Liddell-Scott-Jones
The next lexical resource we will look at is A Greek-English Lexicon, compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, revised and augmented by Henry Stuart Jones in 1925. LSJ is a lexicon of classical Greek, so it must be used cautiously. Languages change through the centuries, so a Greek word might be used much differently in classical works than it is in the Bible, just as a word may be used in Old English with meanings unlike today's. LSJ may be useful for words that are only rarely used in the Bible or literature that is contemporary to it. This does not include genna
ō, but to be complete we will quote LSJ's entry on gennaō.LSJ is more difficult to use than BAGD, since it uses even more cryptic abbreviations and doesn't translate or transliterate any of its Greek. The entry we need is on page 344, in a paragraph that begins
génn-ē. Various forms starting with genn- are listed; about halfway through a column-long paragraph we come to the ending we are interested in:"-áō, fut. Med.
gennēsomai in pass. sense, D.S.19.2 (but -ēthēsomai Id.4.9): (genna): — causal of gignomai (cf. geinomai), mostly of the father, beget, ho gennēsas patēr S.El.1412; hoi genēsantes se your parents, X.Mem.2.I.27; to gennōmenon ek tinos Hdt.I.108, etc.; hothen gegennamenoi sprung, Pi.P.5.74; of the mother, bring forth, bear, A.Supp.48, Arist.GA716a22, X.Lac.I.3, etc.: — Med., produce from oneself, create, Pl.Ti.34b, Mx.238a. 2. produce, grow, get, kan sōma gennēsē mega S.Aj.1077. 3. metaph., engender, produce, lēthē tōn idiōn kakōn thrasytēta genna Democr.196; pantoian aretēn Pl.Smp.209e; dianoēmata te kai doxas Id.R.496a, etc.; gennōsi ton ouranon [hoi philosophoi] call it into existence, Arist.Cael.283b31; ho ex asōmatou gennōn logos ib.305a16, cf. Plot.6.6.9; of numbers, produce a total, Ph.1.347."We could look up the abbreviations of the classical works cited, and for most of them we could go to the Loeb series for a more complete Greek text and translation, but this would probably not be a good use of our time. For our purposes, we can ignore the Greek words and citations to see LSJ's information about classical meanings of genna
ō:1. Mostly of the father, beget (in some contexts it may be translated parents or sprung). Of the mother, bring forth, bear (in middle voice, produce from oneself, create).
2. Produce, grow, get.
3. In a metaphorical use, it can mean engender or produce or call into existence.
I do not know why LSJ did not combine numbers 2 and 3, but the meanings given here are much the same as we see in biblical lexicons. There is nothing here that encourages us to dig deeper into classical meanings of genna
ō.
