from A Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers
by Daniel B. Wallace
PREFACE
This volume is the second in a series of reader’s lexica. The first was A New Reader’s Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, by Michael H. Burer and Jeffrey E. Miller, appearing in 2008. At the urging of the editors at Kregel Publications, principally Jim Weaver, Dennis Hillman, and Paul Hillman, I accepted the role of senior editor for this new series. Ultimately, we envision having several volumes that assist students of Hellenistic Greek in their reading of various corpora that are relevant to nascent Christianity. The lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers (AF) was chosen to be the second in this series because the AF are early and important links to apostolic Christianity, they are hotly debated as to their connection with the normative kerygma of the primitive church, and they are often disregarded in evangelical circles because they are not Scripture. We hope that this work will spur many students of the New Testament, especially evangelicals, to get into the AF and wrestle with their content, theology, praxis, use of the New Testament, and devotion to the risen Lord.
I asked two former ThM interns of mine, Terri Moore and Brittany Burnette, to be the junior editors on whose shoulders the great bulk of the work would be done. They are exacting students of Scripture whose love for the Greek text and skill in exegesis are exceptional. Brit, in fact, has taught a course at her church on the AF for a long time; Terri taught for several years as an adjunct in the New Testament Department at Dallas Seminary. Both women are currently working on their doctorates, Terri her PhD and Brit her DMin. We mapped out an approach in January 2008 and Terri and Brit attacked their assignments enthusiastically and with great care. We also asked several individuals—who are mentioned with gratitude in the Acknowledgments—to proofread the manuscript. The project took much longer than anticipated for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the pioneering nature of this work. We are happy to finally offer it to students of the New Testament who understand the value of other ancient sources for illumination of the biblical text.
The text followed is Michael Holmes’s third edition of the Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007). As in the New Reader’s Lexicon of the New Testament, we have not listed all the words found in the AF. We have limited the vocabulary to those words that occur thirty times or less in the NT. The NT was chosen as the index because those who read the AF almost always first get acquainted with the Greek of the NT. The cut-off at thirty times, rather than fifty times (as in the NT reader’s lexicon), was chosen on the belief that students who begin reading the AF will almost always have a better grasp on NT vocabulary than just the words that occur more than fifty times in that corpus. Admittedly, setting the bar at thirty is somewhat arbitrary; it could have been much lower. The number we set means that a vocabulary of merely 453 words is sufficient for a student to begin to read the AF with some proficiency.
A few particular features of the lexicon’s layout should be noted. All vocabulary is given in its lexical form. Verbs are glossed as infinitives so as to distinguish them more easily from nouns (e.g., ἀναγκάζω is to force rather than force). Nouns are listed with their articles. Even in consecutive verses the lexicon lists every word in the AF that occurs thirty times or less in the NT. The vocabulary in each verse is laid out alphabetically. Lexical forms are given first, followed by at least two numbers and as many as four, each separated by a high dot (•). The first number indicates how many times the word appears in that book. The last number indicates how many times the word appears in the AF. For Ignatius, there are three numbers for each entry, the middle one indicating how often the word appears in all of Ignatius’s letters. (No such middle number appears in 1 Clement or 2 Clement since the latter is authored by someone else.) Occasionally, a number in brackets precedes the other numbers. This indicates the frequency of the word in that particular verse. For examples of this layout, consider the following:
1 Clement 16.10:
ἀντί [2] 4 • 15 instead of, in place of
The word occurs twice in 1 Clement 16.10, four times in 1 Clement, and 15 times in the AF.
Ignatius to the Romans 7.1:
διαφθείρω 1 • 3 • 12 to deprave, ruin
The word occurs once in Romans, three times in Ignatius, and twelve times in the AF.
Shepherd of Hermas 10.4 (Hv 3.2):
πύργος, ὁ 147 • 148 tower
The word occurs 147 times in Hermas and once elsewhere. It should be noted that although this word occurs almost 150 times in the AF, since it appears only four times in the NT, it is included in the reader’s lexicon.
Here are a few interesting statistics on the vocabulary of the AF:
• The AF collectively are 47 percent the size of the NT (66,263 and 138,158 words respectively).
• Exactly 4966 different words occur thirty times or less in the NT; for the AF the same list (including words that do not occur at all in the NT) comes to 4052.
• The rich vocabulary of the AF can be seen by comparison with the NT: even though the AF comprise less than half the number of words of the NT, there are 4296 different lexical forms in the AF compared to 5420 in the NT. In other words, the AF vocabulary stock is nearly 80 percent of that of the NT.
• The most common word listed in this lexicon is πύργος (tower), a word that occurs 148 times, all but once in the Shepherd of Hermas.
• The most frequently occurring words in any verse are ἐγκρατεύομαι (to abstain)—six times in Hermas 38.2, Ἰακώβ (Jacob)—six times in Barnabas 13.5, and πτελέα (elm tree)— five times in Hermas 51.3.
• The verse with the most vocabulary in the lexicon is Diognetus 7.2 (34 words, with two of them occurring twice in the verse).
The glosses are contextually determined. The editors employed the third edition of Bauer’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), by Frederick Danker (BDAG); G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961); A Greek-English Lexicon by H. G. Liddell, and R. Scott, 9th ed. with supplement; rev. by H. S. Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, five vols.; reprint ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981); and Michael Holmes’s translation in his third edition of the Apostolic Fathers. No attempt has been made to cite these sources except on rare occasions (mostly dealing with idioms). Occasionally, the glosses listed in all these works are found to be contextually question- able. In such instances the editors have added their own gloss while also retaining the gloss from one or more of the standard sources.
The glosses are at times mixed with definitions. What we put in italics are the basic glosses that can be used in translation. We are not strictly following BDAG in terms of italicizing only the glosses since the more expanded definitions are also helpful for translation. Consider, for example, ἐναλλάξ in 1 Clement 12.4. The definition/gloss in BDAG says “in the opposite direction, crosswise”; BDAG’s general definition is “in the opposite direction” while their gloss is “crosswise.” Because crosswise could be misunderstood, we have also supplied the general definition that could be used in translation as an expanded gloss. Practicality and communication were key factors in deciding which definitions to include.
There are also occasional syntactical, morphological, and idiom notes found throughout the lexicon. No attempt has been made to be systematic with these notes, and in general our policy has been to offer a bare minimum of them overall. The particular idioms in the AF can almost always be found in BDAG or Lampe; some of the unusual syntax is also discussed in A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, by F. Blass and A. Debrunner; trans. and rev. by R. W. Funk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). In later editions of our lexicon, as readers communicate with us, we hope to expand on these notes, keeping with what we envision as the level of Greek skill that the average reader of the AF will have. Such notes will be incorporated especially in relation to the completion of the second edition of my Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996 [first edition]), which, when published, will include extensive syntax culled from the AF.
This volume may be profitably used by students in their third or fourth semester of biblical Greek as well as by more advanced students. Professors who require that first-year students learn more vocabulary than what occurs fifty or more times may find this volume helpful to their charges once they have mastered their verb paradigms.
This reader’s lexicon is not intended to supplant the standard lexica for the AF. There is a wealth of information especially in BDAG and Lampe that a reader’s lexicon does not touch on. Rather, it is our hope that readers will engage the text and, in the process, interact with these standard tools for understanding this significant body of literature.
All errors—be they lexical, grammatical, or typographical—rest ultimately on my shoulders. A task as large as this undertaking will surely evidence a good number of infelicities. Input from the readers of this lexicon, therefore, will be gratefully appreciated.
—Daniel B. Wallace
Senior Editor
The Feast Day of Saints Peter and Paul
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This post is adapted from the Preface of A Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers by Daniel B. Wallace. If you are interested in adopting this book for a college or seminary course, please request a faculty examination copy. We will also consider requests for your blog or media outlets.
Praise for A Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Father’s
“The study of the Apostolic Fathers and their writings has become something of a growth industry in the last twenty years, with major volumes published in the Hermeneia series and elsewhere updating what we know about these writings. I am happy to commend Daniel Wallace’s new volume, a much needed reader’s lexicon, so that students of the Greek text of the Apostolic Fathers can readily access this valuable early Christian material. Like Philip who responded to the Ethiopian eunuch‘s question: ‘How can I understand this without some help?’, Wallace has now come along side our own chariots, our own studies of these ancient sacred texts, and provided a guide to translation and understanding. Highly recommended!”
—Ben Witherington III,
Amos Professor of the NT for Doctoral Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary
“Dan Wallace and his editorial team have produced an exceedingly helpful reader’s lexicon on the Apostolic Fathers. This is a comprehensive and user-friendly resource for anyone studying the Apostolic Fathers or just doing some advanced Greek study. A Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers is sure to be an enduring exegetical resource for future study of early Christian literature. I earnestly look forward to further volumes from Kregel publishers in this series of lexica.”
—Michael F. Bird, Lecturer in Theology,
Ridley Melbourne College of Mission and Ministry.
“A Reader’s Lexicon to the Apostolic Fathers is precisely the tool needed by students of Greek who want to begin reading the Apostolic Fathers in the original. Organized to help them as they work through these texts, students with only a year or two of Greek will begin to make headway as they read these important documents in the original. Highly recommended.”
—D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament,
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
“This thoughtfully designed work will be of great practical usefulness to students (and general readers) in becoming acquainted with the fascinating body of texts known as the Apostolic Fathers. Intended for those who have cut their teeth on the language of the Greek New Testament, this lexicon should prove very helpful in widening their knowledge of early Christian writers.”
—L. W. Hurtado,
Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology, University of Edinburgh
