Lesson 8 | Original Language Tools
Lexicons
While glosses are easier to use, lexicons go much more in-depth.
lex•i•con noun A dictionary; a listing of words with their meaning and usage
Bible lexicons give you breakdowns of the words found in Scripture. These are detailed “searches gone before us,” gathered into volumes and presented in the third section of the word boxes on Biblearc.
Note: There are several lexicons available on Biblearc.com. To flip through available lexicons for a given word, click on the circular arrows icon in the top-right corner of the lexicon section.
Strong’s Concordance
Strong’s Concordance was constructed under the direction of James Strong, a professor of exegetical theology at Drew Theological Seminary. It was first published in 1890 and is the most commonly used concordance of the Bible—covering Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Entries in this concordance hold valuable information, but oftentimes less detail than BDB and Thayer’s.
Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon
Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) is a lexicon of only the Hebrew and Aramaic (and so only covers the Old Testament). It was published in 1906. While the BDB has helpful information for many words that go well beyond Strong’s, for others it is little more than a gloss.
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon
Thayer’s was first published in 1885, the result of thirty years of work by Joseph Henry Thayer in revising and adding to C.G. Wilke’s Clavis Novi Testamenti. As implied by the name, Thayer’s is only for Greek, covering only original language words in the New Testament. However, it bases its definitions and discussions on Greek usage in the LXX and extra-biblical literature as well for a much wider array of source material.
The biggest advantage of Thayer’s (in comparison to the other options on Biblearc) is that it is so exhaustive, containing an immense amount of information for each entry. The biggest disadvantage to Thayer’s is the same—entries are often so long that they become cumbersome. In addition, it can feel cryptic in its presentation until you have spent a good amount of time using it.
Dodson Greek-English Lexicon
Dodson’s Lexicon was released in 2010 by John Jeffrey Dodson. It is much more of a gloss than a true lexicon.
Final Thoughts
There are two more important points to keep in mind when studying the meaning of a word in the original language.
Idioms
An idiom is a “form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on“ (Wordnik). Idioms exist all over biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and they can trip you up if you are not careful. Examples include “his face fell” (meaning, he was disheartened), “possess the gate” (to defeat a city), the “long nose” of the Lord (his patience), his “arm not being short” (he is not weak), and “those who pee on the wall” (men). Yes, that last example is in your Bible, though it is only translated that way in the KJV.
Cognates
Have you ever heard a preacher say something like, “The word for ‘power’ in Greek is dýnamis, which is where we get the word ‘dynamite.’ So we can see how explosive his power was…”? Words related in form are called cognates. Recognizing cognates can be very helpful, especially when trying to learn a language. However, care needs to be taken because words are not ultimately defined by their cognates. They are defined by their usage. (And, no, dýnamis does not imply explosiveness.)
