Page:A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament.djvu/711



lists of words herewith subjoined, as an aid to researches involving the language of the New Testament, require a few preliminary remarks by way of explanation.

In the attempt to classify the vocabulary of the New Testament, words which occur in secular authors down to and including Aristotle (who died 322) are regarded as belonging to the classical period of the language, and find no place in the lists.

Words first met with between 322 and  150 are regarded as "Later Greek" and registered in the list which bears that heading ; but between 280 and  150 they have "Sept." appended to them in case they also occur in that version.

Words which first appear in the secular authors between 150 and  100 and are also found in the Septuagint are credited to "Biblical Greek" (list 1 p. 693), but with the name of the secular author added.

Words which first appear between 100 and  1 are registered solely as "Later Greek."

Words which first occur between 1 and  50 are enrolled as "Later Greek," but with the name of the author appended.

Words which appear first in the secular authors of the last half of the first century of our era have an asterisk prefixed to them, and are enrolled both in the list of "Later Greek" and in the list of "Biblical Greek."

A New Testament word credited to Biblical Greek, if not found in the Septuagint but occurring in the Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, is so designated by an appended "Apocr."

Whenever a word given in either the Biblical or the Later Greek list is also found in the Anthologies or the Inscriptions, that fact has been noted (as an intimation that such word may possibly be older than it appears to be); and if the word belong to "Later Greek," the name of the oldest determinate author in which it occurs is also given.

The New Testament vocabulary has thus been classified according to hard and fast chronological lines. But to obviate in some measure the incorrect impression which the rigor of such a method might give, it will be noticed that a twofold recognition has been accorded to words belonging to the periods in which the secular usage and the sacred may be supposed to overlap: viz., for the period covered by the preparation of the Septuagint, for the fifty years which followed its completion, and for the last half of the first Christian century. Nevertheless, the uncertainty inseparable from the results no scholar will overlook. Indeed, the surprises