Thayer, Abbott-Smith vs. BAGD/BDAG

Eric S. Weiss eweiss at gte.net
Tue Jul 30 10:54:41 EDT 2002


One advantage still to Thayer's seems to be the nice comments he makes in
his lexical entries (assuming the comments are correct!).

I would still appreciate any examples you might have where Thayer's is
clearly incorrect so I can explain to people that (or why) they should not
rely soley on Thayer, despite its cheap cost and ready availability. I've
picked some random words, but not yet found any others that show, like
KUNARION, that Thayer needs to be corrected by more up-to-date lexicons.

I hesitate to recommend Abbott-Smith to non-Greek readers as, in addition
to some obsolescence, its entries don't seem to frequently contain English
translations of Greek words as BAGD (and Thayer) does.

> A question re: obsolete lexicons:
> 
> Neither Thayer's lexicon nor Abbott-Smith's lexicon indicate that KUNARION
> = "little dog/puppy" (a diminutive of KUWN) might NOT have retained this
> diminutive sense in the Koine. Louw-Nida, I believe, says that it MAY have
> meant a house dog, but both Louw-Nida and BAGD mention that this seems to
> have lost its diminutive sense by NT times. The impact of this is that
> Jesus's referring to the woman as a KUNARION may NOT have been an
> affectionate remark, as some have said in an effort to soften his remarks.
> ("It is not right to give the children's bread to the dogs," etc.)
> 
> What I'm asking is: Is this an example of why Thayer's is considered to be
> obsolete? I need some reasons/examples to tell people who take my "Greek
> for non-Greek students" class why they cannot rely solely on Thayer's or
> Vine's Expository dictionary (which also says KUNARION refers to a little
> dog/puppy) when doing word searches, but must also check more recent
> lexicons to substantiate their findings.



More information about the B-Greek mailing list