Words and what we can do with them

Words... In some circles, word studies are very popular. It's amazing to read or hear what some expositors or commentators find in a single word. The Bible is full of interesting and sometimes perplexing words and it's important for anyone interpreting the biblical text to know how to understand biblical words properly.

You may be familiar with some of the theological dictionaries of biblical words that have extensive, almost encyclopedic, entries on biblical words. It's amazing to think that a single word can contain all that fascinating information. Well, maybe it's a little too amazing to be true...

This is apparently what James Barr thought when he wrote The Semantics of Biblical Language. If you haven't read this seminal book, I highly recommend it. Two other related books are Silva's Biblical Words and their Meaning and Carson's Exegetical Fallacies.

In this brief reflection, I'll touch on two main things that are typically associated with Barr. First, let's consider the etymological fallacy. The main point is that what a word once meant in the past is not necessarily what it means today. Just because the same word appears in the LXX doesn't mean that it means exactly the same thing in the NT. When we try to discern the meaning of a word, we should give primary consideration to its usage in the text being studied and in other literature of the same time period. The etymological fallacy alerts us to the risks of reading too much meaning from the past into the word(s) we're studying.

Another idea that's typically associated with Barr is a mouthful: the Illegitimate Totality Transfer. The essential point is that a word's meaning in a specific context is not the sum total of its meanings in every context.

In some ways this is very similar to the etymological fallacy. Just as you don't want to read in meanings from other times, you don't want to read in meanings from other texts. But let's pick apart this Illegitimate Totality Transfer. The transfer bit is quite clear--that's the reading in from elsewhere, but what about illegitimate totality? Could this mean that there's a legitimate totality transfer and we just need to avoid the improper kind? I don't think so. The point, rather, is that total meaning transfer is to be avoided. So, we could have a legitimate partial transfer, but what would that be? Unfortunately, most authors have told us what we shouldn't do with words and they've given very little guidance on what we should do. This is where Lexical Pragmatics comes in...

So, let's ask a couple questions: where is meaning? How is meaning constructed? In contrast to many other approaches, Lexical Pragmatics (within Relevance Theory) says that meaning is not contained in the words. Words are pointers or clues to the meanings that people construct through cognitive or pragmatic processes. A person's entire cognitive experience is potentially online or active in the process of communication or interpretation. Meaning construction is a dynamic process without clear temporal or textual boundaries. But this dynamic process is also selective, which indicates that total meaning transfer is not even cognitively realistic. The meaning constructed at a given moment of communication is governed by pragmatic factors that may be specific to that moment in time, but this does not rule out connections to other times and texts. 

Much more could be said about this topic, but I hope this stimulates some good thought and discussion...