Book Reviews -- By: Matthew S. DeMoss
Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 172:687 (Jul 2015)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss
BSac 172:687 (July-September 2015) p. 368
Book Reviews
By The Faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary
Editor
New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis. Edited by Moisés Silva. Revised edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2014. 5 vols., 3,552 pp. $249.99.
Words have always been important for exegesis. The rich history in New Testament studies of focusing on words within the broader disciplines of philology, lexicography, and etymology has had an undeniably positive impact upon our understanding of the Greek text. Current trends in scholarship often seek to move beyond the word, but in many ways we can never get past it. The wisest task at present is to improve our understanding of the ways words work within the larger discourse, across languages, and conceptually across the canon. The word remains the fundamental building block of the sentence and discourse and has an important impact upon theology. So it will always deserve careful attention within the exegetical process.
Enter the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDNTTE). This work, with its focus on the theological use and import of Greek words within the New Testament, situates itself as a critical tool for New Testament exegesis. NIDNTTE is the most recent iteration of a line of tools that focus not only on the meaning of words but also on their contribution to biblical theology. The original work with this dual lexical/theological focus, which ultimately led to the publication of the current work, was the Theologisches Begriffslexicon zum Neuen Testament (ed. Lothar Coenen; 2nd ed.; 1970-71), or TBNT. This German work was translated into English, revised, and expanded a few years later to become the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (ed. Colin Brown; 1975-78), or NIDNTT, which became a standard reference work for exegesis. The current work under consideration, NIDNTTE (ed. Moisés Silva; 2014), is a revision of NIDNTT. The name was changed slightly to suggest a relationship to the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (ed. Willem A. Van Gemeren; 1997). Moisés Silva was an excellent choice to be the editor for this new volume, given his work in semantics and linguistics (see his Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics [rev. ed.; 1995] and God, Language, and Scripture: Reading the Bible in the Light of General Linguistics [1990]). NIDNTTE maintains the same dual focus on lexicography and theology as the prior works, advancing the discussion considerably in light of subsequent scholarship.
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