The continuation of my interview series sees a good one here. Greg Fewster is a PhD student at McMaster Divinity College, adjunct instructor of Greek at Great Lakes Bible College and an assistant editor with the journal Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics. He has a book coming out this year with Brill Academic called Creation Language in Romans 8: A Study in Monosemy. I have read significant portions of it and it is top rate. I will certainly draw more attention to it when it is released.

Here I interview Greg on the topic of lexical semantics and word-studies.

AR: So-called “word studies” are popular amongst Christians, from scholars to pastors to lay people. Pastors and teachers, for instance, will sometimes talk about the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word in a sermon and say it is the “literal” meaning. Or, interested lay people will attempt to look up all instances of a perceived key-word like “faith” or “justified” in the Bible or dictionary to give them a better understanding of those words.

Greg, you have been working in this area but have attempted to break new ground from an informed linguistic perspective. Can you give us some insight into what the discipline of lexical semantics is?

GF: Lexical semantics is a fairly broad discipline within linguistic studies. It seeks to answer the question of how words mean. Lexical semantics is not a specific model or theory that attempts to answer this question. Rather, it sets the agenda for particular questions we ask about language.

As you note, this is a question that is often raised in Christian circles, I think because Christians tend to take the words of the Bible pretty seriously. It is fairly common when we are interpreting a passage to ask the question, “Hmmm, what does that word mean here?” That essential question is the basis for lexical semantics.

AR: How does your research inform how we should handle words in the Bible?

GF: In a word: carefully. Possibly the biggest hindrance to excellent lexical semantic work is an implicit (or sometimes explicit) assumption that words, especially biblical words, are magical or something. We want to cram bucket-loads of significance into certain word choices. However, language studies in the last few decades have revealed that meaning in language is not a product of isolated pieces of information, but results from the melding together of these pieces. Meaning is greater than the meaning of its constituent parts, in that, the melding of those language pieces is what gives the pieces specific meaning. It is that specific meaning that we are trying to get when we interpret the Bible, right?

What that says to me is that if we focus too much on the meaning of these little pieces (words) we end up missing the whole point. Don’t get me wrong, words are really important, that’s why I have studied them so much. But that importance needs to be understood in relationship to the other meaningful components of language.

AR: Where do you see pastors and teachers most go wrong when handling ‘words’?

GF: There are a number of ways pastors and teachers can go wrong, a number of them have been identified in D.A. Carson’s little book Exegetical Fallacies. I’ll give you some of my own thoughts though.

1. They overemphasize etymology. The history of a word is not a clue to its meaning in a specific context.

2. They define the meaning of a word based upon one or two other examples. Just because a word seems to mean something in one context doesn’t necessarily imply that it will mean the same thing somewhere else. Look out for defining a word based on “how Jesus used it” or “how the Old Testament uses it.” These attempts often amount to oversimplification and can ignore what is going on in the passage you are reading. By the way, Philo and Josephus are not definitive resources for word meaning either. They can be useful resources but if you’re going to use them, consult other ancient non-biblical writers as well.

3. They confuse words with concepts. This is a tough one, but it means that a word, which linguistic, is different than a concept, which is a mental. So, a particular concept might appear in a passage without a particular word being used. On the other hand, a word is not a cipher for a large conceptual framework. In that case, we need to be careful about how we talk about word meaning since we can only talk about concepts etc. using words. Confusing, I know.

4. They see words as having multiple, discrete meanings. The problem with this view (something called polysemy) is that it enables a practice we like to call sense-selection. This is when we just go to a dictionary and pick the “meaning” that seems to work best in the passage that we are reading. Sometimes dictionaries over-divide the possible ways that a word can mean or give the impression that these distinct “meanings” are not as connected as I think they probably are.

AR: What advice would you have for those performing word studies in order to keep from making interpretive mistakes?

GF: The biggest thing I would suggest is that we need to change the question we ask about words. I think this would go a long way to improving our “word studies.” Rather than asking “what does this word mean and therefore what does this passage mean?” it is more helpful to ask, “how does this word contribute to the meaning of this text?”

Besides this major question let me add a few other suggestions.

1. Use concordances, but use them well. When examining a concordance for a word, try to see what sort of patterns occur. Look for the other words that seem to appear around your target word a lot. Look for the grammatical patterns that frequently associate with your target word. Look for certain concepts (remember these are bigger than words) that associate with your target word. Once you notice these patterns it can give you a better idea of how that word is contributing to the meaning of the passage. Remember, meaning is a product of these larger patterns, not the word itself.

2. Words are not always selected because of the specific content they may represent (though that will inevitably be part of it). Words may also be selected for some stylistic reason (rhyming, repetition, etc.) or because of how it might influence the relationship between the reader and the writer. For example, some words may be synonyms in their content but have different negative or positive connotations. Don’t get too excited about a particular word choice until you seriously consider all the reasons why it may have been used.

3. Don’t rely too heavily on commentaries. Unfortunately, there are lots of authors who have not taken the time to keep on top of lexical semantic theory and, as a result, they make the kind of mistakes that I have been warning about. Don’t ignore the commentaries but have a healthy level of suspicion. Check with other commentaries/dictionaries/etc., and feel free to do your own study.

AR: Do you have any advice to those who are constrained to working with the Bible in translation? What limitations should they be aware of?

GF: This is an important question, because we don’t all have the benefit of knowing Greek or Hebrew. My advice would actually be to avoid doing word studies with too much frequency. Bible translations are not consistent in how they translate Greek words. Sometimes one word will be translated using quite a few different “glosses” and the same English word might be a translation of several different Greek or Hebrew words. Unless you have Strong’s numbers or something, your English concordance won’t help to differentiate these things.

Don’t be discouraged, though. Remember, words aren’t the be-all and end-all of meaning. So if you can’t do an in depth word study for your upcoming sermon (or whatever) it shouldn’t affect the quality of your overall interpretation. That should go for those of us who do know the languages as well. Other options are to learn Greek (it’s a lot of fun!) or make friends with someone who knows it. Two heads are better than one at times anyways.

AR: Are there any good resources (current or forthcoming) for those interested that would help direct them to a more responsible handling of words?

Unfortunately there haven’t been too many studies written recently on this subject. Many are dated by now and some promote some of the ideas I warned about earlier. Many of these are still worth reading though.

If I can put a plug in for myself, I would recommend my own book. It is very technical and very expensive, but I hope worth the read if you are familiar with the Greek language. The book is called Creation Language in Romans 8: A Study in Monosemy. It is published by Brill Academic in their Linguistic Biblical Studies Series and will be hopefully coming out in the late spring or early summer.

You also might check out the following resources:

James Barr. The Semantics of Biblical Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.

D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996.

Benjamin J. Baxter, “Hebrew and Greek Word-Study Fallacies,” MJTM  12 (2010–11) 3–32.

Benjamin J. Baxter, “The Meaning of Biblical Words,” MJTM 11 (2009–10) 89–120.

Wally V. Cirafesi, “‘To Fall Short’ or ‘To Lack’? Reconsidering the Meaning and Translation of ὙΣΤΕΡΕΩ in Romans 3:23,” ExpT  (2012) 429–34. (This is an application of good lexical semantic principles)

M.A.K. Halliday, “Lexicology.” In Lexicology: A Short Introduction. Edited by M.A.K. Halliday and Colin Yallop. London: Continuum, 2004: 1–22.

J.P. Louw, Semantics of New Testament Greek (The SBL Semeia Series; Atlanta: Scholars, 1982).

Eugene A. Nida, and Johannes P. Louw, Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament: A Supplement to the Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains. SBL Resources for Biblical Literature 25. Atlanta: Scholars, 1992.

Matthew Brook O’Donnell, “Some New Testament Words for Resurrection and the Company They Keep,” in Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs (eds.), Resurrection (London: T&T Clark, 1999) 136–65.

Stanley E. Porter, “Greek Linguistics and Lexicography,” in Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough (eds.), Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century, Essays in Honor of D.A. Carson on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011) 19–61.

Colin Yallop, “Words and Meaning,” in M.A.K. Halliday and Colin Yallop (eds.), Lexicology: A Short Introduction (London: Continuum, 2007) 23–93.