee, into the dark heart of modern-day Dusseldorf, circa July 2035. "Deep Eddy," a ripe old 22, is a young man of amazing technical prowess, and while deemed a "security risk" upon his arrival on European soil, he's then assigned his own personal Security Guard who will escort him while he conducts his business in country -- and her name, we are led to believe, is simply Sardelle. These two curious specimens are then thrown together in a dangerous set of circumstances, as they attempt to reach the city center during a "Wende" -- a multi-cultural holiday of some type, wherein over a million people rapidly descend upon the city over the course of a few summer days. Ultimately this turns out to be a tale of both efficiency and charm, and is told by Sterling. with a firm grip on a "truly alien sensibility." In the final analysis, "Deep Eddy" and "Sardelle" are destined to part ways, but not until after they spend a couple of years together. I'd really like to see another story featuring Sardelle, perhaps set in the Canary Islands or Ibiza.
And I suppose my third favorite gem from this volume would be "Bicycle Repairman," a chronicle that has garnered many accolades, and that has been reprinted in any number of other places, such as The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 14, Hartwell's Year's Best SF2, and The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. "Bicycle Repairman" is set in the Chattanooga of 2037, and involves one Lyle Schweik, southern high-rise squatter and confederate mail-drop for one Edward Dertouzas, whom is set upon by comely Federal Agent Kitty Casaday, after receiving a mysterious delivery from former acquaintance "Deep Eddy," currently living it up in Spain. Only it turns out Casaday is incompetent, like most government workers, and as a result she is captured by a trap that Lyle had set up in his home. After some light coercion from Lyle's "unique friends," Kitty reveals her ulterior motives -- "spills the beans" so to speak. When you boil it down, this is a truly fascinating short-hop extension of "Deep Eddy," a classic Sterling short that the author decided to riff on a mere three years later. I'd really like to see another story featuring Eddy & Violeta Dertouzas, their two children and their in-laws -- set in a unified Middle East of 2048. Can you humor me Bruce?
For the purpose of this review, and in favor of not boring you, I've decided to summarize only three of these adventures. The other four items in this anthology, Maneki Neko, The Littlest Jackal, Sacred Cow, and Taklamakan are just as good, in terms of quality. The trio of story lines I've decided to outline for you here are simply the ones that I most prefer to tout. *Sterling still pens short stories from time to time, but the realities of being a writer with a family to support generally make it a necessity that he concentrate solely on non-fiction books, such as *Tomorrow Now, or on science fiction novels, such as *Holy Fire. Which is too bad, since he's so truly adept at the art of the short story -- arguably a more elusive gift than the basic ability to complete a manuscript of novel length.
If you seek out A Good Old-Fashioned Future based on my recommendation here, you'll also want to pick up Bruces@ older anthology, Globalhead, from 1992, and gobble up "Dori Bangs," perhaps the most melancholy short story ever set to paper. I highly recommend anything written by Bruce Sterling, and this volume is one of his better efforts. I have seven of his books -- four in hardback, and three in paperback. Zude. Eventually I'll own them all. Keep on writing Bruce, never change what you do, and please -- write faster!
Stellar collection of stories from cyberpunk's visionary.......2002-12-12
Bruce Sterling rose to prominence in the 1980s as the master visionary and literary theorist of the cyberpunk movement. Although he has not left cyberpunk's sensibility behind, his newer fiction incorporates a wider range of themes, philosophical concepts, and just plain fun which is immediately engaging and entertaining as well as intellectually satisfying.
The best of Sterling's fiction- and "A Good Old-Fashioned Future" definitely belongs in that category- extrapolates current events and trends into the near future, then gives them a baroque twist. Here, Sterling's combination of a mad-cow disease epidemic and the rise of Indian cinema combine to make "Sacred Cow" a darkly humorous exploration of reverse colonialism. Likewise, cultural warfare- whether between differing intellectual movements, government and squatting entrepreneurs, or ethnic minorities against their own state and each other- invests and links the three last stories in the book in a progression that is as intricate as it is involving.
It's not all Bollywood and literary theory, though- Sterling loyalists will be pleased with the return of his irrepressible outlaw Leggy Starlitz. Scheming to free a group of islands from Danish control in order to set up a money-laundry, Starlitz's efforts are as amusing as they are, always, ultimately futile.
All in all, this collection is excellently balanced between the foreboding and the comic, the earnest and the absurd, and it's a must-have both for Sterling fans and those who just want to know how good science fiction can be.
An uneven collection.......2001-12-03
This uneven collection points up a lot of what was going wrong for Bruce Sterling in the 1990s: an overconfidence in his own ability to have his finger on the pulse and sometimes seemingly superficial understanding of other cultures replacing in-depth research.
This is at its worst in stories like 'The Littlest Jackal', set largely in the Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden - I've been there, and he just seems to use the islands as an exotic locale without any real understanding of the culture or geography. This story also features the return of Leggy Starlitz, the shady gun-for-hire of several stories in Globalhead, Sterling's previous and equally uneven collection. Unfortunately where in those stories he was amusing, here he has out-stayed his welcome and become tedious. I know these stories are an ironic riff on the old cyberpunk assassin theme and the superficiality is probably intended, but still - I don't think it works.
Also lightweight is Sacred Cow, which has a great concept (Bollywood film-makers come to Britain to take advantage of cheap labour in a country devastated by mad cow disease), but which largely fails to deliver more than a few cheap laughs. The title character of Deep Eddy (who gets a mention in a couple of other tales) is another of those irritating know-it-alls that Sterlings seems to specialise in at present. Will the geeks inherit the earth? Perhaps he's right, but it doesn't make for interesting characterisation here. Neil Stephenson does this a lot more effectively.
However, there are some really good stories in this collection.
I've lived in Japan, the setting for Maneki Neko, which in this context appears to suffer from the same faults as the lesser stories in demonstrating no more than a passing grasp of the culture in which it is set. However, having thought about this more, I realised that when I first read this story when it was published in F&SF's 'best of' collection, I really enjoyed its subtleties and humour (like many in that fine collection), and indeed its Japaneseness. Perhaps this time I reread it via Leggy Starlitz instead!
The long Bicycle Repairman and Taklamakan, set in the same world as Deep Eddy, are also better, the former a fairly gritty urban tale in a set amongst techie squatters, the latter a effectively dusty and atmospheric tale of some of the same foreign techs and spaceships in central Asia. I also enjoyed the wobbly and wonky Big Jelly which is at least partly down to lunatic collaborator Rudy Rucker's all-round obsession with jellyfish!
Sterling started to return to form with the novel, Holy Fire, but for fans of short fiction I suggest going back to his first satisfyingly varied collection, Crystal Express, which featured both early cyberpunk and more tradtional space-and-aliens sci-fi done equally well.
Overall this collection suggests that Sterling isn't putting as much effort into his short fiction as he used to, but there are very few writers who start off writing short stories who continue to do them as well or as often as their careers progress. While there are some really worthwhile pieces in here, my reading of them at least was unfortunately coloured by the not so great ones.
Excellent collection of cyberpunk stories.......2001-01-01
It's nice to know that someone is still writing good tight cyberpunk stories. Overall, it's a format that suits Sterling quite well. I've read his novels, and they don't seem to be quite all there. It's the short stories that he really shines.
All of his interesting sensibilities are there, and he has evolved to new concepts as time goes on and the future we expected changed. The Japanese mega-corp - a staple of early science fiction - is dead. Bruce was ahead of the curve in viewing Russia as an interesting place to do cyberpunk. Certainly as history unfolds, it remains an interesting place.
Lastly, the evolution of the writing is good. It maintains the cyberpunk view of the world, undergoing some few modifications for the Internet as it came out, not envisioned, as well as the toys that make cyberpunk fun. Bio Drills that eat sugar, not eating and living on implanted fat for days. The whole Urban spider concept is a fun one that needs to be explored more.
Overall, a must read for the old-school cyberpunk fan. Heck, it's a must read in general.
Book Description
This work was created by Friedrich Blass, professor of classical philology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, and was continued after his death by Albert Debrunner, professor of Indo-European and classical philology at the University of Bern until his retirement in 1954. The grammar has passed through ten editions from 1896 to 1960.
Robert W. Funk, in translating this long-established classic, has also revised it and, in doing so, has incorporated the notes which Professor Debrunner had prepared for a new German edition on which he was working at the time of his death in 1958. Dr. Funk has also had the co-operation of leading British, Continental, and American scholars. The translation places in the hands of English-speaking students a book that belongs in their libraries and in the libraries of every theologian, philologist and pastor alongside the Gingrich-Danker Greek-English Lexicon.
This grammar sets the Greek of the New Testament in the context of Hellenistic Greek and compares and contrasts it with the classical norms. It relates to the New Testament language to its Semitic background, to Greek dialects, and to Latin and has been kept fully abreast of latest developments and manuscript discoveries. It is at no point exclusively dependent on modern editions of the Greek New Testament text but considers variant readings wherever they are significant. It is designed to compress the greatest amount of information into the smallest amount of space consistent with clarity. There are subsections discussing difficult or disputed points and copious citations of primary texts in addition to generous bibliographies for those who wish to pursue specific items further.
Customer Reviews:
Useful in a pastors study.......2005-10-30
This grammar is very helpful in a pastor's study (I am a pastor). It stays in my book bag most of the time. When doing sermon exegesis for the LXX or GNT I use Gordon Fee's "NT Exegesis" method. When preparing for my exegesis provisional translation of the text, I use Zerwick's Grammatical Analysis with the coded lessons to his Biblical Greek book. Then I use this book, BDF's Grammar, to read more indepth on the grammatical points that Zerwick describes.
Usually in Zerwick there are 3 to 6 grammar highlights that he points out. So if I have time, I can learn a lot more by going to the referenced Grammar point in BDF and reading it through.
For example when working on Philippians 3:12 this week I found three lessons in Zerwicks analysis...the first one dealing with INA and the subjunctive mood (indirect discourse application). While reading Zerwicks concise and very helpful grammar he actually cites BDF lesson 368 (that's this book currently being reviewed). So when I go there I find a lot more information on the exact same point along with quotations to ancient Christian lit/GNT. The broader context of everything in BDF also provides a clearer picture. In Zerwick's Analysis there is a clause about the point...in his grammar a paragraph...and in BDF you have half a page. And you can jump from one to the other in a few seconds.
When you are done doing that, you feel like you just either refreshed yourself in an old grammar point, or learned something useful that you maybe never picked up in college or seminary.
So I recommend Pastors who have some Greek knowledge to use Zerwick's Grammatical Analysis and Biblical Greek book...along with this one. The combination will give you the confidence you need to make a provisional translation of the text for your sermon each week. The way these books are laid out, it only takes about an hour or so of reading, max, to accompish this. Over time, you will find your Greek grammar knowledge actually sharpening even though you are not in school. Just work these steps into your sermon prep time.
The point that Wallace makes in his review below about Classical Greek is important to consider. I have found it helpful to consult other Grammars or scholars online if there are questions along that line. One good group online is b-greek. Just google that and you will find it. The scholars on that group will often answer questions without any problem.
Review of Funk and Blass.......2000-07-03
A well-written reference book which provides an in-depth look at Greek grammar. It serves as a wonderful aid in research or sermon preparation. Recommended for a specialist or someone with considerable familiarity with Koine Greek.
Review of Blass-Debrunner-Funk.......2000-06-27
BDF is still the standard Greek grammar of the New Testament even after four decades. It is in the process of being revised (by a revision committee of eight members), but the revision will take several more years to complete. We felt it needed revision because BDF presupposes that the average reader has had much exposure to classical Greek prior to working in the New Testament. This is part of the reason that BDF is so hard to use: most NT students have not had exposure to classical Greek nowadays. Another reason is its cryptic nature, Teutonic abbreviations, and omission of 'normal' grammar. Nevertheless, even with these shortcomings, every responsible exegete of the New Testament must own a copy of this goldmine of information.
Daniel B. Wallace, Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary
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