Why Did Piper Say He Does Not Use BDAG?

Excellent overview. I especially liked how he gave a warning about trying to use BDAG without a proper understanding of Greek. Using a tool incorrectly is usually more detrimental than not using that tool at all. Stick to the tools you know.

For my side job, I do excavation/drainage work. That means that when I put pipe in the ground, the water is expected to run downhill and I have to put it in with the proper slope. A simple job would involve putting a culvert across a driveway and placing a long level across the top of the culvert to make sure it is tilted downhill. We however use a laser to check this. If, however, the laser is not set correctly, the old stick level will be much more accurate.

The same is true with so many study tools. Using something that you understand and sticking to what you do understand and not venturing into things you don't understand is the wisest course of action. I worry when someone with a limited understanding tries to correct a studied scholar. I know that some of the scholars I read may not always be right, but when they are discussing a topic that I do not even understand, then I am more inclined to trust them than I am my own calculations.

I don't have BDAG, but I do have and occasionally use "Little Kittel", as well as a couple Hebrew resources, and it strikes me that a good lexicon (Kittle, BDAG, Moody, etc..) will walk you through the usage of a word and help one to see what that word means in context.

So per JD's comment about "using the tools you understand", if a person cannot approach BDAG, then there are going to be precious few worthwhile lexicons that person can use. Generally, it means they're not up to speed on "usage determines meaning" and "context, context, context", and thus will try to form a 1:1 correspondence between Greek or Hebrew and English--with appalling results.

There are several alternatives to BDAG that are a lot easier to use. BDAG is quite dense with abbreviations and references to non-biblical sources. It can be pretty hard to unpack… or maybe decompress is the right term.

The lexicon errors I have most often heard or read have been mostly in the category of not understanding how language works (all the languages). A close second is invalid reasoning. They overlap I suppose.

As an example of not understanding how language works, folks look at a semantic range of a term and think that they get to just pick the option they like for the passage they’re looking at. Or they think the term means all the synonyms/glosses put together every time the word appears. There is no language that works that way.

There can be ambiguity, but a word carries a single, relatively narrow meaning in a given context, not the whole semantic range or some random selection out of the range.

Context is usually more helpful than anything else, which is why comparing a few good translations is so helpful. They are all going to make context-driven judgments about what English equivalents are best. When there is a wide range of different translations, you know it’s a tough passage. When they are saying essentially the same thing with different nuances, you know what the gist is. That is frequently enough for pulpit work. (But I do appreciate the scholars who labor assiduously to determine—and make a case for—the minutest shade of nuance of a word in a given context and across contexts. Their work helps provide boundaries and anchor points for the less exact work us regular folks generally do.)

Back to BDAG: I use it a lot. I got a copy for Christmas back when I was in college, and it feels like an old friend… who talks too much and has a hard time getting to the point. :-D But I still find it handy alongside other tools that are more succinct and transparent.