j a m e s f o r s y t h ✡ n e t

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.

Recently I’ve been lightly dabbling in the Latin language, mainly because I’d like to be able to read Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.

There are quite a few resources online for studying Latin. Perhaps not under the category of study materials, but Latin nonetheless, are Google in Latin and also Wikipedia.

It seems like a strange cross-over between ancient and modern.

I’m also studying Latin because some of the grammatical concepts are similar to Biblical Greek, which I’d like to get back to eventually.

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.

Melbourne (Australia, where we live) has a Greek precinct on Lonsdale Street between Swanston and Russell Streets. There are Greek restaurants, cafes, souvenir shops, travel agents and a baptism/wedding clothes shop.

The food is great, both the main meals and the cakes. And the coffee can be either cappucino, latte or “Greek” coffee (like a short black - originally from Turkey?).

Over the years the strip has shrunken a great deal. It’s been whittled away by the older shop owners gradually moving out and an increasingly Asian demographic in the area. Chinatown is only one block away.

Is this bad? How can it be a bad thing if most Greek young people themselves aren’t even interested in reviving the area? I can’t help feeling, however, that Greek Orthodox culture has some links to my own Evangelical Christian culture, however remote that may be, and I’d rather the strip wasn’t shrunken any further.

I might add that there are quite a few Greeks at my Church. These aren’t Greek Orthodox, but are Evangelicals. Maybe it’s ironic in the light of my yearning for the Greek precinct to stay as it is for religious reasons, but I’ve known of Evangelical Greeks going back to Greece to share the Gospel with Orthodox.

Now if THAT’S necessary (which it is, because Greek Orthodox have no idea of the Gospel at all) then I’d have mixed feelings about the value of the strip on the basis of any remaining Christian heritage.