This little book’s title sums it up:
Douglas S. Huffman. The Handy Guide to New Testament Greek: Grammar, Syntax, and Diagramming. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2012. 112 pp.
This 13-page PDF excerpt includes the table of contents.
Part 3 (pp. 83-106) is by far the most helpful section of the book.
Outline of part 3:
- Diagramming: A Brief Introduction
- Technical Diagramming
- Phrase Diagramming
- Semantic Diagramming
- Arcing
- The Basics of Phrase Diagramming
- Motive
- Goal
- Focus
- Principles
- Flexibility
- Step-by-Step Phrase Diagramming
- Establish the Limits of the Paragraph
- Divide the Sentences into Their Natural Phrases
- Identify the Main Clauses of the Paragraph
- Indent the Subordinate Phrases and Clauses
- Draw Arrows from Each Subordinate Phrase
- Add Semantic Labels
- Mimic the Greek Diagram with the English Text
- Craft a Sermon/Lesson Outline from the Diagram
- Special & Problem Issues
- Word Wrap-Around
- Embedded Phrases
- Parallelism and Chiasm
- Didactic vs. Narrative Passages
Out of curiosity, do many college/seminary Greek classes teach sentence diagramming? I am a Bible college student, and I have taken 22 credits of Greek. I have never been taught how to do sentence diagramming, and two different Greek professors have said that they do not teach it because they do not find it helpful. Yet I have seen it in several books on hermeneutics and exegesis. Am I missing out on something important?
Hi, Eric.
I’m not sure about how many schools teach what. But I’m curious to know (it’d probably take a survey of some sort to find out).
I don’t find sentence diagramming to be all that helpful either. But I find syntactical displays to be immensely valuable.