j a m e s f o r s y t h ✡ n e t

All of the major Reformers contributed something essential to our understanding of the Gospel. We are indebted to Martin Luther for his teachings on salvation, Hulrich Zwingli on the Lord’s supper, Menno Simons on baptism and John Calvin on God’s sovereignty.

It needs to be pointed out that the Reformers in no way actually changed the Gospel. They highlighted (brought to light) truths that were not only inextricable from the Gospel itself but also self-evident if one is to return to Scripture, apostolic teachings and the Church fathers - which are all in agreement with themselves and each other.

For a clearer view of the Gospel and Christ’s work for us, we need go no further than the writings of the Reformers and the Puritans who closely followed them. What a glorious body of literature they have left us! And what a magnification of the splendour of Christ they provide!

For those floundering because they lack the doctrines of grace, I recommend you take serious note of them as soon as possible. Don’t let the teachings of Jacobus Arminius and his followers (of which today there are many, despite themselves not knowing it) rob you of the full richess of the Gospel.

Sola Scriptura! Soli Deo Gloria! Solo Christo! Sola Gratia! Sola Fide!

If you want to use Greek to learn, teach or study the New Testament, this book is essential for the long term.

I found the information on consonantal iota (p43f), digamma (p45f), accentuation (p47f) particularly useful. The paradigms and referencing system is also something you’d definitely pick this volume up for. Every word is accented throughout.

A few minor errors (then again it could always be me that’s wrong):

p50- “preperispomenon” should be “properispomenon”

p201- n3d(1) should include KREAS (meat).

p335- ERHMOS is a-3a, but also n-2b, see footnote 3 on p232.

I bought the soft-cover from Amazon, but immediately covered it with contact. It is too valuable to allow to fray.

In short, this is a very handy volume, but usefulness is lessened by reliance on the short contents page and a word index without page numbers to find one’s way around.

Ok, I’m hoping to grow a bit of a list of favourite hymns here (all linked to the best hymns website I know - Cyberhymnal).

Here’s a few to begin with:

Our God, our help in ages past

Battle hymn of the Republic

Crown Him with many crowns

To God be the glory

Blessed assurance

Rock of ages

Trust and obey

Holy, Holy, Holy

All things bright and beautiful

Dear Lord and Father of mankind

And can it be

The Lord’s my Shepherd

We have an Anchor

I need Thee every hour

Just found:

Chinese version of Our God our help in ages past by Isaac Watts - in Chinese. Fantastic!

Hope this finds you all well. I’ll soon be adding some more photos here.

A hymn site I really enjoy and make a lot of use of is The Cyber Hymnal.

Their own blurb:

Thousands of Christian hymns & Gospel songs from many denominations—lyrics, MIDI files, scores, pictures, history & more. Searchable, advanced Autoplay feature, free downloads. New entries every week. User friendly. Biggest site of its kind on the Internet. Two thumbs up!

Last night on SBS there was a worthwhile documentary called Traders’ Dreams. It was about Ebay, its popularity, competitors and some profiles of a few of their valued key merchants (valued because of the money they make from them).

Major competitor, Alibaba, is a Chinese company which is resisting Ebay’s dominance, mainly because of their inability to escape their English/German box and a refusal to adopt new business models.

Anyhow. One of the interviewees from the Alibaba side used the Chinese idiom 知彼知己, which means “know your enemy and know yourself”. I checked this out in another dictionary, which switches the second and fourth hanzi, thus 知己知彼, meaning “know yourself and know your enemy”.

I’d appreciate any input as to which version of this idiom is the most common. (I’ve since been advised that the correct version is 知己知彼, and that it is followed by (方能?)百战不殆.

知己知彼方能百战不殆.

I also think this idiom is not entirely incompatible with Christianity. Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48), but he never actually denies that we do have enemies. A liberal minister once tried to pull the wool over my eyes with this idea, it leads nowhere.

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.