Considering purchasing BDAG/HALOT

[kitwalker]

I recently bought Bibleworks and am in love with it. I'm now considering purchasing BDAG/HALOT but am not sure if it is worth my money.

I did a search for help here but couldn't find a similar question, sorry if another thread has answered it.

Are they better than the standard lexicons? What do they offer that the standard ones don't? I'm interested in your opinions and if you can point me to some reliable reviews.

I'm currently a theological student planning (Lord willing) to work as a church pastor who will always refer to the Hebrew and Greek in sermon preparation.

Thanks a lot.

[Michael Hanel]

There are two basic questions you want to ask. 1. Are BDAG and HALOT worthwhile as resources for reading the Bible in the Hebrew and Greek? 2. Are they worthwhile to own in BibleWorks.

To the first question, I don't think you will find anyone anywhere who will say they are not necessary. In my own background I have found that professors allow students to use other "learning" lexica the first year of Greek and Hebrew (although BDB is a rather difficult lexicon to use in book edition!), but if you move on to intermediate or advanced studies, you cannot really operate without BDAG and HALOT. They are *the* standard lexica for Greek and Hebrew respectively. Can you work with Hebrew and Greek without them? Yes, but your theological studies will be much poorer without them.

On to the second, it's not really that difficult considering what you've said already. You seem to have experimented some with BibleWorks and enjoy it. BDAG and HALOT will add the scholarly edge to an otherwise good lexical line-up in the standard package. The lexica integrate well, you can use them in the Resource Summary window, build reports with them, etc.

In my mind, two questions with two easy answers. Others will probably offer similar opinions

[arggem]

Here is a link to a previous thread: BDAG/HALOT

[MGVH]

As Michael indicates, BDAG really is the standard. It is thorough, cites nearly all examples (when reasonable to do so), has an eye both on LXX and classical usage, and provides bibliography for further reference.

That said, you may want to consider as an alternative, the Exegetical Dictionary of the NT. (EDNT as a BW module HERE - at $119, it's not a matter of saving you much money over BDAG.) It has definite advantages over Kittel's old Theological Dictionary of the NT (TDNT) in that it really does try to be an exegetical resource.

There are plus/minus in relation to BDAG. E.g., I've been doing some work on Rom 1.18 and the term that shows up there: κατεχω. BDAG has quite a lengthy entry on the word and alerts you to two possible meanings for the word in Rom 1.18: "suppress" (1b) and as a legal terminus technicus meaning "lay claim to" (6). This makes for a significant difference in how we read the text (though not really a significant difference in the ultimate meaning of the phrase).
In EDNT, there is a shorter entry, that does note the "suppress" meaning for the word but not the other. What one does note in EDNT is an extended entry on the problematic use of the word in 2 Thes 2.6f. Looking back at BDAG I find a discussion just as long on these verses, but EDNT with its exegetical perspective may sometimes provide a more helpful summary to highlight the concerns than BDAG's grammatical/historical/linguistic analysis which prepares you for further research.

[frdee]

Just a slight addendum to Michael Hanel's point: BDAG is the standard Lexicon for New Testament Greek (I don't think it has every word in the LXX - could be mistaken). The standard Lexicon for classical Greek is the big LSJ. My recommendation would be to buy BDAG and then, when you come into money, buy LSJ - it can really broaden the understanding of what different words can mean in different contexts (but it does not include all the NT examples like BDAG does).

I do like EDNT, but only as a supplementary Lexicon. You could make that your second purchase instead of LSJ. Then again, where would I be without Moulton and Milligan and my hard copy version of Spicq?

[Michael Hanel]

Just a slight addendum to Michael Hanel's point: BDAG is the standard Lexicon for New Testament Greek (I don't think it has every word in the LXX - could be mistaken). The standard Lexicon for classical Greek is the big LSJ. My recommendation would be to buy BDAG and then, when you come into money, buy LSJ - it can really broaden the understanding of what different words can mean in different contexts (but it does not include all the NT examples like BDAG does).

Yeah sorry if that was unclear. You're absolutely right. BDAG is *the* lexicon if you're talking Greek NT. LSJ is *the* lexicon if you mean Greek generally, meaning classical Greek. Lampe is *the* lexicon if you mean Patristic Greek and Lust-Eynikel-Hauspie is probably a solid LXX lexicon (although I don't think it's going to ever be the best LXX lexicon. It is respectable for now.)

[frdee]

Oops. You wanted reviews... For BDAG, see Rodney Decker's review at http://faculty.bbc.edu/Rdecker/bdag.htm. He also has links to other reviews and keeps an errata page (very short).

Halot is superb for etymology and if you ever do anything with Qumran, it will give you most (all?) of those words as well.
Review: http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetai...age=1161%2C590

[kitwalker]

Thanks for all the replies so far. I'm using your responses to gradually gather ammunition for the proposal I will need to put to my wife

Particularly interested in views from pastors...

[Dale A. Brueggemann]

I recently bought Bibleworks and am in love with it. I'm now considering purchasing BDAG/HALOT.... Are they better than the standard lexicons? What do they offer that the standard ones don't?

If by your use of the term "standard" you mean "printed editions" of the lexicons. The advantages are noticeable. The linkage to your electronic Bible program is the key to it all, so that when you hover the cursor over a term, you get a gloss, and if you want a click will take you to the complete lexical entry. And inside those lexicon articles, all Scripture references are in turn hot-linked so that you can see them on-screen to check the usage while you're reading the lexical entry. The only reason I ever look at the printed texts now is if I need pagination for citation in footnotes. But the standard conventions for citing electronic versions of works like these are now available anyway.

If by "stanard" you mean compared to some other lexicon for Greek or Hebrew, the response is that HALOT and BDAG are the standard lexicons. Biblical Hebrew also has another old standard in BDB (Hebrew-Aramaic and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, by Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles Briggs), but the current scholarly standard is HALOT (The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, by Ludwig Koehler And Walter Baumgartner, subsequently revised by Walter Baumgartner and Johann Jakob Stamm with assistance from Benedikt Hartmann, Ze'ev Ben-Hayyim, Eduard Yechezkel Kutscher, Philippe Reymond, translated and edited under the supervision of M.E.J. Richardson © 1994-2000 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden).


And as for NT Greek, BDAG is it (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third Edition. Copyright © 2000 The University of Chicago Press. Revised and edited by Frederick William Danker based on the Walter Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und für frühchristlichen Literatur, sixth edition, ed. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, with Viktor Reichmann and on previous English Editions by W.F.Arndt, F.W.Gingrich, and F.W.Danker). Of course, you can supplement this standard with various other tools, many of which are already in BibleWorks or can be purchased as add-ons.

I'm currently a theological student planning (Lord willing) to work as a church pastor who will always refer to the Hebrew and Greek in sermon preparation.

A very useful tool for biblical Hebrew for routine classroom work and as a pastoral references is Holladay (A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Based upon the Lexical Work of Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, edited by W.L. Holladay. Copyright © 1997 by Brill Academic Publishers). And it's in BibleWorks.

[SCSaunders]

IMO, everyone's given you really good advice on BDAG/HALOT. Song of Solomon will give you really good advice for wifely proposals. (Just don't call her "Dode.")

That being said, though time is not money, God does want you to purchase it. Dale's advice is worth it's weight in hours.

... The linkage to your electronic Bible program is the key to it all, so that when you hover the cursor over a term, you get a gloss, and if you want a click will take you to the complete lexical entry. And inside those lexicon articles, all Scripture references are in turn hot-linked so that you can see them on-screen to check the usage while you're reading the lexical entry. The only reason I ever look at the printed texts now is if I need pagination for citation in footnotes. ...