At the end of last year the TGC staff cited “best books from 2014.”

This is one of the two books I selected:

Rodney J. Decker. Reading Koine Greek: An Introduction and Integrated Workbook. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014.

My dear friend Rod Decker went to be with the Lord in May 2014 at age 61, but in spite of his terminal cancer God enabled him to complete two major projects that publishers released in November 2014:

1. a two–volume handbook on the Greek text of the Gospel of Mark
2. this comprehensive 672-page introduction to the Greek of the New Testament. Rod’s linguistically informed Greek grammar is his magnum opus, the fruit of decades of classroom instruction.

Check out this 58-page PDF sample.

Thank you, God, for Rod. He was a gift.

Rod’s wife, Linda, has been occasionally posting updates on Rod’s blog. Her handful of posts (starting on May 23, 2014) are filled with grace, godly grief, maturity, and perspective.