[B-Greek] Lexicographical question

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at verizon.net
Tue Nov 27 13:46:13 EST 2007


Amen!! When I was younger and first saw the inside of an unabridged  
L&S, I was disappointed. I thought that such a thick lexicon must be  
loaded with great definitions and explanations. Instead there were  
brief, one-line definitions and lots of citations, which I mostly  
ignored. I figured they were there as proof texts for the meager  
definitions. Now I can say that the light has dawned and I'm a better  
student of the sources. I've hardly scratched the surface, but at  
least now I check the primary sources for words that are crucial to  
the understanding of difficult sources. The better lexicons show you  
what the lexicographers consider important sources for their own  
understanding of a word, so those citations are a great starting  
point. One daunting problem, as Carl points out, is lack of access to  
the sources. The TLG has gone a long way toward solving that; I only  
wish that access to it was not so pricey. I have an old 'D' CD that I  
use in lieu of access to the entire corpus by subscription, and if I  
could afford the subscription I wouldn't hesitate to go that route.  
However, even the D rom has other sources not included by  
lexicographers, and if I need to find out more about a word I run a  
full search of the corpus, not just the recommendations of the  
lexicon. Of course you also have to develop a working knowledge of  
secular Greek, but one way of doing that is to work through these  
valuable sources with a good grammar and lexicon.
	I'm sure many if not most b-greekers have no affordable TLG access,  
and if they did, they might lack the time to develop proficiency with  
it. For them, I ditto the kudos given in the past to BAGD. Recently I  
found a couple of sources cited in it that are not on the D rom and  
had mixed feelings. The bad news was, I couldn't access them; the  
good news is, it's impressive that BAGD research exceeded the limits  
of the old D rom. I'm not even sure the sources in question are in  
the TLG database now, so BAGD is pretty trustworthy. Still, lexicons  
at best represent the educated opinions of the lexicographers, and  
now and then you want (or need) more.

Don Wilkins

On Nov 27, 2007, at 3:25 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> A new blog entry worth noting is at Wayne Leman's "Better Bibles Blog"
> site (http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/). This one by Richard Rhodes
> is entitled, "The Value of Dictionaries":
> http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2007/11/value-of-dictionaries.html
> or
> http://tinyurl.com/2339b9
>
> There's a nice point made about the difference between "primary" and
> "secondary" sources: that the lexicographers who give us glosses for
> original-language words are "secondary sources," while the more
> significant "primary sources" to which they refer are the ancient
> authors or papyri (it's not really "papyrii" -- the original Latin
> word is "papyrus" rather than "papyrius"). This point is worth driving
> home, even if the blog is muddied (as well as obfuscated) by a
> discussion (one seen all too often in this forum, i.e. B-Greek) of the
> range of usage and proper translation in any particular context of
> Greek ἄνθρωπος (ANQRWPOS).
>
> The ultimate value of a lexicon lies in the evidence from original
> sources for the usages and meanings which it catalogs and categorizes;
> provided that one has access to the documents referenced, one is (at
> least theoretically) able to resolve questions of lexical meaning for
> oneself and not merely rely upon the judgment of the lexicographer. On
> the other hand, even the particular documents referenced constitute
> only a partial listing, and there may very well be a difference of
> opinion over any particular instance cited for a usage or meaning. The
> point here, I guess, is that it's good, from time to time, to be
> honest about the degree of relativity in our "knowledge" of an ancient
> language.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)
>
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