From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Wed Dec 29 1999 - 21:21:49 EST
----------
>From: CEP7@aol.com
> Clay >>
>
> Can you cite examples of what you consider good lexical works. Would
> BAGD/BDAG, TDNT, and Louwe & Nida be included?
>
> Charles Powell
> DTS
Yes,
All are good if used intelligently. The one most likely not to be used
intelligently is TDNT. I would also include C. Spicq and NIDTT and EDNT
and Cremer (kind of old) as works worth looking at. The danger with
"theological dictionaries" like TDNT, NIDTT is that they tend to
reinforce the idea that individual words carry around a massive quantity
of theological baggage. However, the problem, as I have already said,
isn't so much the works as the logic of the user. To use these books
intelligently means to have read a number of works on lexical semantics
by authors like JP Louw, EA Nida, M Silva, J Barr and several others.
The problem with the popular level works, Zodhiates, Vincent, Trench is
that they are most likely to be used by people "who aren't fluent in
the original languages" and in this case they are more misleading than
helpful. They will give one a false sense of knowing what is going on in
original languages.
The main issue here is that people "who aren't fluent in the original
languages" and have no background in general linguistics are prone to
think that understanding the original language is achieved by finding
out the meaning of each word. This is a very very prevalent
misconception. J.P. Louw has addressed this in "The Semantics of New
Testament Greek" (Fortress 1982).
Anyway, this has all been said before and it is in the archives back a
year of two.
Clay
-- Clayton Stirling Bartholomew Three Tree Point P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
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