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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Koehler's Lexicon
  • Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 08:03:47 -0400

>===== Original Message From <cmeadows3 AT verizon.net> =====
>Hi all,
>
>I have all the available TDOTs (Botterweck et al). Would I benefit much
>from
getting Ludwig Koehler's Lexicon? Thanx!
>

Yes. As already noted, TDOT is selective, and there are plenty of words that
are linguistically important but do not merit a specific theological word
study. Also, TDOT is too cumbersome to serve as a general-purpose lexicon,
both from the standpoint of sheer physical size and in terms of how much
information there is to wade through. A lexicon is by no means perfectly
objective or infallible, but it is generally categorized somewhere closer to
the objective end of the spectrum than a theological dictionary. Unless
you're
really trying to dig into the full exetent of scholarship on a word (and to
sift it all as carefully as you would any similar resource), a theological
dictionary can be a rather inefficient and potentially misleading tool. It is
good for its purpose, but a lexicon is directed more at the purely linguistic
function of fixing a word's range of meaning. In this respect, it falls
somewhere between the likes of TDOT and a concordance, since it does provide
a
scholarly construct through which to view the data you would get from a
concordance. (This seems to be one of the common criticisms, BTW, of the
Sheffield dictionary--that it refuses to engage in analysis to the point
where
it becomes less helpful as a lexicon and drifts into the category of
concordance.)

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics





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