Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker

by Bernard A. Taylor; John A. L. Lee; Peter R. Burton; Richard Whitaker

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2004

Overview

Frederick W. Danker is deservedly recognized as one of today's foremost Greek lexicographers. Unique among contemporary biblical scholars, Danker has lived to see the publication of two major Greek dictionaries that he himself edited. While he was part of the editorial team that produced the second edition of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, he alone thoroughly revised the entire dictionary to produce the third edition, popularly known as BDAG. Projects like these have considerably advanced New Testament lexicography in the twentieth century and have laid a solid foundation for further lexicographical work in the twenty-first.

Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography celebrates the life and work of Professor Danker. In character with his contribution to Greek scholarship, the essays have been chosen to assist biblical Greek students and their teachers to develop a deeper understanding of aspects of Greek language and lexicography. Among the topics of discussion are the way one discovers the meaning of words, current tools available to students of language, and the approach being used in the latest New Testament and Septuagint Greek dictionaries. The book also features rich footnotes directing students to important Greek language resources, a selected bibliography of Danker’s publications, an appendix listing BDAG precursors, and four indexes: biblical references, Greek words, Hebrew forms, and grammatical and lexicographical terms.

Sure to interest scholars, teachers, pastors, and students, this volume is both a worthy tribute to the career of Frederick Danker and a valuable presentation of the state of the art in Greek and biblical language studies.

Key Features

• Presents essays from leading lexicographers and grammarians on Biblical Greek in honor Frederick W. Danker
• Danker himself provides a narrative account of his efforts on the 3rd edition of his lexicon
• Includes two vauable appendices and detailed indexes

Contents

• “A Brief Biography of Frederick W. Danker” by Peter R. Burton
• “Lexical Evolution and Linguistic Hazard” by Frederick William Danker
• “Remarks of an Outsider about Bauer’s Wörterbuch, BAGD, and BDAG, and Their Textual Basis” by Rykle Borger
• “Look It Up. It’s in BDAG” by John H. Elliott
• “A Review of BDAG” by Terry Roberts
• “The Present State of Lexicography of Ancient Greek” by John A. L. Lee
• “Greek Electronic Resources and the Lexicographical Function” by William A. Johnson
• “Septuagintal Lexicography” by Takamitsu Muraoka
• “A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament: Reflections and Ruminations” by Barclay M. Newman, Jr.
• “Concordances and the Greek New Testament” by Richard E. Whitaker
• “The LXX Quotations in the LSJ Supplements of 1968 and 1996” by Katrin Hauspie
• “The Use of δράκων in the Septuagint” by Erik Eynikel and Katrin Hauspie
• “Hebrew to Greek: A Semantic Study of σπεύδω for the New English Translation of the Septuagint” by Bernard A. Taylor
• “Linguistic Register and Septuagintal Lexicography” by Cameron Boyd-Taylor
• “Deponency and Greek Lexicography” by Bernard A. Taylor
• “Verbs Perception and Aspect, Greek Lexicography and Grammar: Helping Students to Think in Greek” by Randall Buth
• “Future Directions for Aspect Studies in Ancient Greek” by Trevor V. Evans
• ““Aspect Theory and Lexicography” by Stanley E. Porter
• “External Entailment as a Category of Linguistic Analysis” by James W. Voelz
• Appendices
  • Selected Bibliography of Frederick W. Danker
  • BDAG and Its Precursors

Praise for the Print Edition

This collection of essays in honor of Fred Danker, the nestor of New Testament Greek lexicographers, consists of some of the most important and informative discussions of New Testament lexicography currently available between two covers. The book is a well-deserved celebration of Danker’s achievement in radically reworking and correcting some of the deficiencies and egregious errors of the Bauer-Aland lexicon and transforming that work into the linguistically progressive, user-friendly Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich New Testament Greek lexicon.

—David E. Aune, University of Notre Dame

Everyone who has an interest in biblical Greek will learn much from this collection of essays dealing with a wide variety of lexicographic topics. The volume is an altogether fitting tribute to the career of Frederick Danker, to whose learning and industry all of us are deeply indebted.

—Bruce M. Metzger, Princeton Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker
• Author: Bernard A. Taylor, John A.L. Lee, Peter R. Burton, and Richard E. Whitaker
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2007
• Pages: 288
• Resource Type: Festschrift
• Topic: Greek Language

About the Editors

Bernard A. Taylor (Ph.D., Hebrew Union College) is an Old Testament scholar, translator and professor. He is currently the Scholar in Residence at Loma Linda University Church in Loma Linda, California.

John A.L. Lee was trained in Classics at the University of Sydney, where he also learned Hebrew. He subsequently lectured in Ancient Greek there for 28 years. His research interest is in Greek language, especially all forms of Koine Greek, and Greek lexicography. His doctoral dissertation (1970) was on the language of the LXX-Pentateuch and his Grinfield Lectures in Oxford (2011-12) carried the same subject further. He is also interested in Liturgical Greek and Renaissance Greek.

Peter R. Burton is a fellow of the MacLaurin Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and general editor of the Biblical Language Project

Richard E. Whitaker is retired information technology specialist and former lecturer in Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary.