A Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament

Egypt had wisdom, but it was enshrined in hieroglyphics so obscure that their meaning faded centuries ago from the memory of mankind, and for many successive ages no man on earth could penetrate their mysteries. Assyria and Babylon had literature, art, and science; but with a language written in seven or eight hundred cuneiform signs, some of them having fifty different meanings, what wonder is it that for more than two thousand years the language and literature of these nations was lost, buried, and forgotten? The vast literature of China has survived the changes of centuries, but the list of different characters, which in a dictionary of the second century numbered 9353, and in the latest imperial Chinese Dictionary numbers 43,960,—some of them requiring fifty strokes of the pencil to produce them,—shows how unfit such a language must be for a channel to convey the glad tidings of God's salvation to the poor, the weak, the sorrowful, and to people who cannot spend ten or twenty years in learning to comprehend the mysteries of the Chinese tongue.

Who can imagine what would have been the fate of a divine revelation if the words of eternal life had been enswathed in such cerements as these?

In the wisdom of God, the revelation of his will was given in the Hebrew tongue, with an alphabet of twenty-two letters, some of which, as inscribed on the Moabite stone, b.c. 900, are identical in form and sound with those now used in English books.

This Hebrew alphabet, so simple that a child might learn it in a day, has never been lost or forgotten. The Hebrew language in which the Oracles of God were given to man, has never become a dead language. Since the day when the Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai, there never has been a day or hour when the language in which it was written was not known to living men, who were able to read, write, and expound it. And the Hebrew is the only language of those ages that has lived to the present time, preserving the record of a divine revelation, and being conserved by it through the vicissitudes of conflict, conquest, captivity, and dispersion; while the surrounding idolatrous nations perished in their own corruption, and their languages and literature were buried in oblivion.

In later ages, when the gospel of the Son of God was to be proclaimed to all mankind, another language was used as a vehicle for its communication. The bulk of the Israelitish race, through their captivities and eternal associations, had lost the knowledge of the holy tongue, and had learned the languages of the Gentiles among whom they dwelt; and now as their corporate national existence was to be interrupted, and they were to be dispersed among the peoples of the earth, the Hebrew language was not a fit channel for conveying this revelation to the Gentile world. Hence the same wise Providence which chose the undying Hebrew tongue for the utterances of the prophets, selected the Greek, which was at that time, more nearly than any other, a universal language, as the medium through which the teachings of the Saviour and the messages of the apostles should be sent forth to mankind.

This language, like the Hebrew, has maintained its existence,—though it has been somewhat changed by the flight of years,—and the modern Greek spoken in Athens to-day is substantially the Greek of 1800 years ago.

The gospel of Christ was to go forth to every nation; and the miracle of Pentecost indicated that it was the Divine purpose that each nation should hear in their own tongue wherein they were born, the wonderful works of God. Hence the Scriptures have been translated into hundreds of languages, and to-day six hundred millions of people, comprising all the leading races and nations of the earth, may have access to the Word of God in their native tongues. Nevertheless, no translation can perfectly express the delicate shades of thought which are uttered in another language, and it often becomes necessary and desirable to recur to the original Scriptures, and by searching them to find out the precise meaning of those words which were given by the Holy Ghost, and which are "more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold." For while, speaking in a general way, we have faithful translations, which give us with great accuracy the sense of the Scriptures as a whole, yet there are times when we desire fuller and more accurate information concerning particular words uttered by those men to whom the Holy Ghost was given to bring all things to their remembrance, to guide them into all truth, and to show them things to come. Frequently there are depths of meaning which the casual reader does not fathom, and the study of the Greek and Hebrew becomes as needful as it is agreeable to those who love God's law, who delight in his gospel, and who have time and opportunity to prosecute such studies.

There are few lovers of the Bible who do not at times wish that they might clearly know the precise sense of some one original word which may sometimes be obscurely translated; or who would not be delighted to inquire of some competent scholar as to the meaning of certain expressions contained in that Book of God. Such persons are glad to study the original Scriptures, that they may learn, as far as possible, exactly what God has said to man.

The learning of a living language from those who seek it is no trifling task; but a language which must be learned from books, presents much greater difficulties; and to many persons the mastery of the Greek tongue looks like the labor of a lifetime. It is; and yet it is possible for studious Bible readers to learn the things they specially need to know, with an amount of labor which need not appall or dishearten any diligent student.

There are contained in the Greek New Testament about 5594 words; but in the whole Greek literature the words are a great multitude, which perhaps no man has ever numbered. The student of the Scriptures is not anxious to master or explore this vast wealth of Greek literature, but his ambition is to know something of those 5594 New Testament words in which the message of God's mercy is conveyed to fallen man. Hence he may pass by the bulk of Greek literature, and confine his investigations to those few Greek words which are used in the New Testament to convey to man the treasures of Divine truth.

A lexicon of the entire Greek language might extend through thousands of pages. There stands on the shelves of the writer a copy of Stephen's "Thesaures Grææ Linguæ," in eight folio volumes, (London, 1816-1825,) which contains more than thirteen thousand large, closely printed pages. A later edition of the same work is still larger; and there are critics and students who would find use for a lexicon as elaborate as this; but for the great mass of Biblical students most of this material would be entirely useless, and a very small volume would contain all they would find necessary in their study of the Scriptures of truth. Thus a portable volume, confining itself to the definition of the words included in the New Testament, could give them fuller treatment than a very large volume which, covering the entire language would be obliged to condense and abridge at every point, omitting perhaps the very matter most desired by a student of the Sacred Word.

There is another consideration; the Greek of the New Testament differs materially in its character from the classical Green, or from the Greek language as a whole. About b.c. 288, the law of Moses was translated from Hebrew into Greek, by request of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who sought everywhere for books to enrich his great library at Alexandria. Subsequently other portions were translated, and hence, we have what is known as the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. This was largely used among the Jewish people in Egypt and elsewhere in the time of our Saviour. It was a Greek version of a Hebrew book, and it was through this book, as well as by intercourse with Grecian people and foreigners of the Jewish stock, that the Jewish people became acquainted with the Greek tongue. But the Greek of the Septuagint was full of Hebrew ideas and idioms, and hence the Greek of the Jews in Palestine, and of the New Testament which is also saturated with Old Testament ideas, differed from the ordinary language of the Greeks, new meanings having been imparted to various words, in order that they might represent Hebrew words and Hebrew ideas. For example, when the Greek word hades is used, we are not thereby committed to a belief in all the fabulous ideas of the Greeks concerning the abode of the dead, for the word was but the representative of the Hebrew word sheol, which is almost always translated hades in the Greek Testament. Hence in studying this Greek word in the New Testament we are not to go to the Greek classics to find out what they mean by the word hades, but rather to the Hebrew prophets to learn in what sense they use the Hebrew word sheol, of which it is the Greek equivalent. So the word diatheke in classic Greek signifies a will, testament, covenant, and so the term in the common English version is translated in both these ways. But in the Septuagint the word diatheke is used to translate the Hebrew word berith, which signifies a covenant, but does not signify a will or testament.1* Hence, instead of speaking of "The New Testament" we should more correctly call it the "The New Covenant." A variety of instances might be adduced where New Testament Greek words have meaning widely different from the same words in classic Greek.

It must also be remembered, that there are words in the New Testament which are not found at all in the classical writers. When new ideas are to be conveyed, new words must be found to convey them. In the language of the Hindus there is no word for home, simply because the Hindu has no home. The idea of a home as understood by Christians, is utterly foreign to the Hindu nation and religion. There are heathen nations that have no word for gratitude, because gratitude is unknown to them; so the word agape or charity, which describes unselfish love, a love which reaches to enemies, and which seeks no personal gratification or reward,—that love which is of God, and concerning which it is said, "God is Love," refers to something unknown to the heathen world. They had no word to express it, because they had not the thing itself to express.

These illustrations indicate some of the peculiarities of the New Testament Greek, and serve to show use why the student of the Bible needs an especial apparatus for studying the Greek New Testament. For this purpose, he has been most generously furnished with New Testament lexicons, in different languages, Latin, German, and English, by the labor of devout and learned students. Among the most noteworthy may be mentioned Robinson's Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, and Prof. J. H. Thayer's later and more elaborate Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, based upon Prof. Grimm's get Lexicon; which is well adapted to meet the needs of the critical student.