An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek: Analysis of Prepositions, Adverbs, Particles, Relative Pronouns, and Conjunctions, by G.K. Beale, Daniel J. Brendsel, and William A. Ross (Zondervan, 2014).
Based on A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Second and Third Editions with references to Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics and Harris’ Prepositions and Theology in the Greek New Testament, Beale, Brendsel, and Ross’s Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek (Analysis of Prepositions, Adverbs, Particles, Relative Pronouns, and Conjunctions) provides an indispensable resource for those interested in thorough and diligent exegesis.
In its most basic form this book can be described as the brilliant work of scholars who through painstaking work provide: a list of the key linking words (prepositions, adverbs, particles, etc.) in New Testament Greek, their English glosses, the various ways they can function in a discourse, and where they occur in some of the most notable Greek resources, all in one 96-paged book.
The authors have put together an invaluable resource that focuses on the small words encountered in the NT and their often grand implications in Greek exegesis. Though much of this work is focused on smaller details, the overall purpose and function of this book is to provide a tool for a reader of the NT to better detect a writer’s flow of thought and thus the main point of a given discourse.
Steps toward this goal are achieved by the two-fold function of this book: (1) its use as a lexicon for the key words in the NT used to indicate relationships between clauses, and (2) its use as an interpretive handbook, providing categories for how these key words may be functioning in a given discourse and how they construct or support the main point (or points) in the author’s communication.
Layout of the Book
The book begins by describing its usefulness for the task of discourse analysis, that is, analyzing the meaningful and logical relationships between statements and propositions in meaningful and extended communication. By highlighting the relevance of understanding linking words such as “since” and “therefore” in every day communication, the book anticipates the necessity to understand these types of words in the communication of the NT.
On the next few pages a table is provided categorizing the various relationships between statements and breaking them down into more specific categories. Next to these categories, symbols are provided to identify how propositions within the category are logically related to its surrounding propositions. These symbols indicate the discourse function of a word and are found next to the entries provided in the Lexicon (discussed below). The remaining pages in the introduction describe how the book is to be used in conjunction with the external Greek resources referenced within each entry.
The remainder and bulk of the book is dedicated to the Interpretive Lexicon. Each page contains a Greek word, its syntactical function, a list of its semantic range with the symbols indicating its possible discourse function, its location in BDAG and BAGD, and its references in the works of Wallace and Harris.
Critiques
For those who do not have a baseline knowledge of discourse analysis, I wonder if the curious exegete who picked up this book would understand how to move from the step of categorizing isolated propositions to understanding how they relate to the propositions that construct and support the author’s main point (or points) in the surrounding context. Though symbols are provided to indicate a word’s logical function, their visual role in connecting propositions on a larger discourse is left untouched. For this reason, I believe that the potential usefulness of this book may be truncated for those unfamiliar with Beale’s incorporation of the tools provided for his method of discourse analysis.
My last critique is less of a critique of the book and perhaps more a critique on the people reading the book. The introductory discussion on the stylistic features used to indicate references to BDAG and BAGD is quite cumbersome. Aside from this, I think it is a very real possibility that students will solely rely on the options provided in the book without considering the work of the resources provided. Nevertheless, the fact that the authors repeatedly refer to the importance of cross-referencing these resources unfortunately makes it necessary that the reader pay special attention to this area in the introduction in order to track the insights of the Lexicon with the information provided in BDAG and BAGD.
Praise:
This book will save you a tremendous amount of time as it gives you the page and section numbers of a word’s occurrence in BDAG and BAGD as well as their appearance in the work of Wallace and Harris. When a word’s function seems to be particularly ambiguous, referencing these resources will allow one to better formulate a conclusion for a more precise translation or interpretation.
Secondly, it provides you with tools for a slower, and closer reading of the text in order to identify how Greek words are contributing to the whole of an author’s communication. Often times courses in Greek syntax focus on the smaller levels of the reciprocal relation of words and clauses through sentence flows or diagramming. There is usually little attention given to how sentences are related to the larger context of the paragraph and how paragraphs are related to connect to its broader context. Therefore, with the knowledge of the discourse function of these linking words, the exegete is better equipped to determine how these words are used to connect propositions and how propositions are connected to larger sections of discourse that eventually form an entire epistle or narrative. This results in a closer look at what an author is trying to communicate using the clues from the text itself.
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