Jude
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 58, No. 1 – Fall 2015
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
Edited by Daniel B. Wallace, Brittany C. Burnette, and Terri Darby Moore. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2013. 256 pages. Hardcover, $34.99.
Daniel B. Wallace and his coeditors, Brittany C. Burnette and Terri Darby Moore, have provided students and scholars of early Christianity a helpful resource in their recent publication, A Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers. As with other similar lexicons, the purpose of the volume is to assist in reading and studying the Apostolic Fathers in the original language. This lexicon complements an earlier volume entitled, A New Readers’ Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (edited by Michael H. Burer and Jeffrey E. Miller [Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2008]) and follows the same basic format. Wallace also remarks that this work is only a starting point and he hopes to produce “several volumes that assist students of Hellenistic Greek in their reading of various corpora that are relevant to nascent Christianity” (11).
The Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers is based upon the Greek text represented in Michael Holmes’s edition and translation of the Apostolic Fathers (The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007]). The volume lists the basic lexicographic information for any word used thirty times or less in the New Testament. The reason for this, Wallace argues, is that most students read the Apostolic Fathers after having studied the New Testament. The lexicographic information provided is based on a variety of lexicons including the third edition of Bauer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), Lampe’s APatristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 2010), and Lightfoot’s five-volume publication on the Apostolic Fathers (J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, 5 vols [reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981]). In certain instances the editors supplemented the definitions with their own glosses based upon the context. The work corresponds to the chapter and paragraph divisions in the Apostolic Fathers in order to help guide the reader through the various writings within this collection of texts. The presentation of the lexicon is simple and straightforward. The vocabulary is defined in its basic lexical forms with additional numbers identifying how many times a word is used in each individual book, as well as the entire corpus of the Apostolic Fathers. This supplemental information allows readers to evaluate the significance of key terms easily and compare these findings with the New Testament writings. For example, Wallace observes that “even though the AF [Apostolic Fathers] comprise less than half the number of words of the NT, there are 4296 different lexical forms in the AF [Apostolic Fathers] compared to 5420 in the NT” (13).
The volume is manageable for students with at least a couple of semesters of Greek, though even beginning students may find this work helpful as they become more acquainted with the language. It is also possible to use the lexicon as a word list to study the more difficult vocabulary essential to reading the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament. Those who come to the Apostolic Fathers after studying the New Testament might also find some sections more challenging since these writings contain many unique terms and concepts. Some readers may wish that the lexical entries provided more information, such as the specific cross-references where parallel terms and concepts are used. By comparison the companion reader on the New Testament by Burer and Miller is more detailed. Each entry indicates the number of occasions that a term appears in a particular book of the New Testament, the writings of a particular author of the New Testament, and the whole New Testament canon. Burer and Miller also provide the specific references (not simply the number of times a term is used) for any words used fewer than three times in a particular book, an author, or the New Testament as a whole. Certainly limiting the information in each lexical entry keeps these volumes down to a manageable size, but any careful study of their writings will need to seek other resources to supplement the information in this lexicon. Nevertheless, as Wallace indicates, the study of the Apostolic Fathers is imperative for any student of the New Testament, since these writings provide the earliest reception of the apostles’ teachings and writings. For this reason, A Reader’s Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers is a great entryway into reading and studying the faith life of the early church. Students and scholars of early Christianity will certainly benefit from this resource and others that help facilitate the study of the early church.
