James Hope Moulton

This is a Classic with a Caveat.

Classic, in that it is the single best and most convenient reference for the discoveries about koine Greek as it affects the New Testament. It provides access to the readings of many papyri which "casually" illuminate the New Testament vocabulary. As such, it is incredibly useful -- it shows us how people of the time truly used those words.

But it is organized based on the new discoveries, not the New Testament. If a word hasn't been found in the Papyri, you won't find it here. Moulton and Milligan is not a dictionary of New Testament Greek (let alone of classical Greek). It is an addition to earlier dictionaries, and supplies fuller citations.

Thus, if you can only get one book, the book to get remains Bauer/Arndt/Gingrich/Danker. This is book #2. Or maybe even #3; it wouldn't be a bad idea to get Liddell & Scott's dictionary of classical Greek as well. But with that caveat noted, if you want to truly understand the New Testament, this volume is vital.… (más)

This volume is a helpful supplement to Walter Bauer and Frederick Danker’s [i]Greek-English Lexicon[/i] (earlier editions are called “Bauer Arndt Gingrich” after previous editors). Bauer’s dictionary places a star next to words found in the papyri and has a supplement at the end where these words can be looked up. This book provides more complete citations of many words found in the New Testament and in ordinary letters, receipts, civic and legal documents in the Egypt of the early Christian era and defines each word from that context rather than a theological one. The definitions themselves are full of grumbling (but charming) opinions from an era when every working scholar knew Greek as a schoolboy. Since the Greek of the New Testament was the everyday language of ordinary people and since Egypt’s dry climate preserved the most documents and books from the era, this volume is a useful corrective to reading the Bible within the airless world of specialized dictionaries. Many words used in the Bible were not the religious technical terms they became for later theologians: reading the New Testament in Greek with this dictionary is a breath of fresh air from the ordinary life of the ancient world.

-Kushana… (más)