One of the biggest warning flags in a sermon comes when the preacher says: “Now, in Greek, the word is … which (literally) means …” Sometimes they know what they’re talking about. More often they are about to pull a fast one.
There are two sorts of bad exegetical moves the preacher is likely to make at this point. The first is an example of the etymological fallacy. Typically, taking a compound word, the preacher will break these down into the root meanings of the original components. A good, and frequently used homiletic example is where the Greek word proskyneō (προσκυνἐω) is translated worship. At this point the preacher will say something like:
What this word literally means is ‘I come toward to kiss’ and it reminds us how wonderful a relationship we are meant to have with our Father in heaven: when we worship him it is an act of love.
This is, unfortunately, almost entirely untrue in every way that matters. First, by the time we get to New Testament times it may simply mean worship, or pay homage. Alternatively it may mean, “kneel before, prostrate oneself before.” In favour of the idea that it is slowly losing its meaning of prostration may be the way in which Matthew uses an additional word to indicate “falling down” before saying the magi worshipped the infant Jesus (Matt 2:11). Something similar happens in Mark 15:19.
In so far as it may once have meant “I come towards to kiss” it did so in the context of abasing oneself at the feet of a social superior, either kissing the ground, the hem of their garment, or their feet. This is almost the exact opposite of the preacher’s idea of easy familial intimacy, or kissing as a sign of love. Linguistically and culturally the meaning and the interpretation are as far apart as it possible for them to get.
The second bad move is one that the late great James Barr characterised as “illegitimate totality transfer”. This is not just the fault of preachers, but a trap rather too many scholars fall into also. Yesterday I mentioned the bad habit of Radical Orthodoxy writers to pepper their texts with the Greek word telos (τέλος) as though this adds something that words such as goal and purpose do not.
Now, they have half an excuse. As with most translation work, there is very rarely a one-to-one correspondence between words in different languages. Even when their main meaning is the same, associated meanings and ideas will be different. What scholars and preachers who do this are trying to do, I think, is catch the nuances, and emphasising that lack of one-to-one correspondence.
Unfortunately, they are mistaken. Imagine an English equivalent. Here is the word “religious” in several different contexts.
She’s not a religious person. (She doesn’t go to church)
I’m not religious, I’m a Christian. (Faith is a relationship not a system)
He’s religious about following Liverpool. (He’s a dedicated fan.)
She’s a religious. (RC usage – she’s a nun).
Now imagine doing for the word “religious” what people do for the Greek words of the New Testament like telos. Take all its meanings and add them together and then claim that’s the real meaning. “The real meaning of the word “religious” is “a churchgoing, football-following monk or nun who relies on the ritual system instead of a personal relationship with God.”
Because we are native English speakers we can see that’s a complete nonsense. You simply can’t get to the “real” meaning by adding up all the different possible meanings. Words take their meaning in relationship to the other words in the sentence. And if we can see it’s nonsense when we do it in English, then we should also see that it’s nonsense when someone else does it in Greek.
The next time you hear anyone saying: “The real meaning of …” or even more obviously “What this word literally means is …”, turn on your claptrap detector. [Ed. I did use a stronger word originally, akin to St Paul's use of skybαla (σκύβαλα - Phil 3:8)] You are about to be bamboozled.
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You’re absolutely right. And far too often, the conclusion the preacher abuses Greek to get is valid without the shameful treatment of language. In particular, it seems far to often people quickly turn to Strong’s extremely-abbreviated Greek dictionary and extend its cryptic remarks into distorted nonsense.
You make a very valid point there Doug! I can’t say I’d really thought of it like that before!
Excellent guide! I’d love to pass this on to many friends of mine. But…well…
I live in the American South. Georgia, to be precise. Like it or not, your “saucy” word at the end would cause them to question anything you say. “This guy’s a cleric, and he cusses? What’s his game?” Next time they heard one of those catch-phrases (“what the Greek literally means here…”), their bullshit detector might indeed go off, but it would almost as likely be alerting them to shrug off the admonition of a “liberal Christian” who probably just didn’t want them to hear the deeper truths their pastor it telling them. Infuriating, I know.
Steve, just so you can pass it on, I’ve decided to edit it, get ironic and use a Greek word from St Paul, which is at least as strong, if not stronger!
Haha! I love it!!!!
Ha! Now if they’ll just avoid the comments so they won’t see me use that word!
Well I am not going to give you carte blanche on this post. First re religious, it is from its etymology easy to see the common thread in your four examples, that is what I bind myself to. My bindings to God are strong enough to change the meaning of homage, prostration, and worship, but not without the consecration that comes through the circumcision in Christ Jesus. One problem with ‘religion’ is that it means to many mostly conformity and convenience rather than a devoted delight in the Beloved. There is no sufficient ‘explanation’, only the obedience of faith, to grab one of the Pauline envelopes that I think can be made to conform to his own experience. What it ‘really truly’ means is a warning sign anywhere in any context in any subject. Yes, do put up the refuse shield and hope it isn’t just a screen. Same for your post. You are not at all absolutely right.
Gosh, Bob, what’s that really mean in English?
You want me to explain? I partly agree with you. My philosophy textbooks warned me decades ago about ‘true’ and ‘real’ as adjectives.
I don’t think your religion example is a good one since it reduces to a common theme based on the ‘real’ meaning of the Latin root. And as a second point – if one has put to death the deeds of the body by the spirit, then one will live – that’s all. But I didn’t use Paul’s words in Romans 8 or psalms since people often read such proof-texts as religious – yet another meaning of that word. Religious here means – “I know all that already so I don’t need to figure out what he is talking about”.
I just translated again Psalm 119 Mem – in which is this verse (beginning with M of course)
Mid your judgments I have not turned aside
for you have taught me
More than sweet are they to my palate
your promise as honey to my mouth
This is a healthy, wholesome, sometimes harrowing, homage. But my original comment is dense – like me and my translations
My use of the term ‘circumcision in Christ Jesus’ is from Colossians 2:11 in which the writer likens the cross to circumcision, implying for me that this is a sufficient completeness of Torah for Gentiles. I will admit that is not a metaphor that is easy to follow and I suppose my application of the verse to the in-gathering of the Gentiles is equally a stretch. I think the point is though that just as the old covenant had an difficult entry symbol, the cost of entry in the new covenant is no less difficult but more inclusive and equally secure and permanent. Like the strange story of Zippora early in Exodus, the anointed becomes a bridegroom but only through death. It is enough.
Wayne Meeks in a lecture he gave in 2007 at Abilene Christian University said, “The next time you hear someone say, ‘The Bible clearly teaches…’, please say to yourself, if not to the speaker, ‘no it doesn’t.’ The Apostle Paul knew the Bible better than any of us and he said, ‘now I know only in part.’ If the Bible ‘teaches’, it does so only through a mirror darkly until the end of time.” I included this in my final post on Why I am Not an Inerrantist: http://kolhaadam.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/why-i-am-not-an-inerrantist-part-five/
Helpful post, although you fall by your own standards. There is no evidence that [i]skybala[/i] had any ‘cussing’ connotations in Paul’s day. An earthy term yes, but not one that was regarded as a profanity.
However, there are legitimate occasions to resort to the Greek or Hebrew in terms of identifying a semantic domain that cannot be conveyed through any single English term, and in some cases even by a compilation of English notions – without also pointing out that these English words are only in part relevant (for they also have wider semantic domains). Try to come up with a simple translation of [i]koinonia[/i] for instance.
While Barr’s charge of “illegitimate totality transfer” is undoubtedly warranted, reference to the Greek can be necessary to signal a semantic field, and even to allow a degree of ambiguity to stay with a term, which an English translation can forego or obscure. There is a sense in which [i]telos[/i] retains such ambiguity, for example, which a simple translation loses, unless you get into composite words.
Having said all that, I quite agree with your main points, and frequently find myself squirming by such assertions from the pulpit. Etymological abuses of [i]ekklesia[/i] as ‘sending out’ and [i]dynamis[/i] are two of my ‘favourite’ red flags to the proverbial bull
OK Tim, fair enough qualifications. (PS I didn’t regard “bullshit” as a profanity either.)
Bob wrote, First re religious, it is from its etymology easy to see the common thread in your four examples, that is what I bind myself to.
I have to agree with Clayboy here. Words don’t get their meanings from their etymology or from how they are put together.
One example I give in And God Said is “hostile.” On the basis of “infant/infantile,” one would think that “hostile” is “like a host,” but of course it’s not. (For non-English speakers: an “infant” is a very young child, and “infantile” means “like a very young child.” A “host” holds an event (a party, for instance) or welcomes someone to such an event, while “hostile” means “confrontational.” “Hostile” means “Not like a host.”)
-Joel
What about a hostel?
Joel wrote: “Words don’t get their meanings from their etymology or from how they are put together.”
Wow! who wants meaning then? Perhaps it is the search for meaning that is meaningless. I think this subject is worth teasing out. Comments will not likely provide an adequate place. I admit when I criticize a translation for missing what I think is obvious structure, I run the risk of being in conflict with committees of experts. And I can inwardly squirm even with my own examples. But although I treat language this way to begin, it is not the end point. Etymology is only one factor. We started with the words ‘homage’ and ‘religious’ – searching for what? I frame the root meaning of religious with religare – to bind. It is a starting point. At the other end, homage is not confined to enforced submission.
Meaning is not always the most important thing in discussions of what God said. Over the past day or so, as I have pondered this thread, a few examples have come to mind that require a much larger frame than etymology or even immediate structure. Homage is one since it is here – is it possible to reframe the entire meaning of ‘every knee shall bow’ to something other than enforced worship?
If I had to begin the frame with one word, it would be Hear – as in the Shema. If I had to end the frame, it would end with Eat as in ‘unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’ In other words, the frame for my assimilation of the words is the canon of my Scriptures. Homage such as in the adoration of Isaiah or Philippians (every knee…) has to account for more than kissing the feet of a monarch. Framing is how I learn – of course it must encompass a host of disciplines besides the careful observation of words. (I have to say observation for this tongue since there are no native speakers I can hear.)
One of my favorite examples of a missing frame in translations is from Job – ‘Leviathan and the eyelids of dawn’ are in chapter 3 – the uncreation of Job and are repeated by Hashem in chapter 41, his recreation. The result for him? Homage? (Scholars dispute and poets complain and psychologists say the text of his confession in Job 42:6 cannot mean x or y.)
of the hearing of an ear I had heard of you
and now my eye sees you
therefore I refuse
and I am comforted in dust and ashes
(refuse is not refuse)
Of course one can criticize the preacher who casts out a grappling iron to etymology in the hopes of engaging a congregation. The iron may be too heavy for the thread it is attached to – congregation beware of falling grappling irons. Or the rope may be too elastic – let the preacher duck.
As for the untranslatable words – I came across one recently in Proverbs 8:23. This ‘word’ נסך has possible glosses: to be anointed; to pour out as a libation. It would be easy to associate this with the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Is that too large a stretch? I don’t think so but it might be an imposition on the text, much as the divine right of kings might be on Proverbs 8:15-16.
So dear friends, I think there is more to this subject than meets the ear. Clayboy is good as a meme generator and we haven’t had one for a while…
I wrote “words don’t get their meaning from … how they are put together.”
I should have been clearer. I meant, “…from their internal word structure.” That it, the meaning of a single word doesn’t come from its parts (morphology).
Texts absolutely get their meaning from how the words are put together one with another (syntax, usually).
-Joel
Sorry, Joel, I misread your parallelism! I didn’t finish my grappling hook metaphor either – when the grappling hook works, it catches a strong crag and everyone can climb the rope and look around from a higher vantage point. (One hope of course that it is the right mountain).
This is material we’ve gone over extensively over on Better Bibles. I haven’t posted much on the question of the relation between words and meanings in a while, but basically words (or at least the class of words relevant to this discussion) do two things:
1) they refer — they pick out a category of entities
2) they frame — they tell you how to look at the referent
And, as if that isn’t enough, it turns out that there are conventional ways to approach referring to complex situations.
I’ve had posts on each of these.
On the question of approach I posted about how German and English use different wordings to express the same thought.
On the question of framing I posted here.
I also did a series on the word ἐπιτιμάω here, here, here, here, and here. I showed that although we translate this word as rebuke, its reference is different from that of rebuke and its framing is more neutral.
Most of our problems in interpreting what a word “means”, come from our lack of understanding the complexities of human categorization and from failing to distinguish between reference and framing.
Great post, Doug.
There’s another dimension to the multiple meanings issue. That is, often folks quoting Greek get their information from a translator’s resource (often, depressingly, Strongs). So they don’t even get to see definitions, they see glosses. And glosses can give you wildly the wrong idea about a word.
I posted on this myself a couple of weeks ago, here.
Is it my imagination, or is it that preachers who love to pepper their sermons with Greek words do not read the Bible in Greek? Even though our Bible translations are littered with problems, I would suspect the average translator spends a whole deal more time reading the Bible in Greek than most preachers. Humility begs deference to the translation in most cases.
Is this connected with the knack ordinands have of preaching essays in churches and turning in sermons for classes?
lol. I think that’s just another part of the skill set!
Terrific. This reminded me of one of my own preaching peeve posts in which I engaged in the preaching peeve you mention here! http://lingamish.com/2006/11/preaching-peeve-1-seed-pickers/
I like the seed-picker post! How about translating spermologos as “intellectual magpie” – a bird famous for opportunistic scavenging?
Joel wrote: One example I give in And God Said is “hostile.”
My favorite is ‘sweater’, which, obviously, is nothing to work into a sweat about.
Also (and more to the general audience of this blog), as in all things linguistic, there’s the need for balance. There are places where the author “plays with the words.” The singular versus plural ‘seed’ example comes to mind. Preachers should have fun with these places.
But, one can’t derive a pervasive, always applicable, axiom from that one example. Nor can one justify any one case by citing Paul’s example. So, in a sense, the fact of “playing with words” –by its very existence–means that “the Greek literally means…” will often miss the actual meaning of the text. In other words, in order for playing with words to be funny, deriving meaning from the parts of words can not be normal.
For what it’s worth, my favorite place of word play (of a different sort than etymology) is 2 Cor. 6:12: οὐ στενοχωρεῖσθε ἐν ἡμῖν στενοχωρεῖσθε δὲ ἐν τοῖς σπλάγχνοις ὑμῶν. Though this doesn’t quite capture what is happening in the text, I would translate as “We don’t strain with affection for you, but you have a constipated affection for us.” I laugh every time I read that.
Before someone suggests that the etymology of ‘sweater’ could be helpful because sweat comes from heat, and heat is provided by a sweater, let me say that although it’s interesting, and even if there’s a shred of truth in it, it’s not what the speaker has in mind when using the word ‘sweater’.
There are hundreds of English words the etimologies of which I’ve never considered, even though I capably use though words frequently. In that last sentence I used the word ‘considered’, but I’ve never tried to break down that word to understand the separate meanings of ‘sider’ and ‘con’. So if you’re interpreting something I’ve written, you cannot allude to the etymology of ‘considered’ to explain what I meant when I wrote it. That’s simply unjust, unfair, and dishonest to the author and his use of language.
Mike says, “There are places where the author ‘plays with the words.’” The word religulous, coined by author Bill Maher, comes to mind. It might apply to each use of the word religious that Doug gives above. But we readers apply it, which makes it playful and full of interpretative wiggle room and performative (not entirely different from bad actors in plays). Bob isn’t wrong to suggest that etymologies help every one of us play with words from time to time. A preacher might sweat more in a sweater if the host of a hostel were hostile.
Thus, likewise, a reader (and listener and translator) “plays” with and makes “plays” with and has “plays” on words too:
Plays = http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=plays&gwp=13
“Now, in Greek, the word is … which (literally) means …” :
παίγνιον = παιχνίδι = as in the last word here:
http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/elenhs_egwmion.html
http://www.bemidjistate.edu/academics/departments/english/Donovan/helen.html
And this (literally) means that many preachers want to sound more like Aristotle [boxing up word meanings] than like the rhetorical sophists and poets and playwrights [allowing "plays" on words]
Kurk,
The kind of word play that highlights etymology — A preacher might sweat more in a sweater if the host of a hostel were hostile. — plays a relatively small roll in the NT. It’s exactly the kind of thing that non-native speakers (John, Mark, Matthew) do NOT do, or maybe cannot do.
Part of the reason I push back against the Ach und Weh of those afraid of losing intertextuality is that there’s a lot less of it going around than the amount of discussion on the topic suggests.
Still, I agree that too many preachers are trying too hard to find certainty in words by pushing for ever more literality. But that’s not where certainty lies.
Oops, roll > role.
Rich,
We agree with Doug here on the problems preachers (and RO theologians) have in making an “original” Greek word have one technical (i.e., “literal” and absolute) meaning. But the Greek of the NT rolls on. Certainty lies. In one of your posts linked above you assert: “redundancy is what makes language learnable” and “breaks us out of being a slave to dictionaries.” And yet, isn’t difference (i.e., aren’t slight differences in words) what also helps language learning? If we can’t agree on the original author(s) intention(s) in many cases, especially when something “original” is written, then we do see patterns of similarities but slight differences in word uses too. Can’t we agree that there’s a tremendous amount of (perhaps unintended) wordplay in the NT?
“St Paul’s use of skybαla (σκύβαλα” is akin to Clayboy’s use of “bullshit.” Had the one used only “σκύ” and the other just “bull,” then readers and listeners still “get it.” Rhetoric scholars using their technical Greekish English might declare that this is “enthymematic” – but the rest of us can just laugh.
Paul also plays ἐδοκίμασαν against ἀ-δόκιμον (in Rm 1:28); Ἰουδαῖος against ἔπαινος recalling wordplay on the name “Judah” of Genesis 49:9 [יְהוּדָה אַתָּה יֹודוּךָ אַחֶיךָ] (in Rm 2:29); ὑπο-τασσέσθω vs. ἀντι-τασσόμενος vs. ἀν-θεστηκότες as ἀντι-ίστημι (in Rm 13:1-2); Φιλήμονι vs. τῷ ἀγαπητῷ and Ὀνήσιμον vs. ἄχρηστον vs. εὔχρηστον (in Philemon); and so forth.
When Matthew uses Greek to render something Jesus says, then don’t Greek readers hear and see the play? Doesn’t πέτρα (petra) sound and look like πέτρος (petros) when Simon is given his Rock solid name? But does this (did it) sound the same in Aramaic? (The telos τέλος of my blog series on this is here — ha — but isn’t our mining of the wordplay in the NT just at the Beginning?)
Oops — it should be Genesis 49:8 [יְהוּדָה אַתָּה יֹודוּךָ אַחֶיךָ] that Paul seems to play with (“Jews” as “Judah’s brothers” vs “praise”) in Romans 2:29.
Pretty much agree with you here, along with Tim Harris’s comment.
It comes down largely to synchronic vs. diachronic approaches, and the recognition that words in context (sentences, pericopes, books, and contemporary usage) carry meaning, rather than in splendid isolation (or accumulated heritage).
An excellent discussion of the subject is given in Moises Silva’s ‘Linguistics for Bbilicla Interpretation’ in the Apollos imprint.
I think Silva’s book is something like “Biblical Words and their meaning” and the title you refer to is Cotterell and Turner??
I think you’re right about C & T – Silva’s book (now that I’ve checked it) is ‘God, Language and Scripture’, which is also included in the six vols in one ‘Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation’, pp. 193-280, and begins with examples of preaching fallacies.
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