A pastor’s solemn responsibility

I believe that it is a pastor’s solemn responsibility before God and his congregation to acquaint himself with the Bible and the best currently available tools for the study of it.

Paidiske said:

With the caveat that not everybody needs exactly the same study tools, but needs a good set of study tools (and best might be different for different people), I would agree.

Click to expand...

There are, however, some basic tools for the study of the Bible that every pastor should have readily at hand. One of these basic tools is the Third Edition of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature. The pedigree of this lexicon would be in order here,

By the early 1900’s, the new studies in the lexicography of Koine Greek had become so great in number and significance that Erwin Preuschen published his Greek-German lexicon in 1910. Upon his death in 1920, the revision of his lexicon was entrusted to Walter Bauer and this revision was published in 1928 as the second edition. In 1930, James Hope Mouton and George Milligan independently published The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament. A thoroughly revised edition of the Preuschen lexicon was published in 1937 with only Bauer’s name on the title page. Bauer realized, however, that his lexicon, although a huge improvement over Thayer’s in terms of accuracy and completeness, needed to be thoroughly revised and updated and therefore undertook a thorough search of all known Greek literature down to the Byzantine times to determine more precisely the meaning of the words found in the New Testament. This resulted in the publication of the monumental work, Griechisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der übrigen urchristlichen Literatur in 1949-1952. An English translation (by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich) of this lexicon was published by the University of Chicago in 1957 with the title, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature and became widely known as the “Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich Lexicon.” A second edition was published by the University of Chicago in 1979. A thorough revision by Frederick William Danker was published by the University of Chicago in 2000. It is very commonly referred to simply as the “BDAG” and this name appears on the title page in parenthesis below the official title.

This work is the standard Greek-English lexicon used today in Bible colleges, seminaries, universities around the world, and any pastor who lacks this lexicon is severely handicapped by the lack of it.