Subtitled Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources, this work, first published in one volume in 1930, was one of the most important exegetical tools of the past generation for the study of the Greek New Testament.
The work for this vital tool was began by James Moulton at the beginning of the 20th Cent. A short while afterwards he invited George Milligan to join him in this project to produce a vocabulary of the NT that would be illustrated by the large amounts of Greek papyrus discovered in the sands of Egypt and other archaeological resouces that had been discovered in the recent decades. A number of words dealing with representative words were first published in the Expositor from 1908 to 1911. The first part of the Vocabulary was published in 1914, and the second part the following year. The work continued under Milligan's charge after Moulton died in ###, and the completed work was published in one volume in 1930.
Though now dated it served a whole generation with lexicographic insights of how Greek words were used in mundane contexts that are so crucial to an understanding of how the same words are used in the NT. Moulton & Milligan serves as a good example of the immense effort of patiently teashing out every bit of resources—bills, soldiers' requests for extension of their leave, invoices, lovers' letters, etc—put in by men we seldom border to acknowledge who have open up the NT in ways otherwise impossible. ALBERITH salutes them.
©ALBERITH
200416lch