[B-Greek] On Thayer and BDAG
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 17 23:35:37 EDT 2008
Mike,
This notion that a definition is better than a gloss because it uses more
than one word strikes me as not self-evident. BDAG gives one defintion of
KEPHALH as "the part of the body that contains the brain." I
prefer Thayer's gloss: "head." If you can get the point across better
with one word, why use more than one? Maybe Thayer's glosses
(and for that matter, the glosses in Bauer's second edition) go
back so far because they are good ones to use.
You say that Lee shows both Thayer and BDAG to be wrong.
Amazon.com sells BDAG for $128.29 and Thayer for $16.47.
Does Lee show that Thayer has eight times as many errors
as Bauer? Can anyone show me one clear thing wrong in
Thayer that BDAG corrects?
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm not the one who
keeps bringing this up. When people on this list tell
NT Greek learners that they should spend $111.82 more
to buy Bauer over Thayer instead of using the money to
buy two or three of the other NT Greek resources which
will really help them like Zerwick or Trenchard's vocab
guide or Metzger's textual commentary, or, heck even
maybe using the money to buy a few gallons of gas,
well, they have to give a reason, or stop saying it.
Mark L.
--- On Thu, 7/17/08, Michael Aubrey <mga318 at yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Michael Aubrey <mga318 at yahoo.com>
Subject: On Thayer and BDAG
To: B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org, "Mark Lightman" <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008, 5:27 PM
If you read Lee's A History of New Testament Greek Lexicography, you'll see quite of few examples of why not only is Thayer wrong at times, but so also is BDAG!
None of the presently available lexicons are a fresh examination of the evidence. They all depend on previous works, which if you look closely, are dependent not only lexicographical work, but on translations. Thayer has glosses that go back to the Tyndale's translation and even all the way back to the Vulgate. BDAG is superior because it uses actual definitions (though at times even Danker is inconsistent).
Mike
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