[B-Greek] a real Koine dictionary?

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Thu Mar 31 15:53:45 EST 2005


Randall makes good points in his note. I personally would only question 
his comment about LSJ's being "too comprehensive," which I may be 
misunderstanding. The unabridged volume can be daunting to readers 
because of its bulk, but the bulk is necessary for the invaluable job it 
does of listing occurrences which can often be read within an article 
itself, or in any event can be looked up in the TLG or other sources. 
Aside from that, I especially applaud Randall's  desire to have a 
dictionary of widely-attested first-century vocabulary, and I wonder if 
a joint effort could not be formed to produce such a dictionary along 
the lines of which he speaks. As a single argument in favor of that, it 
has always bothered me that we make general statements about a given 
biblical author's vocabulary based solely on the NT book or books he has 
written, which in no case are substantial in volume with the possible 
exception of Paul. Now we'll never have other sources from biblical 
authors to study, but if we had a solid grasp of ordinary first-century 
vocabulary, we would at least have a standard for comparison--not to 
mention the additional information that might become available for 
reevaluating nuances in vocabulary.

Don Wilkins

On Thursday, March 31, 2005, at 12:26 PM, R Yochanan Bitan Buth wrote:

> In the discussion on "looking for a book" the following raises some
> hidden issues:
>
>
>
> Sangrey EGRAPSEN
>
> "In a certain sense, what your pastor is looking for is simply Koine
>
> Greek.  Since, 'koine', by definition, is vernacular.  In this case,
> you
>
> (and we) really already have such creatures.  BDAG, Louw & Nida,
> Moulton
>
> and Milligan, Brown's, and others, do this for us.
>
>
>
> "However, the gotcha, if I'm not reading into your question, is that
> even
>
> these books take 1st Century Greek vernacular and, with a number of
>
> words key to theological discussions, give them a theological spin.
> For
>
> example, CARIS as used on the street would not have had its rich
>
> theological implications read back into it.  People in the KMarticus
>
> parking lot would not have done that.  And we do it far too easily.
>
>
>
> "Having a lexicon that does ONLY that would be valuable.  Though,
> again,
>
> a lexicon like Louw & Nida gets very close.  Kittel, on the other
> hand,
>
> is at the other extreme."
>
>
>
> WDE ARXOMAI
>
> All of the above works on the 'KOINH' are skewed "by accident, by
> chance", something often forgotten or not factored into the
> discussion. The words that are in Louw and Nida do not necessary
> represent street Koine, but they represent the vocabulary that
> happened to be used in the New Testament. It would be like defining
> 'standard English' by the words that occur in a particular NT
> translation. The four to five thousand words would hardly describe all
> of the most common English words, nor would it exclude some quite
> specialized words. This can be illustrated quite easily with something
> as basic as color in the NT.
>
>
>
> In Louw and Nida, under color one finds QEIW'DHS. This means something
> like the 'sulphuric, sulphurous yellow'. But it is hardly the word
> that a kid would use playing in a street. For that you would need
> KSANQO'S 'yellow'. For 'blue' Louw and Nida list UAKI'NQINOS 'hyacinth
> blue', but without the more basic KUA'NEOS 'blue'.
>
>
>
> It is actually a tricky question to get back to what the basic
> language was in daily speech because we need to use written documents
> to do this. However, a nice basis would be a mix of vocabulary from
> sources like Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, NT, Epictetus, Josephus, et al.
> and selected papyri, in order to get the period correct. For example,
> would people in the street say PEIROUMAI... for 'I am trying ...' or
> would they say 'PEIRAZW', or both, and when? We have word lists and a
> wealth of materials to do this. We also have novels that have an
> interesting mix of language and the quite humorous dialogues of Lucian
> that were not constrained by the meter of the epigrams or the classic
> literature.
>
>
>
> I would enjoy having a dictionary of 'words widely attested in the
> first century'. (It needs to be bi-directional, too, Greek-to-a modern
> language; modern language-to-Greek, and/or monolingual in ancient
> Greek.) Liddell-Scott is just too comprehensive, Bauer D-A-G, M-M, and
> Lampe are too restrictive.
>
>
>
> PS: KOINH refers to a dialect of features shared between some of the
> earlier dialect divisions. It does not necessarily mean 'colloquial',
> 'vernacular', or 'common-man language'. Josephus wrote in the KOINH,
> as we see from forms like EDWKAMEN 'we gave', instead of the Attic
> EDOMEN. But Josephus also used 'highfalutin' vocabulary and forms like
> SFISI for simpler KOINH AUTOIS.
>
>
>
> ERRWSO
>
>
>
>
>
> Randall Buth, PhD
>
> Director, Biblical Language Center
>
> www.biblicalulpan.org
>
> and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
>
> Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
>
> ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
>
>
>
> ---
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>




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