[B-Greek] New book: Singular-Meaning Lexicon and Handbook of the Greek New Testament

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Sep 25 08:05:22 EDT 2008


Mike Aubrey in a blog entry of yesterday (http://evepheso.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/heres-a-winner-for-you/ 
  = http://tinyurl.com/4cumdo) calls attention to the above new title.  
He cites the blurb for it thus: "is divided into two distinct  
sections. The Lexicon first gives a singular meaning for every NT  
Greek word. Next, the meaning is discovered by analysis of every  
occurrence of that word in the NT. Meanings are sifted until a  
singular meaning is found that adapts in every location of that word.  
This would be as near as a human could get to the meaning that was in  
the one mind of God, who is the author. The Handbook includes a  
treatment on the rare subject of the scriptural history of language.  
The Grammar section is an attempt to adapt the NT Greek grammar so  
that it is consistent. Issues like the passive meaning given to the  
middle voice, imperatival force put on the participial verb forms etc.  
are discussed."

I don't know whether to be delighted, amused, or appalled at what the  
the title of this book suggests. Is the intent of this lexical  
analysis to discover/uncover the unique sense supposedly inherent in  
each Greek word in the GNT? On the surface, at least, it looks like a  
lexicographical quest for the "least common denominator." IF that's  
what it is, I really wonder how useful that is to the student of the  
GNT -- but maybe that's NOT what is meant by "a singular meaning for  
every NT Greek word"? There's clearly a hermeneutical assumption at  
the heart of the proposition here, and hermeneutics is NOT a topic  
open for discussion in this forum. And are we to understand the second  
section is aiming at the very same sort of consistency with respect to  
Koine Greek grammatical constructions? That certainly sounds pretty  
good ... Google Book Search lets you see exactly what this involves: http://tinyurl.com/4rmepd 
  The review at Amazon.com concludes with the following appraisal:  
"The method in this book fails to treat Greek as a language, trying to  
make it some magical, mathematical formula instead." Mike Aubrey says,  
"Its a good review, but what scares me is that there were two people  
who didn’t think it was helpful." I note that there were ten others  
that thought it was a helpful review, but of course we don't evaluate  
scholarship by majority vote. In any case, I'd like to see the book,  
although at $24 it seems a bit pricey; but my guess is that I'd  
probably say in paraphrase of this effort what the French general  
Bosquet said about the celebrated "charge of the Light Brigade" in the  
Crimean War: "C''est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la grammaire."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)




More information about the B-Greek mailing list