BIBLICO-THEOLOGICAL

LEXICON

of

NEW TESTAMENT GREEK

by

HERMANN CREMER, D.D.,

professor of theology in the university of greifswald

FOURTH ENGLISH EDITION

WITH SUPPLEMENT

Translated from the latest German Edition,

by

WILLIAM URWICK, M.A.

EDINBURGH:

T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET

Fourth Edition 1895

Latest Reprint 1962

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

PROFESSOR CREMER’S Lexicon of New Testament Greek is in Germany considered one of the most important contributions to the study of New Testament Exegesis that has appeared for many years. As is clear from the author’s preface, the student must not expect to find in it every word which the New Testament contains. For words whose ordinary meaning in the classics is retained unmodified and unchanged in Scripture, he must resort still to the classical lexicons. But for words whose meaning is thus modified, words which have become the bases and watchwords of Christian theology, he will find this lexicon most valuable and suggestive, tracing as it does their history in their transference from the classics into the Septuagint, and from the Septuagint into the New Testament, and the gradual deepening and elevation of their meaning till they reach the fulness of New Testament thought. The esteem in which the work is held in Germany is evident from the facts that it has procured for the author his appointment as Professor of Theology in the University of Greifswald, that a second edition has been so soon called for, and that a translation of it has appeared in Holland.

The present translation contains several alterations and additions made by Professor Cremer in the sheets of his second edition; about four hundred errata, moreover, occurring in that edition have been corrected.

WILLIAM URWICK.

49 Belsize Park Gardens, London, N.W.,

August 1878.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

LEXICAL works upon New Testament Greek have hitherto lacked a thorough appreciation of what Schleiermacher calls “the language-moulding power of Christianity.” A language so highly elaborated and widely used as was Greek having been chosen as the organ of the Spirit of Christ, it necessarily followed that as Christianity fulfilled the aspirations of truth, the expressions of that language received a new meaning, and terms hackneyed and worn out by the current misuse of daily talk received a new impress and a fresh power. But as Christianity stands in express and obvious antithesis to the natural man (using this phrase in a spiritual sense), Greek, as the embodiment and reflection of man’s natural life in its richness and fulness, presents this contrast in the service of the sanctuary. This is a phenomenon which repeats itself in every sphere of life upon which Christianity enters, not, of course, always in the same way, but always with the same result—namely, that the spirit of the language expands, and makes itself adequate to the new views which the Spirit of Christ reveals. The speaker’s or writer’s range of view must change as the starting-point ...