b-greek digest: March 20, 2001

Bill Garrison BillGarrison at msn.com
Wed Mar 21 08:36:04 EST 2001


Subject: Re: Hapax legomena
From: "Bill Garrison" BillGarrison at msn.com
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 18:07:27 -0900

An article by Bruce M. Metzger in BibliothecaSacra 150-599 (July 1993)
273-284, addresses the quantity of such "absolute hapax legomena"  but does
not provide a list. Metzger writes, "In comparison with the difficulties of
ascertaining the meaning of words in the Hebrew Bible, the Greek New
Testament is much easier, at least with regard to the number of lexical
problems. According to statistics collected by an assiduous researcher,
[Robert Morgenthaler] the Greek New Testament contains 137,328 words,
comprising a total of 5,436 different words, of which 1,934 occur only once.
In footnote #5, Metzger adds, "According to information kindly supplied by
Frederick W. Danker (letter, December 10, 1989), only two dozen words (not
including proper nouns) have not been found elsewhere."
Bill Garrison
Baltimore, MD.
----- Original Message -----
From: Rodney J. Decker <rdecker at bbc.edu>
To: Biblical Greek <b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 12:21 PM
Subject: [b-greek] Hapax legomena


> Can anyone point me to a relatively recent list of "absolute hapax
> legomena"? That is, words that occur only one time in the NT and not in
any
> previous known Greek literature. It's not hard to find a list of
"relative"
> hapaxes--those that occur only once in the NT, but I'm looking for a more
> narrow list. I've read the intro to BDAG, but despite a number of catalog
> lists, I don't think they include what I'm seeking--unless I've not
> understood the descriptions that Bauer gives.
>
> ****************************************************
> Rodney J. Decker, Th.D.       Baptist Bible Seminary
> Assoc. Prof./NT  PO Box 800, Clarks Summit, PA 18411
> rdecker at bbc.edu      http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/
> XNS Universal Address: =RodDecker
> The *Resources for NT Study* site is accessible at:
> http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/rd_rsrc.htm
> ****************************************************





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