Jonathan Robie wrote:I suspect you and I have done less work than the people who have written these reference works, and have received less scrutiny from the wider community.
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Looking it up in a lexicon feels like a more reliable methodology for those of us who don't have the time to do lexicography ourselves.
There are points where reference works including lexicons are not adequate. I think that, in terms of lexicons, this is one of those words.
There are a number of things that I look at in a lexicon entry such as BDAG, to judge the quality of the entry. In this case it is relying on a single word gloss, in another case (such as καθόλου that we were discussing last week) a "fudged" translation (without explanation) in the body of the lexicon entry has to make up for a gloss that doesn't match what we find in the text. A further thing that indicates the quality of the entry (in BDAG at least) is the number of scholarly articles that are noted.
One thing that I think would be very beneficial, would be to have threads to expand BDAG, quoting out the texts referenced, and giving a book review or summary of the articles that are cited. In giving references, it is not like someone giving the letters after their name to lend credence to their words, they are invitations to explore more, to see a word used in multiple similar situations. Let me quote Jonathan then continue:
Jonathan Robie wrote:I don't think it's safe to say "as distinguished from things that are not real property" simply because neither of us has found examples that do that yet, especially when neither of us has really put in the work to search for them. And proving a negative is pretty much impossible in general.
There are on average about 5 times more meanings for a word given in the more extensive lexicons than in the limited ones. The examples given in a entry such as the one for κτήτωρ in BDAG is case in point. Those 3 (2 if one doesn't include an editor's speculation as a real example) are examples of where κτήτωρ means "(land) owner". To use the lexicon entry's data intelligently, we need to realise the inherent bias in creating a lexicon limited to not only the words for the corpus it was intended for, but also the range of meanings that wold be needed for dealing with that corpus.
We hear a lot about the great benefit that the discovery of the papyri had on our understanding of the New Testament word stock, but trying to read those same papyri, (e.g. the three extracts quoted in this thread), we quickly realise that there is so much more to the world of Greek than we know. The words found in the papyri, the inscriptions and in other works of literature are words that co-existed with the 6,000 odd words that we are familiar with. People who could read the New Testament, could also read those other texts, in which there are more words and a greater number of meanings for the words that we are familiar with.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Those quotes are enough for me. I am happy to accept as a working definition that κτήτωρ means property owner. If I come across it again in a different context, I can revise my understanding.
Faced with that uncertainty and the enormity of the task of really knowing Greek, this is the strategy that I employ to give validity to the known and the possibility to admitting the unknown.
To bean effective lexicon user, we have to be a effective amateur lexicographer. Examples are given in the bigger works, to encourage grappling with the texts that the compilers of the lexicons grappled with to find meanings. At the very least we need a way (or a number of ways) to recognise when we have recognised a meaning. one of those is avoidance - what would this not be used with. The rules of collocational avoidance remain flexible, and allow for things like satire and humour. There is always a degree of subjectivity in language.
Understanding can be achieved to some extent through analytical study and comparison, to some extent through composition practice, to some extent through reading, but ultimately it is through identification with the writers or their readers - not just in intention, but also in so many ways.