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Concordances: Aland and Schmoller
My comments on this were conveyed privately to Nichael, but comments on
Schmoller and an Aland force me to comment to all.
Schmoller: Someone praised it as really useful, in an earlier posting.
I have found, through thousands of attempts, that its very partial listings
give nothing except what I already can cite in my head. It is not a
complete concordance, and therefore it is good for NOTHING except
to locate a passage whose exact placement is not ready-to-mind. For this
purpose, it is of course helpful, if you do not know the text very well.
Schmoller, #2: Nevertheless, contrary to Mealand's comment that it is
"larger and heavier than 'hand concordance' suggests", it is very small and
very light -- maybe 1/2" thick and less than 5" x 7.5". Mealand obviously has
the old, black-binding, big, thick-paper, ancient printing (which I also
have -- want to buy it CHEAP?). The 1989 printing, edited by Beate Koester
(no relation to Helmut Koester), is the one which is "handy" (English
title-page calls it "Pocket Concordance").
But still don't buy it!
Aland: I don't understand "find all and every instance of a given
special sense of a word in NA26". It IS to NA26 and GNT 3rd ed., but includes
many variants. But none of my copies (I have the original paperback
"Vollstaendige" edition, the two-volume edition for over $1000, and several
editions of the one-volume, now under $100) deal with "givenspecial sense(s)
of a word". Perhaps there is an edition I don't know. The ones I know don't deal
with senses of a word; they only deal with the Stichwort, with sequential
listings for each.
For "senses of a word," one is still stuck with Walter Bauer's opinion
on the subject (or, worse, Fred Danker's "corrections" of Walter Bauer's
opinion). The single or double asterisk indicates a complete concordance
for NT occurrences. For high-frequency words (usually without an asterisk),
one must do the work oneself, using either Moulton and Geden (still very
useful, for $40), or Aland's cheap edition ($85).
--Edward Hobbs