In his recent book, Early Christian Creeds and Hymns, Trinitarian apologist Tony Costa took exception with a definition of “αρχη” (KJV: “beginning”) from Rev 3:14 in BDAG:
. . . Surprisingly,
in this third edition, BDAG, 138 s.v. 3 (italics in original), states “beginning
= ‘first created’ is linguistically probable.” This meaning is highly unlikely
since the words “beginning,” “Ruler,” and “originator” are much more probable
in light of passages which speak of the pre-existence of the Son and his role
in the creation of “all things.” We see this in the Colossian hymn in 1:16-17.
This would be an example of Occam’s razor, which states that the simplest and
clearest explanation is to be preferred to tenuous and complicated
explanations. (Tony Costa, Early Christian Creeds and Hymns—What the
Earliest Christians Believed in Word and Song: An Exegetical-Theological
Setting [Peterborough, Ontario: H&E Academic, 2021], 183 n. 33)
I bring this up as I know for a fact if a
Latter-day Saint was to take exception with BDAG or some other scholarly
lexicon of biblical Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, critics would say this is an
example of the anti-intellectual and “cultic” nature of “Mormonism.” However,
in reality, there is no problem disagreeing with lexicons and other scholarly
sources if one can make a sound case (so as to avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect)
that a scholar is wrong.
