A Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament

by William Greenfield

PREFACE

The hidden depths both of the wisdom and knowledge of God were manifest, not only in the revelation of his will contained in the Scriptures of truth, but in the manner of giving that revelation, and in the language in which is was given.

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.