1170-08_ANES(45)08_13_ Jouon 08-10-2008 12:45 Pagina 235 doi: 10.2143/ANES.45.0.2033173 ANES 45 (2008) 235-259 Advances in the Lexicography of Biblical Languages: A Review Essay Francis I. ANDERSEN Centre for Classics and Archaeology The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 AUSTRALIA E-mail: [email protected] Takamitsu Muraoka A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint: Chiefly of the Pentateuch and the Twelve Prophets. Peeters: Louvain, 2002. Pp. xxxi, 613. ISBN 9042911824 Something of the nature of a revolution is taking place in the lexicography of the languages of ancient biblical texts. New principles and policies have been proposed, and their disciplined implementation can already be found in three significant recent works. The long dominant Greek-German lexicon of the NT associated with the name of Walter Bauer, like many such German works of reference, has passed through several editors beginning with Erwin Preuschen (1910) to the sixth (Aland and Aland, 1988).1 The first English versions of Bauer’s fourth edition were essentially translations; but the third edition, under the sole editorship of Frederick W. Danker [BDAG] (2000), went its own way, notably in the treatment and presentation of the semantic component.2 Here some influence of Louw and Nida’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (1988) can be recognised. But there is more to it than that. The second volume of Terry Falla’s A Key to the Peshitta Gospels [KPG] (2000) was significantly different in methodology from the first volume. Falla discussed these improvements in the INTRODUCTION to KPG 2. In particular, the grammatical classification “follow[s] modern linguistic 1 For bibliographical details, see Taylor et al. 2004, pp. 235–36. 2 See Taylor et al. 2004. 1170-08_ANES(45)08_13_ Jouon 08-10-2008 12:45 Pagina 236 236 FRANCIS I. ANDERSEN principles, in so far as they recognize that use determines not only meaning but also functional class (part of speech)” (p. XXVII). Falla also acknowledged the inspiration of Louw and Nida’s work. The third example is the book under review – Muraoka’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint: Chiefly of the Pentateuch and the Twelve Prophets [GELS]. BDAG is a lexicon of biblical and related texts composed in Greek; the other two are lexicons of translations. There is a nice symmetry between LXX (Hebrew to Greek) and Peshitta [P] (Greek to Syriac). In the one instance, Greek is the receiver from a Semitic language; in the other, a Semitic lan- guage is the receiver from Greek. Together, the three lexicons open a window on lexical relations between Greek and two Semitic languages where we have the giving and receiving texts. What is lacking is a lexicon of biblical Hebrew that marches in step with these others. That would cover three of the five major biblical languages, the others being Aramaic and Latin. So long as the source texts of translations are viewed as having dominat- ing authority, with LXX and P ‘only translations’, there is a danger that researchers’ knowledge of the Hebrew and Aramaic (OT) and Greek (NT) originals will interfere with the lexicographers’ prime task, which is to tell us what the LXX vocabulary meant in Greek (not what the original meant in Hebrew), what the Syriac vocabulary meant in Syriac (not what the orig- inal meant in Greek). Lexicographers of LXX are by no means agreed on the definition of their task. The eventual status of LXX as sacred scripture of on-going Greek Christian culture finally left its Hebrew parent behind. Even accomplished Christian scholars knew no Hebrew. If, originally, the purpose of the trans- lators was not so much to graft the Jewish Bible onto Greek literature as to take Greek readers into the Hebrew Bible (“aimed at bringing the reader to the Hebrew original rather than bringing the Hebrew original to the reader”3), then we must ask to what extent it is inappropriate to seek the meanings of LXX vocabulary in other contemporary natural Greek texts, rather than recognising that many Greek lexemes were called upon to serve as artificial equivalents for Hebrew terms — for Jewish ideas, institutions, and customs unfamiliar to readers of Greek who did not read Hebrew — some of them possibly Jews, but especially non-Jews. So the same lexeme, assisted by its context, would acquire a new meaning exotic to Greek, and either puzzle a naive Greek reader, or be taken in the only meaning he knew 3 A. Pietersma, et al., 2000 “To the reader of NETS” in A Pietersma, trs., The Psalms of the Septuagint (New York: OUP), p. xiii; quoted by Cameron Boyd-Taylor in Taylor et al. 2004, p. 150, n. 8. 1170-08_ANES(45)08_13_ Jouon 08-10-2008 12:45 Pagina 237 A REVIEW ESSAY 237 as a natural speaker of Greek, thus getting it wrong. A sophisticated reader might have been able to tell the difference, giving a lexeme its ordinary sense when reading a secular Greek text, while factoring in a coefficient for the Hebrew background when reading LXX. In addition to the explanations supplied in the INTRODUCTION to KPG 2, Falla has written a number of papers on the methodology needed to achieve “the lexicon for which we long” (1998/99) now consolidated in a full-scale manifesto (2005). In addition to arguing for the need of full dis- closure of principles in a “user-manual” introduction and supplementary supportive indexes, Falla discussed five dimensions of an adequate lexicon: 1. User; 2. Scope (corpus); 3. Content (what kind of information, and how much); 4. Methodology (how to do it); 5. Arrangement (presentation). Each of these considerations may be used to assess how well GELS is the LXX lexicon we have longed for. 1. Users Muraoka does not tell us what kind of user he had in mind in planning his work. The blurb says that GELS is “[a]n indispensable tool for students of the Septuagint, the New Testament, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Greek language.” They could have added patristics. Are these students already equipped with the competence that the lexicon takes for granted? Beginners are in danger of being daunted by the vast scale of the treatment along with its succinctness to the point of opacity; and they are likely to fall back on the deceptive simplicity of older works that are little better than glossaries. In contrast to A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, compiled by J. Lust, E. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1992, 1996) [LEH], Muraoka characterises his lexicon as “fully fledged,” by which he means providing “as much information as considered necessary and desir- able” (GELS X). Users will differ in their needs and expectations, ranging from beginners through working scholars to researchers, with ever-widen- ing fields of interest, extending to historical semantics and discourse gram- mar (corpus linguistics); so they will have different ideas of what is “neces- sary and desirable.” Falla conceives “a work that meets as many interests as possible, presents information in such a way that the user can easily find what is sought, and beckons us beyond our immediate requirements and interests”.4 Muraoka wisely decided “to err on the generous side” (GELS XII). But, the more information, the harder it is to present a mass of detail in a user-friendly display. See further under #5: Presentation. 4 Falla 2005, p. 11. 1170-08_ANES(45)08_13_ Jouon 08-10-2008 12:45 Pagina 238 238 FRANCIS I. ANDERSEN 2. Scope (corpus) Muraoka’s choice of the Twelve Prophets as the corpus for the first stage of his project was determined in part by the consideration that it was “homogeneous and generally attributed to a single translator”.5 The next move, incorporating the Pentateuch, is reasonable in light of the general recognition that it has its own linguistic homogeneity. But as steps are taken to expand the work to embrace the entire LXX, the danger will increase that inhomogeneity among the diverse components of LXX (not to mention the existence of several recensions of the Greek ‘Old Testament’) will make the achievement of a single lexicon for the entire LXX more and more difficult. There is no need to question the dominant role of the Pentateuch. As the first part to be translated, the Greek Pentateuch provided a standard for subsequent translation of the other portions of the Hebrew Bible. Conse- quently, an interim lexicon of Pentateuch and XII is not as limited as it might seem. All of the basic vocabulary of LXX is already covered in GELS, and for many entries citations have been completed for the whole LXX. There is every reason to hope that Muraoka will now be able to gather in the vocabulary from the rest of LXX for a subsequent, complete lexicon of LXX. This does not mean, however, that the completed GELS together with BDAG will give us all we need to know about biblical Greek vocabulary. It took a long time to build a fence around the canon. If the mystique of can- onization could be removed from the mindset of researchers, and all value judgments about the quality of the works that didn’t make it (some missed by only a whisker) suspended, systematic correlation of all the religious writings from the period of the Second Temple would greatly assist the investigation of numerous questions. For one, how unified or diverse were ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ in this period? BDAG takes a small step in this direction by including “other early Christian literature” with the New Tes- tament to make a lexicon of early Christian Greek.