Review of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
For anyone serious about studying the New Testament or New Testament Greek, this is the lexicon of choice. Perhaps that which sets it apart the most is its thorough references to early Christian literature at the time. This gives us a fuller understanding of what words actually mean. Too often we are confined to other examples within the canon of Scripture itself for further light on what a word means. Here we are taken much further.
The very informative “Foreword to the Revised Edition” and “Introduction to the Lexicon of the Greek New Testament” are included, and should be read for a greater understanding of how the dictionary works, the history of the lexicon and some tips on New Testament Greek itself.
The head word includes the full lexical form which, for example, means:
a) If the word is an adjective, the inflection/s for each gender of the nominative case are provided.
b) If the word is a noun, the nominative and genitive forms and the article are included.
After the (bolded) presentation of the head word, it is presented in a number of important forms. These are either the 1st person singular of different tenses/moods of the verb paradigms or commonly used forms.
Because of the fullness of the material and the need to save space, many abbreviations are used. It is worth familiarising oneself with the abbreviations by skimming over the “Composite List of Abbreviations” page LIXff before dipping too far into your work.
Possible improvements:
1) Mounce’s categorisation of each word into a given code is quite well known and widely used (these can be found in his Basics of Biblical Greek, Analytical Lexicon and Morphology of Biblical Greek). It would be a great future improvement of BDAG to include these codes alongside each entry.
2) The font used makes kappas and rhos look funny and I personally need to look at a word twice at times in order to be able to tell what it is. A less cursive-style font would look better in future editions.
3) Little/no use is made of the front and back inside cover or back of the book. The back has some sample entries, which, while handy for a bookstore who may want to seal the book to maintain its good condition, it is a bit of a bore to someone who has owned the lexicon for some years. It would be better to include something worth memorising or a few quotes scholars have made about the dictionary itself.
If looking this book up in your library catalogue or any online resource, please note that it will not necessarily help to type in what it is commonly known as - BDAG. This is because it is not officially used as part of the title of the book, despite the widespread usage of this abbreviation.
