A manual Greek lexicon of the New Testament

The need of a new Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament will hardly be questioned. Thayer's monumental work, deservedly the standard for more than thirty years past, and, supplemented by later literature, still likely to remain a standard of reference for some time to come, was rather too bulky to serve as a table companion to the New Testament for the average man. A smaller book, which would lend itself more readily to constant reference, has been a real and growing want for the student. This want has been enhanced by the progress of lexical study during the last quarter century. The study of vernacular texts, which in recent years received a new impetus through the discovery of vast numbers of non-literary papyri, chiefly in Egypt, has removed all doubt as to the category to which the language of the New Testament belongs. It is now abundantly clear that the diction of the apostolic writers is not a peculiar isolated idiom, characteristic of Jewish Hellenists, but simply the common speech of the Greek-speaking world at the time when the New Testament books were written. While the statement just made has come to be a commonplace, it has not been so for long. There has arisen, therefore, the need not only of the collection and arrangement in convenient form (a need which is now being supplied for the advanced scholar in Moulton and Milligan's Vocabulary of the Greek Testament) of the results of pioneer study in the papyri, but also of a systematic revision, in the light of recent research, of many of the views regarding the diction and vocabulary of the New Testament which were commonly accepted thirty or even twenty years ago. - Publisher.