[B-Greek] RE: a real Koine dictionary?
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Thu Mar 31 16:29:12 EST 2005
Wilkins EGRAPSE
>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>
A brief clarification on LSJ-MBGT being 'too comprehensive'. It is too
comprehensive for the first century. It is filled with many words that
were not in use in the first century. Finding a word in LSJ does not
tell someone what the preferred diction would be in the first century,
though it helps greatly when finding rare twists of phrase in an old
playwright or epic.
Randall Buth

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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