We noted earlier that the task of the interpreter is never quite finished. Inter- pretation is an ongoing challenge, and the truth must out that even the most eminent and unbespectacled grammarians and lexicographers look betimes with vision blurred. This testimony to mortality imposes an earnest respon- sibility on students who may be tempted to succumb to uncritical dependence on what overwhelms them as the authoritative word. The humility evidenced is salutary; the intellectual surrender may be fatal.
A lexicon is really a sort of systematized concordance. Words in themselves are merely symbols. They are a medium of thought exchange. The task of lexicographers is to document the intellectual monetary system of a particular period in history. They endeavor to search out as many contexts as possible in which a given word is employed. They are forbidden under oath to impose another language symbol on a word until they discover from a close inspec- tion of various contexts what that word represents. When the word appears only once they “cannot be holpen by conference of places,” as the revisers of 1611 noted, but must make a learned guess. They may secure help from a
translator who lived closer to the writing of the autograph, but must always allow for the possibility that almost any translator might also have been either forced or prone to make a guess. Thus Jerome renders t0eAoflp~crxia (Col. 2:23) with superstitionis. The lexicographer gathers from the context and from the components of tfleXo0p~axia that the writer of Colossians is discussing some kind of free-wheeling cultic approach.
It would appear that the more contexts lexicographers have to explore and compare, the lighter their task and the higher their percentage of accuracy.
In many cases this is true. Thus the word ~CarpaXoyi~oyat occurs in a sufficient number of contexts to assure the lexicographer that “deception” is the basic idea conveyed by the word. Something is reckoned in alongside something else.
The delusive element may be either a row of figures that is substituted for a bona fide list of expenditures or it may be a fallacious premise or argument.
In either case “deception” is an intruding factor. In passages situated in mercantile contexts the lexicographer will say that the word means “reckon fraudulently, defraud”; in others involving questionable persuasive approaches,
“deceive, delude.” No one will dispute the correctness of these classifications or the distribution of the respective passages in BAGD. The word adapts itself easily to clear and convincing analysis. At the same time it is necessary to note that the one Greek word does not itself have all the “meanings” that we assign to it in the various translations we use for it. Totality-transfer is a sure route to distortion of an author’s meaning.
With a word like p.&prn< the problem is more complex. BAGD suggests three major classifications: (1) a legal sense; (2) figuratively, of anyone who testifies to anything the individual has heard or seen; and (3) a martyr, as in Acts 22:20 and Rev. 2:13 with their references to Stephen and Antipas. But a study of the passages under “c” of the second classification casts suspicion on the equa- tion of what appears a more fluid usage with a later technical meaning. Stephen and Antipas are called “martyrs” (@pope<) not primarily because they testified by their violent deaths, which is what the word in its later technical sense implies, but because their lives rendered such sterling witness. In other words, one must keep a firm rein on easy assumptions.
Again, in 1 Peter 1:6 the writer uses the expression Aum@nt~ iv XOLXLXOL~
mrpacpoT<. BAG 2b rendered the word rce\paay6< here with “temptation.” But the context of the letter indicates that the writer is exhorting addressees who are profoundly distressed by the troubles to which they have been exposed because of their Christian allegiance. These troubles may indeed prove to be sources of temptation to sin, but at this point the writer is chiefly concerned about the perplexity such hardships have created in the minds of his readers.
The participle XuqO~vvzs~, describing an attendant circumstance of pain, would appear to cast the decisive vote in favor of a “test” or “trial” of Christian endurance. The passage would then fall in the category of 1 Peter 4:12, as
146 Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study
The Use of Grammars and Lexicons 147 BAGD partially grants by placing it in $ 1 with the observation “perhaps,’
and alerting the reader to that possibility in $ 2b.
Christmas radio skits often include a gruff, uncooperative innkeeper.
Whether he is a legitimate member of the Christmas cast is questionable, pace BAG, which interprets the word xa&uua in Luke 2:7 as “inn.” The more general meaning of “lodging” or “guestroom” is assigned to the other occur- rence of this word in Luke’s Gospel (22:ll). It is true that both associations of the Greek word might have been intended by the evangelist, but in view of the fact that Luke lo:34 uses the technical term for an inn, navSox&1ov, the less precise term in Luke 2:7 appears designed. Instead of taking lodgings in the crowded large upper room they preferred the privacy of the lower quarters.
Clearly lexicons are marvels of interpretive insight, but they are not infallible.
Yet their creators try to be alert, and students will note BAGD’s reappraisal of the use of the term in Luke 2:7.7.
A similar critical approach must be applied to grammars. On page 595 of his “Big Grammar” Robertson cites passages in which the preposition pi< is used to express aim or purpose. After stating that this is undoubtedly the use of ei< in Matt. 26:28 (ri, nspi ZOXX&J kx~vvv6yevov ei< &cpeow &papr&v) he goes on to say: “But it by no means follows that the same idea is expressed by E&
ticptc~rv in Mk. 1:4 and Acts 2:38 (see Mt. 10:41), though that may in the abstract be true. It remains a matter for the interpreter to decide.” Why these latter passages, but not Matt. 26:28, should be left to the mercy of the interpreter is not discussed. On page 523 Robertson gives the dative in Rom. 6:20
(kh6eEpOL TTJ Gwatoabvg) the force of a locative, whereas the associative idea predominates. On the subject of ij,, Robertson asserts that instances of con- secutive 6,~ in the New Testament “are not numerous, but they are very clear”
(p. 1001). He goes on to cite Mark 4:41; Matt. 8:27; Heb.2:6; and Luke 4:36, all of which are handled with considerably more reserve in BAGD and BDF.
At times, as students struggle for hours with a few phrases of Scripture, they will wonder whether it is worth all the trouble and whether it might not be better after all to take some “authority’s’‘-perhaps a commentator’s-word for it. Others will conclude that in this latter day of instant truth, word study is not for them, and they will just let the text express itself. In their naivete they tend to forget that in the end they may be listening to themselves. It would be well for them to read Morton Smith’s remarks delivered at a meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Dallas, in 1968.8 And in the moment of lassitude let them remember that the advance troops in the battle for truth
7 This observation about reappraisal serves also as a reminder to be precise about acronyms.
It is remarkable how many errors occur in the exegetical literature due to confusion of editions of Bauer’s lexicon. Frequently BAG is cited, without apparent awareness of a modification or correction in BAGD, which contains more than 20 percent new material.
8 Morton Smith, “The Present State of Old Testament Studies,” JBL 88 (1969): 19-35.
are always those who take nothing for granted. As Einstein said of himself, in accounting for some of his brilliant discoveries, “I accepted no axioms.”
Scientific lexical and grammatical study, as Philipp K. Buttmann once noted, is among the best antidotes against theological vagaries and somewhat sectarian and ideological interpretations to which, alas, even the most well- meaning commentators fall victim.
Bible Dictionaries 1 4 9 C H A P T E R N I N E
Bible Dictionaries
Certain scholars have rendered great service by providing the student of the Sacred Scriptures with interpretations of all Hebrew, Syrian, Egyptian, and other foreign expressions and names that are introduced without further explanation by the sacred writers. Eusebius through his historical investigations developing out of a concern for the divine books has also left us an indispensable tool. These men have done their work so that Christians need not search through many authors for information on some small point. But there is further need of someone with the proper qualifications to produce, in the interests of his fellow Christians, what would properly be called a labor of love. What I have in mind is a work that would carefully classify and accord individual treatment to the geographical loca- tions, the flora and fauna, and the stones and unknown metals of Scripture.
So
WROTE ST. AUGUSTINE in his De doctrina Christiana (Migne, PL 34:62).Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, had indeed written a book on geographical names in both the Old and New Testaments, nepi T&J zomx8v 6vo~dm~~v ri3v -iv 6g oEi$ ypa(p@, amplified by Jerome under the title Liber de situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum (Migne, PL 33:903-76), but the world waited more than a thousand years for fulfillment of Augustine’s dream.
Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588-1638) merits the title of pioneer in this area of biblical interpreters’ aids.’ After writing on almost every conceivable subject, including Tabacologia: doctrina de natura, usu et abusu tabaci, he must have been in fine fettle for his Triumphs bibliorum sacrorum seu Encyclopaedia biblica (Frankfort, 1625).
In the succeeding century the French Benedictine monk Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672-1757) published the first dictionary of consequence, Dictionnaire 1 On the history of Bible dictionaries, see The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1907), 4:577-79; Fuller Library Bulletin nos. 20-23 (October 1953~September 1954); and Gert A.
Zischka, Index lexicorum: Bibliographie der lexikalischen Nachscblagewerke (Vienna: Verlag Briider Hollinek, 1959): 17-39. See also Bruce M. Metzger, “A Survey of Recent Research on the Ancient Versions of the New Testament,” NTS 11 (1955): 1-16. On Eusebius’s hand in the Onomasticon and on its value for topographical study, see Carl Umhau Wolf, “Eusebius of Caesarea and the Onomasticon,” The Biblical Archaeologist 27 (1964): 66-96.
historique et critique, chronologique, gkographique et lit&al de la Bible, 2 vols. and 2 ~01s. supplement (Paris, 1722-28), reissued in 4 ~01s. (Geneva and Paris, 1730). The work was subsequently translated into English by Samuel doyly and John Colson and published in a three-volume edition in London in 1732 under the title An Historical, Critical, Geographical, Chronological, and Etymological Dictionary of the Holy Bible. Numerous additions and some significant subtractions of rabbinic and Roman Catholic material were made by Charles Taylor in his edition published in London in 1795; in 1832-35 Edward Robinson prepared and published a condensed and revised seventh edition. Many later editions and translations have spread Calmet’s work, and its influence is evident in most of the Bible dictionaries of the last century.
Even today the work is not completely antiquated, for at its end is a long classified bibliography of interpretive aids, the like of which is difficult to find.
Johann Georg Benedikt Winer, Biblisches Realworterbuch zum Hand- gebrauch fiir Studirende, Kandidaten, Gymnasiallehrer und Prediger (Leipzig, 1820; 3d ed. rev., 2 vols., Leipzig, 1847-48), broke new ground and remained the standard work for two generations in Germany. In England John Kitto, A Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature (Edinburgh, 1843-45; 2d ed. Henry Burgess, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1856; 3d ed. rewritten by William Lindsay Alexander, 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1862-66; Philadelphia, 1866), set novel patterns with emphases on the religion, literature, and archaeology of the New Testa- ment. Biographical sketches of prominent Bible students and discussions of rabbinical lore such as the Talmud were for the first time considered substantial ingredients of a Bible dictionary. The works of both Winer and Kitto served as the basis for a number of articles in Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, ed. John M’Clintock and James Strong (see below).
William Smith, A Dictionary of the Bible: Comprising Its Antiquities, Biography, Geography, and Natural History, 3 ~01s. (London, 1860-63), soon overtook Kitto in popularity. Based on the language of the KJV, this dictionary was the first to contain a complete list of proper names in the Old and the New Testament and the Apocrypha. Its material on topography is superior to that on natural science. The dictionary was designed to be noncontroversial, and some of its subjects are represented by several articles, each treating the matter from a different point of view. A revised American edition by Horatio Balch Hackett, assisted by Ezra Abbot, was published in 4 volumes (New York, 1870) under the title Dr. William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible; Comprising Its Antiquities, Biography, Geography, and Natural History. Since then the multivolume work has spawned a number of one-volume editions. Being in the public domain, the multivolume work is still to be found as a reprint.
Deserving of more than passing mention is Thomas Kelly Cheyne and John Sutherland Black’s Encyclopaedia biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political, and Religious History, the Archaeology, Geography, and 148
150 Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study Bible Dictionaries 151 Natural History of the Bible, 4 ~01s. (London: Adam and Charles Black; 1899-
1903). The great number of leading biblical scholars contributing to this work and the generally high degree of accuracy and completeness pervading it placed it high on scholars’ lists, despite what some considered unnecessary skepticism and undue emphasis on conjectural criticism, complaints that seem inapposite after the space of a century of hermeneutical inquiry. The fact that a reprint was made about seventy-five years later (New York: Gordon Press, 1977) suggests the secure foundation of EB’s structure.
A less technical production designed also for the nonspecialist was under- taken by James Hastings, with the assistance of John Alexander Selbie, Andrew Bruce Davidson, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Henry Barclay Swete. The title, A Dictionary of the Bible, Dealing with Its Language, Literature, and Contents, Including the Biblical Theology, -4 ~01s. (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1898-1902; extra vol., 1904), abbreviated HDB, indicates the broad scope of this work. Beware of the hazard of “lust for the latest.” Older works of this quality are not to be ignored. Jewish scholars like Wilhelm Bather made signal contributions to this set, and Sir William Ramsay, who helped ancient Asia Minor come alive for New Testament students, contributed numerous articles of considerable durability to all of the volumes in this set.
A moderate type of French Roman Catholic biblical scholarship is repre- sented in Fulcran Gregoire Vigouroux, Dictionnaire de la Bible, 5 ~01s. (Paris:
Letouzey et A&, 1895-1912; supplements by various editors, including Louis Pirot, beginning in 1928, Andre Robert, H. Cazellez, A. Feuillet, et al., 1928-).
This carefully compiled dictionary will, despite the mold on some of its articles, meet the taste of students for gourmet fare. Bo Reicke and Leonhard Rost answer in German with historical flavor in Biblisch-historisches HandwMer- buch: Lundeskunde, Geschichte, Religion, Kultur, Literatur, 4 ~01s. (Gbttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962-79). Pseudepigraphic writings may be neglected in some small dictionaries, but not in Gad Danske Bibel Lexikon, ed. Eduard Nielsen and Bent Noack, 2 ~01s. (Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad, 1965-66).
For those who read only English, and for all who wish a quick trip to knowledge in the fast-moving world of developments in biblical research, two works dominate the field. The first is The Anchor Bible Dictionary (ABD), ed. David Noel Freedman, and associates Gary A. Herion, David F. Graf, and John David Pleins, 6 ~01s. (New York: Doubleday, 1992). The discussion, for example, of the census recorded in Luke 2, one of two under the general entry
“Census,” is a model of fidelity to the state of knowledge and is quite repre- sentative of the responsible scholarship that floods this dictionary without sinking in bewildering verbiage the broader public that is purportedly envisaged by contributors to the Anchor Bible Series (AB).
Second, but not always in breadth of treatment, is The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (ISBE), rev. ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, with associates
Everett F. Harrison, Roland K. Harrison, and William Sanford LaSor, 4 ~01s.
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979-88). This is a “fully revised” edition of what had long been a fixture in ministers’ studies. 2 A random comparison of entries suggests the importance of making use of more than one dictionary. For example, ISBE not only contains specific entries on Bible commentaries and Bible dictionaries but also lists outstanding commentaries at the end of each article on a biblical book, whereas ABD offers no such detailed information in these two categories. Although the number of volumes in ABD exceeds those in ZSBE, the latter has eleven columns in the entry “Apostolic Council,” and
ABD only three under “Jerusalem, Council of.” Moreover, it would be im- prudent, as also the editors of ABD acknowledge, to ignore an earlier publica- tion, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (IDB), 4 vols., edited by George Arthur Buttrick and respected associates (New York, Nashville: Abingdon, 1962). A supplement, ed. Keith Renn Crim (New York, 1976), preludes some of the topical interests that give a special stamp to ABD.
IDB is marked by such excellent scholarship that its entries remain sources of basic information, and its organization of data is in some respects preferable to that of ABD. For example, IDB contains an entire column (ISBE about a half column) on the use of the word “apple” in the English Bible (mainly RSV), whereas ABD directs its user- a la “find-the-treasure-in-the-dungeon computer game” -to “Flora, Biblical,” where one hunts under a sylvan subheading “Fruit Trees, Nut Trees, and Shrubs” and finds the word “Apple,” with a further direc- tion to “see Apricot and Quince,” both of which mercifully follow without requiring much further search, but offer only a few pits of information; and for “Apple of the Eye” (absent in ABD) one must go to ZDB, which offers more information than ISBE. In short, no ministerial library (whether private or church) should be lacking any of the three. In the last analysis, ABD, when compared with ZDB and ZSBE, marks the boundary between an older fact- gathering emphasis with stress on synthesis and a developing attention to epistemological concerns; or, as the editors express it, “How do we know what we know about this topic?”
In the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, 5 ~01s. (Grand Rapids, 1975), editors Merrill C. Tenney and Steven Barabas endeavored to reach a more sophisticated public and “supply more detail for scholarly study” than was envisaged for the earlier The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary of 1963.
As stated in its preface, “the critical and theological position . . . is con- servative.” In addition to a profusion of black-and-white photographs, there are some spectacular expanses of color, including stunning exhibitions of numismatic items, following the entry “coat” (vol. 1, after p. 896).
’ The International Standard Bible Encycfopedia, ed. James Orr, et al., 5 ~01s. (Chicago: Howard Severance Co., 1915; rev. ed. Melvin Grove Kyle, 1929).