[b-Greek] Re: New review of BDAG ..."Eric S. Weiss" <eweiss at gte.net>
Vincent M. Setterholm
Vincents at minn.net
Fri Jun 14 05:53:20 EDT 2002
in my humble opinion, the reviewer missed the point on a couple issues.
Regarding the 'Jew/Judean' issue, the point is that 'Jew' now carries a
great deal of semantic 'weight', associations that may not have been part of
the word originally. It is not a matter of trying to be politically correct
to translate Judean, but rather trying to get rid of the baggage that we as
readers of English bring to the table with the word Jew, baggage that would
not have been there for a first century reader of Ioudaios. Episkopos is a
good example of this. There is a long tradition of rendering this word as
'bishop' in English, but many, if not most, English readers have
associations of bishops as robed and mitered catholic clergy. Thus 'bishop'
has a lot of associations that have more to do with our present culture than
the biblical one, so BDAG leaves the word out, an prefers 'supervisor' or
'overseer' instead. Is it trying to put a Protestant spin on the Greek? I
don't think so. It is just trying to remove connotations that weren't there
in the Greek to begin with.
The reviewer also questions the usefulness of some of the extended
definitions. But part of the purpose of this was to make the definitions
clear even if English was not a person's first language. The olive tree is
a good example. Olive can be a fruit or a color. The extended definition
makes it clear that the word refers to the fruit rather than the color.
Might seem silly to native English speakers, but this type of articulation
was one of the intended goals of the lexicon, and hopefully ESL readers will
appreciate it, even in cases where the rest of us don't.
Cheers,
Vincent Setterholm
-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Andre' Dixon [mailto:bereandad at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 1:28 AM
To: Biblical Greek
Subject: [b-greek] Re: New review of BDAG ..."Eric S. Weiss"
<eweiss at gte.net>
Eric:
I'm sticking with my 1979 edition too for the time
being, Eric. I have similar concerns about the latest
edition,which I'm sure has some improvements, but I
think it would be accurate to say that if one used the
second edition, he would not have to worry much about
making valuable and accurate lexical decisions with
that BAGD.
I appreciated "Biblical Words" by Moises Silva, which
helps me to read the 1979 edition critically. MAYBE
I'll eventually break down and fork over the C-bill
for the newest edition, but why fret over PC, when
there's enough to worry about otherwise.
Perhaps I'm sounding VERY naive. I'd be interested to
hear what others think about this.
Danny Andre' Dixon
--- "Eric S. Weiss" <eweiss at gte.net> wrote:
> > "These comments in no way lessen the value of this
> resource; rather, they
> > should simply encourage us to read lexica as we do
> other texts, both
> > ancient and modern: critically, carefully, and
> comparatively. Furthermore,
> > a close reading of a lexicon can remind us of the
> complex theoretical and
> > practical problems involved in the act of
> ascribing meaning to words, to
> > phrases, and to texts. BDAG will remain the
> standard reference tool for
> > students and scholars of the New Testament and
> other early Christian
> > literature for the foreseeable future."
>
> (sigh!) For those of use who don't have the time,
> access, expertise,
> exposure, etc., to comparatively read lexica to the
> necessary extent, it
> is disheartening to read the reviewer's comments
> about BDAG's definitions
> for, e.g., "Ioudaios" -- which does seem, from the
> review, to be based on
> a desire to be "politically correct" more than based
> on proof that it
> refers primarily to residents of Judea. (Versus
> Galileans -- or what? I
> think Hugh Schonfield made a similar argument in his
> controversial
> PASSOVER PLOT). Paul's statements about the Jews'
> rejection of Jesus does
> seem to encompass the people as a whole, vs. EQNOS;
> PERITOMH vs.
> AKROBUSTIA; etc. But this is moving beyond Greek
> grammar. Thanks for the
> link -- I haven't yet spent my $125 on the volume.
>
> ---
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