(Part 1)

JBTM Book Reviews
121
Verbal aspect and Aktionsart are two interrelated topics that Campbell has studied in
great depth. The reader will appreciate his experience and basic description of these concepts.
He offers a brief history of the discussion about verbal aspect. This debate centers
around whether temporal reference is a core feature of verbs in the indicative mood, especially
with perfect-tense forms. Campbell’s greatest contribution is his provision of a
four-step process (Semantics, Lexeme, Context, Aktionsart) that assists in the exegeting
of a verb in context. He also briefly addresses aspect in relation to narrative structure and
planes of discourse.
Campbell offers a brief survey of the lesser-understood topics of idiolect, genre, and
register and their influence on aspectual patterns. He concludes that genre and form account
for convergent aspectual patterns. Patterns are predictable within a given genre and
are also distinct from patterns in other genres. Idiolect and register account for divergent
patterns due to author preferences for certain verbal phenomena.
Campbell dedicates two chapters to the various approaches of discourse analysis,
which is rather new to New Testament studies. Campbell details the pros and cons of a few
major approaches of discourse analysis. The Hallidayan approach focuses on cohesion of
a text through the use of conjunction, reference, ellipsis, and lexical cohesion. The study
of cohesion allows the analyst to describe objectively how a particular text hangs together.
The approach developed by Stephen Levinsohn is especially useful because it marries the
study of Greek parts of speech with principles from the wider linguistic world. Levinsohn’s
main focus is on the significance of an author’s choice of words to express meaning. His
approach is truly eclectic because he analyzes constituent order, sentence conjunctions,
patterns of reference, backgrounding and highlighting devices, reporting of conversation,
and boundary features. The approach of Steven E. Runge is the most useful for the Greek
student and is the most comprehensive as it has been applied to the entire New Testament.
Runge’s approach also focuses on the function of Greek connectives, forward-pointing devices,
information structuring devices, and thematic highlighting devices.
The final two chapters give attention to the issues of Greek pronunciation and pedagogy.
My own study of textual criticism leads me to appreciate Campbell’s concern and
conclusions about Greek pronunciation. He rejects the Erasmian system because Erasmus
ultimately failed to appreciate the difference between Koine and Classical Greek. The orthographies
found in Koine inscriptions and papyri suggest the pronunciation was similar
to that of modern Greek. I tend to agree with Campbell’s conclusion that Erasmus represents
a misstep that puts Greek pedagogy increasingly out of step with Greek scholarship.
Campbell discusses the age-old issue of how quickly to get students reading the Greek
New Testament. He also addresses the pros and cons of using technology and immersion
methods.
As a teacher of Greek, I appreciate all the issues that Campbell addresses. Many of