Roger Omanson’s excellent A Textual Guide to the GNT does something that many of us have known we need. For years those who are curious about the apparatus — the footnotes to the Greek NT — have had only two options: either know it all or use Bruce Metzger’s Textual Guide. There was a problem with Metzger:

You have to know textual criticism well to be able to read it easily. Well, those days are over. Roger Omanson has made Metzger readable and easier to use. I hope many pastors will buy Omanson’s guide, too. It’s a tool that will last a lifetime and beyond.
Another tool for students of the Greek NT is this one: A Reader’s Edition of the GNT by Barclay Newman. Let’s face it, not everyone can parse every word in the NT. So, many need some helps to move them along and it is better to use helps than not to read the Greek at all … and this book parses the more difficult words in the NT. Buy it, take it along with you on a trip and, without a lexicon, you will find yourself reading longer texts. Of course, as my friend Phil Towner says in the Preface, there is no substitute for hard work — but this book will encourage working in the NT. When you get to where you no longer need it, give it to a younger student who does or do an older pastor who forgot.