I received in the mail today Rodney Whitacre’s new A Patristic Greek Reader (Hendrickson, 2007; $29.95) which was just released. As the author of a forthcoming Greek reader myself, I’m obviously very interested in other similar projects. Whitacre’s reader addresses a corpus almost (there is some overlap) totally different than mine. Whereas mine is a *Koine* Greek Reader, Whitacre’s is a koine and Byzantine reader. It begins with some of the same writers as I do (Didache, 1 Clement, Ignatius), but then moves on through mostly later koine writers and a few Byzantine representatives all the way up to the 11th century (Symeon the New Theologian). In other words, this is, indeed, a *patristics* reader. (I start with NT, then do LXX, apostolic fathers, and end with the earliest creeds. You can see the list of my chapters here.) I’ll give Whitacre’s list below.
Each chapter in Whitacre includes an introduction to the writer in view, then follows the reading selection in “split page” format: text above with notes on the bottom half of the page arranged “run in” verse-by-verse. The notes are mostly vocab, followed in decreasing frequency (my impression; I didn’t count) by parsings (sometimes only the lexical form, others times complete), and grammar notes, and once in a while a v.l. The vocab entries give basic glosses only, and only part of the lexical entry (art and nom sing form, no gen).
Translations of all the selections are given at the end of the book. There are also two appendices with some basic vocab and parsing help. The readings are arranged chronologically, not in graded sequence, but appendix C does give a graded list in order of difficulty–a nice touch.
The layout and publishing details are very well done; the pages look clear and legible. The book designer is to be commended. I haven’t read enough with sufficient care yet to judge the quality of the proof reading, but thus far nothing has jumped off the page at me. (Proofing this quantity of Greek text is tedious indeed! I just finished the proofs of my own reader… 
)
For those wanting to extend their Greek reading skills beyond the early-mid koine into the later koine as well as a sample of Byzantine writers, this looks like a very useful volume.
Whitacre’s reading selections (author/ab. title only, with century)
Didache (1?-2) 1 Clement (late 1) Ignatius (early 2) Diognetus (2) Mart. Polycarp (2) Justin Martyr (2) Melito (2) Clement Alex. (late 2) Eusebius (4) Athanasius (4) Gregory Naz. (4) Desert Fathers (4-5) Chrysostom (4) Hesychios (7-8?) Symeon (10-11)
My only perplexity is the range of selections. Since almost all are 2-4 centuries, why add two “odd balls” from 7th and 11th centuries? If one wanted to cover that range, why not spread the selection more evenly? Granted there are fewer Greek writers in the later centuries, but it seems a bit lopsidded to me–and I find no comment regarding the reason for the selections.
