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Greek Lexicography

Introduction

This is not intended as a complete guide to Greek lexicography. For that, see recommended books, below. Rather, the focus here is on the resources available for those active in Greek lexicography, and especially the difficulties in dealing with non-literary sources. These sources are particularly valuable for Koine and later Greek, but can also be utilized for Classical Greek research. As there are no lexicons available for such material, the researcher must make his or her own judgement on them, after careful examination. (NB illustrative examples will be added in due course.)

Gathering the lexical evidence

See also my recommendations for TLG and PHI search software.

Many will be familiar with TLG#E, which allows the searching of all Greek literature from Homer to AD 1453 (the fall of Byzantium). The equivalent for inscriptions and papyri is PHI#7, available from the Packard Humanities Institute (NB magical papyri are included in TLG). PHI only contains data up to 1995, and even then is not complete up to that date. For example, many inscriptions were entered according to region, and although many of the Greek inscriptions from the SEG volumes were entered, inscriptions from Italy were not entered up to 1995. Indices of individual volumes should be consulted, but an important service has been provided by the Heidelberger Woerterlisten (see Web resources, below). When searching PHI one should bear in mind typical phonetic spelling variants.

The papyri from PHI#7 are now available online with corrections and updates in the Duke Databank. Packard Humanities have begun to post online too their inscriptions from the PHI#7 CD-Rom, but it is not yet clear if this is comprehensive or not (it is a beta version).

Dating of sources

Most editions of papyri will indicate the date of a papyrus, but rarely do the volumes of inscriptions indicate date (particularly in the case of the IG volumes). PHI has recorded the date of the papyri from the volumes, and for most of the inscriptions it has included McCabe's dates. However, of all the search tools available for TLG/PHI only Pandora for the Mac, as far as I know, displays these dates. This is a serious problem, especially given the lack of new versions of Pandora, and should be addressed by developers of the search tools. If using PHI in Pandora, you will be able to gain a historical picture of the distribution of a particular word.

Abbreviations

There is a lack of consistency in citation of publications for papyri and inscriptions, but a growing concensus is to use the following (which also include reference to alternative citation systems):

For Papyri and ostraca:
Checklist of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets
For inscriptions:
G. Horsley and J. Lee, ‘A preliminary checklist of abbreviations of Greek epigraphic volumes’, Epigraphica 56 (1994) 129-169.

See also CLAROS (below) for checking latest publications of texts.

Checking the sources

Using the abbreviations list one should be able to follow up the list of occurrences and check them in the original publications. The typing into the PHI (or TLG) CD-ROM might not always have been reliable and unclear cases should be checked. The editions of texts, especially inscriptions, will often not provide translations, but even where they do one should rely on one's own knowledge of Greek. Publications might not be accurate in accents or in the translation, and one should make one's own judgement. The editors were aiming to produce a corpus within a reasonable length of time and sometimes could only make a decision with limited resources. They were not concerned with the lexicography of any particular word, and did not have the luxury of a lexicographer to investigate every occurrence of a word. Furthermore, since publication new data might have come to light to clarify a particular text.

Dialect and register

It should not be presumed that all texts from the Hellenistic and Roman periods are in standard koine, or that, if they are documentary texts, they are necessarily of a low or colloquial register. Although koine is the designation of the language in this period (including high, low, literary etc.), some sources are still written in a dialect preserved from earlier times. The register is the choice of the author, and a letter, for example, might be written in either a high or low register. register can also vary within a document, especially in literature, to indicate the status of different speakers or the genre of a passage.

Web Resources

Bibliographies

P. Boned & J. Rodríguez Somolinos, Repertorio bibliográfico de la lexicografía griega, Diccionario Griego-Español. Anejo III, Madrid, CSIC,1998. Bibliography, but by no means exhaustive, on all ancient Greek words (now supplemented by the additions in RBLG).
RBLG supplement
CLAROS Concordance of Greek inscriptions: Provides details of the latest publications of inscriptions
Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis
Heidelberger Woerterlisten: List of words appearing in recent publications of papyri (post PHI#7)
APIS: Advanced Papyrological Information System

Databases

The Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri Most papyri, incoporating an update of the PHI#7 CD-Rom
Inscriptions by region The Inscriptions from PHI#7 now online

Recommended Books

John Chadwick, Lexicographica graeca: contributions to the lexicography of ancient Greek (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1996).
J.A.L. Lee, A History of New Testament Lexicography (Peter Lang, 2003).
Bo Svensén, Practical lexicography: principles and methods of dictionary-making, translated from the Swedish by John Sykes and Kerstin Schofield (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1993).
B. Taylor, et al. (eds), Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).

Resources: contents

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