[B-Greek] On Thayer and BDAG

James Ernest j.d.ernest at bc.edu
Sat Jul 19 00:03:08 EDT 2008


On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Jeffrey B. Gibson <jgibson000 at comcast.net>
wrote:

> Perhaps because Danker knows -- as you do as well -- that "head" is not
> an adequate translation of KEFALH when KEFALH is being used with
> reference to a Pater Familias or the source of a river, etc.
>
>
Well, of course Thayer knew that also, as you can see if you look up the
word in Thayer. Thayer is a learned book. It represents the state of the art
in NT Greek lexicography in its day. Its entries are not one-word glosses.
So with respect to Mark's (completely reasonable) question:

> Can anyone show me one clear thing wrong in
> Thayer that BDAG corrects?

You're not likely to find cases where Thayer thought a word meant "house"
and BDAG shows that it really means "gastroenteritis." The definitions and
glosses in Thayer are well supported in the Greek literature that was known
prior to the 20th century, which is of course nearly all of Greek
literature. What BDAG adds is a concise summation, word by word, of the
results of twentieth-century discoveries in the inscriptions and papyri,
together with a remarkable amount of bibliographic info. It no doubts
refines and corrects Thayer in hundreds of cases (like the PHRA example),
but I doubt there are many cases where Thayer is just plain wrong.

And with regard to bare glosses: my own experience makes it impossible for
me to line up among the despisers of Barclay Newman's little dictionary, or
Bruce Metzger's Lexical Aids, or Autenrieth's similar guide for Homeric
vocabulary. Memorizing glosses, or consulting cribs, can grease the skids
when you're trying to get from the point where OUDEN ARA NUN KATAKRIMA might
as well be "Twas brillig and the slithy toves" to reading with (imperfect)
understanding, especially if some of your available learning time is on the
T between Government Center and Boston College, where you're not likely to
be carrying BDAG or LSJ. It would be lovely, but is not necessary, to leap
from utter ignorance to refined lexicographic omniscience in one swell foop.
If you learn this year to stumble through a sentence (looking up every other
word in Barclay Newman, or recalling one-word glosses that you memorized
from Metzger) telling you that Jesus told his disciples not to take a
"wallet" or "knapsack" with them, and don't learn until next year or the
year after that the possibility that he meant a beggar's bag . . . well,
that's OK. You're making progress. If you can look words up in BDAG rather
than Barclay Newman, or better just memorize BDAG (as Walter Elwell
memorized Thayer in his students days--no kidding--he was one credit short
of graduating, and the dean told him if he memorized Thayer he could have
the credit, so he did), maybe you'll make even faster progress.

Barclay Newman, Thayer, whatever . . . it's all good when used to help you
progress along the path, all bad if mistaken for the last word. For now,
BDAG is the last word, but of course eventually it too will be outdated.

James Ernest



More information about the B-Greek mailing list