Hazardous Materials
Riplinger addresses lexicons in the book, “Hazardous Materials”
1.) Lexicons are not exhaustive of every possible meaning of a word (Yes that includes Kittel). And often it is the correct biblical meaning of a biblical word which isn’t thoroughly dealt with in the lexicons.
2.) Lexicons are not contextual, i.e., they do not necessarily give the contextual meaning of a word in a specific context, or a specific biblical context, or in the context of the whole Bible itself.
3.) Lexicons are usually authored by unsaved men who have not the Spirit of God.
4.) Lexicons tempt people to choose the first or most often used definition/meaning, and thus demean the work of the KJB translators (under the good preserving hand of God, I might add) who were far more skilled than the lexicon author or the lexicon user.
The way to understand any word in the Bible is to study all occurrences of all forms of the word in the Bible (KJB) itself, in their various contexts, as well as in the context of the whole Bible.
Will Kinney writes:
Who is messing with the Greek Lexicons?
I recently discovered something that I think is very interesting and quite enlightening about how modern scholars are changing the definitions that words once had.
I have in my study two different printings of the well known Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon. One is from 1887 and the other one is from 1976, which was a reprint of the 9th edition of 1940.
The more modern Liddell and Scott defines the word monokeros as “a wild ox”. However the 1887 edition gives only one definition of the word – A UNICORN!!!.
The same thing occurs with the word translated as “LUNATICK” in the King James Bible (and many others as well) two times in the N.T. In Matthew 4:24 and in Matthew 17:15 we read “lunatics” and “he is a lunatic”.
The 1887 Liddell and Scott edition page 632 clearly defines this word as “to be moon struck or lunatic.” But the 1976 edition now has as the definition – “to be moonstruck, i.e. EPILEPTIC” So again, who changed this?
A third example I have found is in the definition of the Greek word monogenes – or “only begotten”. Liddell & Scott’s Lexicon 1887 on page 451 defines monogenes as “ONLY-BEGOTTEN”.
Yet the 1976 edition of Liddell & Scott completely omits any reference to “only begotten” and NOW has as the definitions “UNIQUE”, “ONLY, or SINGLE”.
Now, it should be obvious that Liddell and Scott themselves were not alive in 1976 so that they could suddenly change their minds about what this word meant. So who changed the definition of this word for future generations of Bible correctors?