Why don’t more Christians read the New Testament in its original language? Muslims believe that the Quran exists in Arabic and only in Arabic. Hindus read the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. Serious students of Buddhism learn Pali or Tibetan. So why do Christians make do with translations or even paraphrases?

Frederick Danker’s Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament aims to help those who want to read the New Testament in its orginal Greek. As the word “concise” in its title suggests, this is not a book for seminarians and ministry students; for them there is the full Bauer-Danker Lexicon. This shorter volume is aimed at laypeople.

Perhaps the best way I can explain what the book offers is to use an example. In 1 Corinthians 16:1, St. Paul talks about taking a collection for the “saints.” Now, what did he mean by “saints” — an English word that has assumed connotations presumably not present in the first century?

We learn that the actual Greek word ἅγιος is related to a similar Sanskrit word, and that this suggests an Indo-European etymological meaning of “set apart for dedication to the interests or expectations of deity.” The simplest one-word translation would be “holy.” More nuances follow: “holy, sacred, consecrated,” and so on. Each of these is supported by references to the word in Greek New Testament contexts. I learned, for example, that this is the same word used as an adjective to describe the “Holy” Spirit. I certainly wouldn’t have known that without Danker’s book.

But Danker goes further and gives “God’s people, special people” as suggested renderings in some passages. I’m no expert on Greek, but it seems to me that he has gone way beyond anything that could be understood from the word itself and introduced his own theology into these supposed translations. While this concise lexicon is undoubtedly valuable, I think it must be used with some caution.

Frederick William Danker. The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Chicago University Press, 2009. Hardcover. 408 pages. ISBN 9780226136158. $55.00.

Well, as a classicist, I can only say that words like "hagios" or "sacer"/"sanctus" (in Latin), or any other word of this type, can have various meanings which change in time depending on how authors use them. Therefore, I can see no big difference between the meaning of hagios and the meaning of "sacred", "holy" or "saint" in modern English. St. Paul have his reasons to use such a word to describe members of Christian community, but it's not necessary to change a translation into "God's people", for example. So I totally agree with your intuition, Derek.

I don't know Hebrew, but I heard that the word that were used in Hebrew to render what the angels cried in Isaiah 6:3 (Septuagint has "hagios, hagios, hagios", Vulgata - Sanctus), had also specific meaning - "holy" in a sense of totally transcendent, different from anything known to human beings, separated etc. Even though it's no reason to use other word than "holy".

Btw, in Polish language we have only one word that means as well "sacred", "holy", and "saint".