Moulton & Milligan and Thayer

James P. Ware (jw44@evansville.edu)
Wed, 27 May 1998 21:13:56 -0500 (CDT)

I want to concur with Jim West's praise of Moulton and Milligan. Much of
Bauer's peculiar value is due to how thoroughly it ransacks the pages of
M&M. It is mainly this material, which is lacking in Thayer, that makes
that lexicon "out of date," as was mentioned earlier on the list.
However, it might be good to point out that "out of date" does not mean
"useless." Thayer is a steal at $20, and it can be very useful when
doing close study of a word or passage to consult not only Bauer but also
Thayer. In fact, there are some areas where Thayer is superior to Bauer
throughout. I will mention just two:

1. Attention to a word's synonyms. Bauer does almost nothing with this.
For this one needs to go either to Louw and Nida, or to Thayer. Thayer is
actually superior to either one on this score most of the time, because
he summarizes the results of Schmidt's Synonymik and other foundational
works, which BAGD does not even seem aware of. In addition, Thayer
conveniently lays out a word's synonyms at the conclusion of the article,
with cross-references to these discussions in the articles of related
words, and references to the fuller discussion in the standard works.
Very user friendly.

2. Significance of middle forms. Bauer consistently minimalizes the
significance of the distinction between active and middle. Sometimes it
can be downright misleading, as for instance in the entry for tithemi,
where if memory serves he cites Blass and Robertson as authorities for his
assertion of no difference in meaning between the active and middle,
although both Blass and Robertson say quite the opposite! Thayer offers
an alternative view in such cases.

Jim Ware