The Benefits and Dangers of Word Studies
Introduction to Word/Phrase Studies
One of the most helpful tools in
interpretation is a word or phrase study.
How can we strive to have faith if we do not know what it
is? What does Paul mean when he says
that we are justified from the faith of Jesus Christ (Galatians
2:16)? What is the righteousness
of God that is revealed in the gospel (Romans 1:16)? The answers to these questions come from
word and phrase studies.
It is very important that we understand
how words work before we start on such ventures. There a number of fundamental
misunderstandings of words that have often led down immensely inappropriate
avenues in interpretation. Pastors
(and even scholars) are notorious for the way they misuse words from the pulpit
(and in commentaries!). Read what
follows carefully and beware!
Fallacious Approaches to Word/Phrase
Study
1. Words do not have fixed or intrinsic
meanings. A word is a "sign" that
"signifies" something to the mind looking at it.
A word is only a squiggle on a page--it
means nothing in and of itself.
Occasionally a sound might resemble what it signifies (onomatopoeia;
e.g. "gargle" sounds a little like what it signifies). But in the overwhelming majority of
cases, the sounds and letters of a word are completely arbitrary. Thus, a "Brief" in German is a
letter; "brief" in English is short. In neither case do the letters and
sounds have anything to do with the meaning. It is when a mind finds significance in
those squiggles and sounds that they come to have meaning.
2. The meaning of a word is in the way it
is used.
This is essential to an appropriate
understanding of words. A
dictionary does not tell us what a word means in any specific occurrence of the
word, as if the meaning of a word was somehow fixed. A dictionary records the various ways
that a word is being used at any given point in time. It lists these meanings from the most
frequent use to the least frequent.
Since usage changes, dictionaries have to be updated continually. New meanings are constantly being added
to the list. Could you have found
the word email in a dictionary fifteen years ago? On the other hand, older meanings are
removed or move down in the list.
How often do we use the word intercourse in reference to
conversation these days?
Here are a number of facts about words
that follow from this observation, along with some of the more common fallacies
that relate to them:
2a. Words can have a number of distinct
and different meanings.
I heard of a Bible translation once that
always translated a Greek or Hebrew word in the same way every time. It thought that this made it a better
translation. On the contrary, it indictated that the translation was horrible. Words mean different things in different
contexts, and none of these meanings have to relate to one another in any way.
Warning 1: You cannot assume that words in one book
of the Bible mean the same thing they mean in other parts of the Bible. Much of popular Christian literature is
based upon a mixing and matching of words and imagery from biblical texts that
originally had entirely different situations in view (e.g. most prophecy books
today). You cannot assume that Paul
uses the word righteousness in the way Matthew does or that Genesis
means soul in the way Paul does.
This is the "one meaning" fallacy.
Example: Matthew 10:28 and 10:39 both use the
Greek word psyche, but translations rightly translate the word
differently in each case. They
generally render 10:28 as "soul" (fear the one who can throw both soul
and body into Gehenna) and 10:39 as "life"
(whoever loses his life will find it). This is a perfect example of the fact
that words can mean different things in different contexts.
Warning 2: Words usually don't come loaded with an
entire theology. Kittel's Theological Dictionary was a favorite of a
previous generation of scholars, but it repeatedly committed the "word-concept"
fallacy. That is, it ransacked
all the places in Greek literature, including the New Testament, where a word
was used and then dumped all those meanings into every place where the word
occurred. It implied that an entire
theological system could be present every time a particular word was used
rather than recognizing that words frequently have a number of distinct and
unrelated meanings. A theology is
not in a word; a word in a context may relate to an overall theology.
Examples:
The word faith can mean "trust," but it can also mean
"belief" and even "faithfulness." All three meanings are valid yet they
can be distinct meanings. You
cannot assume that all three meanings are there in every occurrence of the
word. James 2 is primarily focusing
on faith as belief; 1 Corinthians 13:2 focuses on trust; while Hebrews 10:39
emphasizes faithfulness (cf. Romans 3:3).
The old "four loves" debate can
fall in here as well. C.S. Lewis
lived in the heyday of the word-concept fallacy. Even if on some occasion there is a
distinction between phileo and agapao (and this is debatable), you cannot invest
every instance of each word with as much theological baggage as Lewis and
others have tried to do. The Greek
Old Testament says that Amnon "loved" (agapao) Tamar--and then that he raped her (2 Samuel
13:1).
2b. The different ways a word is used may
have nothing to do with the other ways a word is used.
There is often no "essential" or root meaning to a word. Michael Jackson furnishes us with a good
example of this in the way he uses the word bad. When Michael Jackson is "bad,"
he is really, really good--the exact opposite of the connotations the
word usually has.
Greek teachers are sometimes guilty of
trying to relate the different meanings a word has in various forms to the
other meanings it has in other forms of that word. This may help a student remember, but it
is sometimes fallacious. The word archo in Greek means "I rule" in the
active voice, but it means "I begin" in the middle voice. It is the same word, but don't try to
figure out how the same word can mean both "to rule" and "to
begin." Even if there is a historical
(diachronic) explanation, this is quite a distinct issue from what a Greek
speaker was thinking when s/he used the word (synchronic).
The idea that a word has some essential,
basic meaning that plays itself out in some way every time a word occurs is
called the "lexical fallacy." The idea that the meaning of a word
always relates to some meaning of a root stem is the "root
fallacy."
Example: The Greek stem baph-
does have connotations of immersing, but this fact does not necessarily imply
anything about how any biblical author used the word baptizo,
"to baptize." The meaning
of a word comes from the way it is used on a specific occasion and may have
absolutely nothing to do with its root.
This is the root fallacy.
2c. The history of a word may have
nothing to do with its meaning now. In a sense we are
saying the same thing over and over again.
The meaning of a word derives from its use on a specific occasion--its
context. You cannot necessarily
dump the meaning that word has or had anywhere else into the particular
instance at which you are looking.
One of the most frequently committed
fallacy pastors use is the so called "etymological fallacy"--using
the component parts of a word to explain what the word means. On the one hand, this practice can have
great illustrative power and sometimes it seems to work. But the etymology of a word doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with the current meaning of a word. People don't normally think of a word's
etymology when they use it--no one thinks of "standing under"
something when they use the word understanding!!
Examples: The Greek word for church is ekklesia and pastors often point out that ek means "out of" while kaleo means to "call." Thus you often hear pastors speaking of
the church as the "called out" ones. There's no problem with this theology,
but I assure you that Greek speakers were not thinking anything like this when
they used the word. In fact, Acts
19:41 uses the word in reference to a mob riot in
Nevertheless, I do sometimes use such
breakdowns (with a warning) in preaching and teaching Greek because sometimes
it really does help make a point.
But we must always be very cautious. The Holy Spirit is indeed the one
"called along side" us to help us (=para
+ kaleo), but it is highly unlikely John was
thinking anything like this when he wrote his gospel. To be holy is to be "not of the
earth" (=a + ge) in a sense, but no one
was thinking this when they used the word.
We know the meanings of words because of
specific "language games" in use at particular times and places. When you say "the fire has gone
out," I need to know whether we are camping or in church to know what you
mean.
2d. You cannot take meanings a word later
came to have and read them back into earlier uses of the word.
This is what I might call the fallacy
of anachronism. Words change
their meanings, and we must be careful to locate a word in its correct
context. When Acts 1:8 says that
the disciples will be witnesses (martyres), it
did not imply that they would all die--which is what the word martyr
eventually came to mean. When
Isaiah 45:1 calls the Persian king Cyrus God's meshiach,
"anointed one," it did not mean the same thing as what Peter meant in
Mark 8:29 when he called Jesus the Messiah, the "anointed one" (Christos). Indeed, even Peter did not mean the same
thing by this word as what Jesus understood the word to mean (cf. Mark 8:33)!
Example: My own denominational history (the
The problem here was two-fold: 1) I was investing
an entire system of theology into every instance of this word (the word-concept
fallacy) and 2) I was reading a meaning that the word holiness came to
have in the nineteenth century back into a biblical text that did not process,
categorize, or formulate the word holiness in that way.
A Legitimate Approach to Word/Phrase
Study
The following approach to word/phrase
study avoids the preceding fallacies and embodies a more appropriate
understanding of language:
Step 1: Write down some basic meanings
the word can have.
Get a feel for the word (or for the words
in the phrase) by looking it (them) up in an original language dictionary.
You should use a Greek, Hebrew, or
Aramaic dictionary to get a sense of the range of meaning the word can
have. English words do not have
exactly the same range of meaning as words in other languages that overlap with
them. That is, words in one
language almost never map onto words in other languages in a one-to-one kind of
way. Even then, the connotations of
the word are often quite different in different cultures (e.g. the connotations
of the word dog in
Remember, this is only a rough
draft. Write down some basic meanings the word
can have to get started, but remember that only a specific context can tell you
for sure what a word means in that particular instance!
The standard New Testament Greek Lexicon
is Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich's A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
and Other Early Christian Literature (I think this is on BibleWorks). I
hardly ever use it myself. It is
best used to give me a sense of a word's range of meanings. If I slavishly follow the meaning it
suggests for the passage I am interpreting, then I have let it do my
interpretive work for me. And the
further you get down its list of possible meanings, the more interpretation is
involved--and the more debatable its conclusions!
Warning:
Avoid the root fallacy and the etymological fallacy. The word's root cannot tell you what it
means elsewhere, nor can its component parts. If you realize this, however, you can
use the root and the etymology guardedly to give you a "rough draft"
feel for the word.
Step 2: Brainstorm
I suggest that you start by creating a
list of some possible meanings that jump out at you from your work up to this
point on the passage in question.
Ideally, you have surveyed broader units and perhaps even done a
detailed observation on the verse in question. You hopefully have at least some sense
of what the options are. Brainstorm
and jot down all the possibilities that come to mind.
Step 3: Create a list of possible
meanings by looking at the various places the word occurs.
Warning: Avoid the one-meaning fallacy, the
lexical fallacy, and the word-concept fallacy. You are creating a list of distinct
and separate meanings. Do not
assume that every place the word occurs it has the same meaning (one meaning
fallacy). Do not assume that all
the occurrences of a word are spins on a single, essential meaning (lexical
fallacy). Do not load a system of
theology into every individual occurrence of the word or load all the nuances a
word can have into every occurrence of the word (word-concept fallacy). Even if some of the meanings are closely
related, discipline yourself to think of them as distinct from one another.
3a. Start with the book in question.
How does the book you are studying seem
to use the word/phrase elsewhere?
Again, don't assume that the book always uses it in the same way.
Some critical considerations can come
into play here, particularly when an author has incorporated sources. In the case of Matthew and Luke, for
example, we may have some discontinuity of word usage when these gospels are
incorporating Markan material (according to the
prevailing hypothesis).
3b. Look at other books by the same
author.
Unfortunately, more often than not we do
not have the luxury of a second book by the same author. But we do in the case of Luke, Paul, and
possibly John. We should assume
there may be less continuity of meaning in the other writings of an author than
there is within the book in question.
Critical considerations also come into
play here. The differences between
the Gospel of John and Revelation, for example, are significant enough that we
must be very careful not to assume they both use words in the same way (most
scholars would say they come from different authors). Similarly, regardless of what one thinks
about pseudonymity in the New Testament (writing
under the name of a dead authority figure from the past), it is clear that a
number of shifts do take place between the language/imagery of Paul's earlier
writings and books like Ephesians or 1 Timothy. We must be very careful not to assume
that these writings use words in the same way as Paul's other writings.
3c. Look at other books in the New
Testament (or Old
Testament if you are looking at a Hebrew word).
Here we must be very cautious about
assuming that other authors use words in the same way (e.g. compare Mark's use
of the word sign with John's!).
Nevertheless, we are expanding our list of possible meanings for a word.
3d. Look at the Greek Old Testament
(Septuagint: LXX for short).
We of course are thinking here of a
word/phrase study on a Greek word from the New Testament. Since all the books of the New Testament
are in Greek, there is an excellent chance that the LXX was primarily the
"version" they used (the author of Hebrews even makes some points
from the Greek text that couldn't be made from the Hebrew original). Expand your list of possible meanings by
looking at how the word was used in the LXX (Hatch and Redpath's
Concordance to the Septuagint is the standard work here--BibleWorks should have all these tools on it).
You might focus especially on any OT
passages that seem central to the author's argument in the context of what you
are interpreting.
3e. Consider background literature.
Here we mean a couple of things. On the one hand, we mean how the word is
used in the Greek language as a whole.
Kittel's Theological Dictionary did
spade work of immense value, although you must be extremely cautious of the
word-concept, root, and etymological fallacies into which it repeatedly
falls. Harris, Archer, and Waltke's Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament
can perform a similar function for Old Testament word study.
The Dead Sea Scrolls can provide helpful
background information for the NT now as well, although they were in
Hebrew. As much as I hate to say
it, you may have to consult an up-to-date commentary in the end to get a sense
of possible background possibilities outside the canon. Please put this off until after you
have completed the remaining steps below, however, so that the evidence is not
"tainted" with the conclusions of someone else. A "methodical" IBS student is
frequently a better observer than half the commentators out there!
Now systematize the list: 1, 2, 3. Try to list them in the order above: 1)
in the same book, 2) in books by the same author, 3) in the NT, 4) in the LXX,
5) in background literature. Within
each domain, order them from most frequent to least. Do your best--it's not for publication,
and it's not your final answer.
4. Use the immediate context of the word
to identify the most likely meaning for the word/phrase in that context, as
well as what you think the "runners up" are.
Now bring the range of possible meanings
to bear on the text in question.
Using what you have learned from your surveys and detailed observations,
"fall off the log" and make some choices!
I encourage you to explain your thoughts
at each point in paragraph form.
Let us know what you are thinking at each step of the way.
5. Look at an up-to-date commentary to
see if you have missed any possibilities.
One of the greatest values of an up-to-date commentary is that it will record the most likely interpretive options that all the previous generations of scholars for the last 2000 years have suggested. This is an invaluable tool. In most cases you will find that your careful and methodical observation has generated the main options. Sometimes an important one will slip by, however, particularly if you are not aware of some important aspect of the ancient world and its literature. After you have done your own homework, compare your insights to those of others.