[B-Greek] NA27 and Greek-English Dictionary

Trevor Peterson 06PETERSON at cua.edu
Thu Oct 2 14:06:15 EDT 2003


>===== Original Message From "Barry W. Hickey" <bhickey at sun-spot.com> =====
>After reading through the archives about both current GNT editions, I came
>to be persuaded that very few people like the font of UBS4.  Many seem to be
>`distracted` when reading because of the font.  Therefore I'm leaning
>towards purchasing a copy of NA27.  Are there any versions of NA27 that
>contain a Greek-English dictionary similar to the one available with UBS4.
>If not, how important is such a dictionary for a beginning student?

Honestly, as a beginner, you may benefit from forcing yourself to use a major 
lexicon instead of this sort of little dictionary. It should properly be 
called a glossary, because all it really provides are common glosses for the 
words. This is not enough to develop your semantic sensibilities, which is 
important early on. If all you do is replace Greek words with one- or two-word 
English equivalents, you'll miss a lot of the benefit of learning to read 
Greek in the first place. You will probably be memorizing brief glosses when 
you learn vocabulary, but you should use occasions when you have to look up a 
word as opportunities to see the wider range of meaning. Besides, hauling BDAG 
around everywhere you go is good exercise :-)

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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