[B-Greek] Etymology of Greek Words

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Sun Oct 1 20:15:50 EDT 2006


On Oct 1, 2006, at 3:19 PM, Mark Spitsbergen wrote:

> I am looking for additional resources to more
> thoroughly and objectively understand the meaning of Biblical Greek  
> words.
> For example, I have benefited immensely from the etymological studies
> offered by Jacob Milgrom and others who have written for the Anchor  
> Bible
> Series, especially with respect to the Hebrew language. If anyone  
> knows of
> other resources that I can make use of for Biblical Greek, I would be
> appreciative.

Mark,

J.Barr is still worth reading although the book is nearly half a  
century old.

Biblical Hebrew philology or more specifically lexical semantics  
tends to employ etymology to a greater extent than NT Greek. There  
are good reasons for this. The database for the biblical Hebrew  
lexicon is far more limited than for ancient Greek. A good  
introduction to the topic is the second edition of:

  M. Silva,  Biblical Words and their Meaning: An Introduction to  
Lexical Semantics.


Silva is somewhat dated (1st ed. 1983). A more current look a the  
subject using a different theoretical framework is

TOWARDS A NEW DICTIONARY OF BIBLICAL HEBREW BASED ON SEMANTIC DOMAINS
Reinier de Blois United Bible Societies Woerden (Utr.), The Netherlands


http://www.sdbh.org/framework/index.html

Click on the two SBL papers on the left hand side of the page.

IMHO, R. de Blois is light years ahead of Jame Barr.

Elizabeth Kline







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