Voice and Mood serves as the first volume in a new series edited by Stanley Porter entitled Essentials of Biblical Greek Grammar. The series attempts to bridge the gap between technical monographs and the generic discussions found in major Greek grammars. The goal is to provide students of the New Testament with concise introductions to recent scholarly advances without requiring them to wade through dense secondary literature. At the same time, given Porter’s oversight, one would expect the volumes in this series to be well-informed by current linguistic research, and Mathewson’s Voice and Mood is no exception.As the title aptly indicates, Voice and Mood investigates two features of the Greek verbal system: voice (pp. 5–73) and mood (pp. 75–168). Mathewson approaches these features from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and thereby operates with the dictum that “meaning implies choice” (p. 2). The range of options for portraying the action of the verb (active, middle, or passive voice and the variety of possible moods) suggests intentional decisions on the part of the author.In Part 1, Mathewson provides an extensive treatment of voice. Chapter 1 succinctly summarizes the secondary literature, moving from the discussions in standard grammars to more specialized studies (specifically the contributions of Rutger Allan, Rachel Aubrey, and Bryan Fletcher).Chapter 2 comprises Mathewson’s effort to use SFL to unpack the contribution of voice within the Greek verbal system. Following Porter, he claims that “causality is the main semantic feature indicated by the selection of a given voice form” (p. 34). To support this, Mathewson repurposes M. A. K. Halliday’s concept of “ergativity,” which describes whether an action is self-engendered (internally caused) or not (caused by an external agent). Mathewson suggests that the author’s portrayal of causality is encoded in the particular morphological verb endings. Thus, “the active voice indicates direct causality and agency of the subject. The middle voice indicates internal causality and subject-affectedness but lacks any external agency. The passive indicates external/indirect causality with subject-affectedness” (p. 34). The middle and passive voices are thus linked by the fact that the grammatical subject is also the “medium,” that is, the patient receiving the action (p. 38).Chapter 3 builds on Chapter 2 by arguing that Koine Greek contains a three-voice verbal system, thus pushing back against the current trend within scholarship advocating a two-voice model. Furthermore, Mathewson contends that viewing the middle voice as primarily encoding internal causality renders the category of deponency unnecessary (pp. 70–71).In Part 2, Mathewson turns to address the subject of mood, which he suggests has received far too little attention. Chapter 4 surveys the standard grammars, highlighting the fact that many are quite fuzzy on the specific semantic contribution of each mood. The grammars often provide lists of possible functions for each mood that are in fact dependent on the various contexts in which the examples occur. Mathewson instead follows Porter in describing mood as grammaticalizing “the language user’s perspective on the relationship of the verbal action to reality” (pp. 88–89). Mathewson is careful to emphasize that “mood is perspectival in that it has to do with the author/speaker’s conception of or portrayal of the action, not with the reality of the action itself” (p. 77).In Chapter 5, Mathewson surveys the entire Greek mood system, dividing it into the assertive (indicative) and nonassertive (subjunctive, optative, and imperative) moods. The indicative mood “encodes epistemic modality (the author’s attitude toward the factual status of the statement)” (p. 100, emphasis original). Being the most common, “it is the unmarked mood form” (p. 101). By contrast, the nonassertive moods make “no assertion about reality . . . and instead [make] projections about reality” (p. 109). For Mathewson, the subjunctive mood projects an action or state of affairs as a “potentiality or within the realm of possibility” (p. 110). The optative mood not only encodes projection of a potentiality but also conveys the additional semantic feature of contingency (pp. 116–17). In other words, the potential action or state of affairs is portrayed as conditional on other actions or events (which may or may never occur). Finally, the imperative mood encodes the semantic feature of direction, commanding or desiring a specific potential outcome from the recipients (p. 124). In connection with the nonassertive moods, Mathewson also briefly touches on the future tense-form as encoding expectation of fulfillment (pp. 131–34).Chapter 6 is something of a lengthy excursus addressing the semantic features of infinitives and participles. While he recognizes that they are not technically moods, Mathewson argues that infinitives and participles are similar to the mood system in that they likewise convey the author’s assumptions regarding the relation of the action of the verb to reality (see especially his discussion on p. 139). Mathewson finishes the book with a succinct conclusion (pp. 169–72).Despite being a relatively slim book, Voice and Mood covers a lot of territory. Mathewson is to be commended for bringing to the fore two often overlooked elements of the Greek verbal system. There are several noteworthy characteristics of this volume, which I want to highlight briefly. I appreciated that while discussions of voice often limit themselves to contentions surrounding the middle voice and deponency, Mathewson provides a comprehensive overview of the entire voice system (esp. in Chapter 3), thus refusing to treat one voice in isolation from the others. Of course, readers must draw their own conclusions about whether he is correct regarding the number of voices. Furthermore, his overviews of secondary literature are concise and helpful, enabling students to grasp the lay of the land before encountering his own views. I welcomed Mathewson’s interaction with von Siebenthal as an example of recent German reflection on Koine Greek grammar from a linguistically informed perspective. Finally, I found especially gratifying the sections on the exegetical significance of the various voices and moods. Pedagogically, it is not enough simply to instill in our students an understanding of the finer points of grammar (laudable as that is). We must also underscore their relevance toward a more accurate understanding of the biblical text.I also want to mention quickly several areas where this volume could be improved. Given that the book is aimed at theological students, I found it surprising that there are no full first citations in the footnotes. The thoroughgoing use of a short citation format means that students must often turn to the bibliography for the necessary information if they are not already familiar with a particular resource (see, for example, p.15n27). Similarly, the diagrams provided are often not clear enough to be useful to students. As a straightforward example, Figure 2.1 (p. 37) does not explain what “+” means, and Mathewson does not explain any of the symbols in his diagrams until p. 96. Even then, the visually presented information often feels unnecessarily obtuse with excessive jargon (see pp. 97–98). Finally, there is a significant amount of unnecessary repetition throughout the book, but especially between Chapters 1 and 2. Curiously, p. 21n39 and p. 33n29 feature identical quotations from Bryan Fletcher, but Mathewson provides differing citation information.These issues notwithstanding, Mathewson has done the biblical studies guild a service by shedding light on voice and mood with the help of advances in linguistics.