Halot & Bdag

[DeMody]

What would be the benefit of purchasing licenses for either HALOT or BDAG or both? Are not the included lexicons sufficient for study?

I mainly need just the lexical help, not information of variants or historical word information. Just looking for helpful thoughts from anyone. Thanks.

[Michael Hanel]

What would be the benefit of purchasing licenses for either HALOT or BDAG or both? Are not the included lexicons sufficient for study?

I mainly need just the lexical help, not information of variants or historical word information. Just looking for helpful thoughts from anyone. Thanks.

This really depends on where you are in your study of the Bible in its original languages. If you're a novice and just working your way through things and don't have a lot of extra money to invest, you can get by quite fine with the lexicons provided in BW. However, if you plan to do a lot of in depth stuff, you will find that BDAG and HALOT are the standard critical lexica in each language. You will not be considered much of a scholar if you fail to take into account some of their information (especially bibliographic information which is provided in lexical entries, which may be more valuable than the entry itself). If you have access to a good library, you can check out both of these books to see how valuable they are. The bottom line is you must own them.

Now the only question is why should you get them for BW if you already own them? The answer is because it makes your work so easy. Now instead of looking up a word you run across in Greek or Hebrew in the book sitting on your shelf, all you do is hold the mouse over the word and you get the entirety of the entry immediately. That's advantage one. Advantage two is that you can search the whole lexicon for the "bless" for instance to find every place in the lexicon where that word is used. Try looking through a thousand page book for that same info with the same speed. Yikes.

[arggem]

Yeah, what Michael said!

The out-of-the-box version of BW is an excellent tool, and one can do very legitimate exegetical work with it. I believe the makers of BW are very committed to that concept.

That said, yes, there is an additional level of tool one needs in for scholastic credibility, but many BW users don't need that. I sincerely doubt that you will be unable to understand a passage because you don't have BDAG or HALOT. Those tools will shed more light on a word or passage, but in rare instances will they provide a key to unlocking the mysteries of the passage.

And that's the beauty of BW. Right out of the box it's an exceptional program. Need more? It's available. Don't need it? Don't buy it. Sweet, huh?

[DeMody]

Thank you all for your responses.

What would be a specific example of why I would want to purchase BDAG? I do not have the lexicon in print, but I do have Thayer's in print. I was told that BDAG is more respected than other lexicons because the authors were unbiased in their research and findings and that all-in-all their research was very scholarly.

As Michael pointed out, the search features would be a great benefit.

Would anyone have an example of where using BDAG would be an advantage (or provide more precise meaning) in doing a word study over the other "canned" lexicons?

Thanks.

[Gontroppo]

Hi Demody
The best argument for using BDAG is that it is the newest scholarly lexicon. Thayer is over 100 years old.

There has been a lot of stuff done in the past 100 years in linguistics and more manuscripts have been discovered, etc.

Don't buy the argument that BDAG is unbiased. We're all biased in one way or another. Everything needs to be read with discernment.

I think it is fair to say that at times BDAG can exhibit late 20th century political correctness, so be on your guard.

But it is the best scholarship currently available.

David McKay
www.davidmckay.info