Chapter 1. Introduction: Tools, Concerns, and Approach
1.3 Data, Resources, Method, Theory, and Justification
1.3.3 What Kind of Theory?
Here, strict linguistic terminology is not always assumed for vocabulary. For example ‘semantic’, or ‘semantics’, used here, simply means ‘pertaining to meaning’ rather than in its strict linguistic
81 Robert Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879–1901). Hereafter ‘TS’.
82 Thomas Audo, Dictionnaire de la langue chaldeenne (Mosul: Dominicains, 1897). Audo’s more recent offspring is E.
Thelly, Syriac-English-Malayalam Lexicon (Kottayam: Deepika, 1999). Thelly offers English glosses but is not intended to be a lexicon to the New Testament and does not cite sources for its meanings.
83 An exception would be Jan Joosten, The Syriac Language of Peshitta and Old Syriac Versions of Matthew: Syntactic
Structure, Inner-Syriac Developments and Translation Technique (Leiden: Brill, 1996). See also Jeffrey P. Lyon, Syriac Gospel Translations: A Comparison of the Language and Translation Method Used in the Old Syriac, the Diatessaron, and the Peshitto
(Louvain: Peeters, 1994).
84 Definitions in BDAG are not fully developed. BDAG provides so-called ‘extended definitions’ for about three
quarters of head-words, achieved primarily by selecting certain glosses and phrases from the previous edition. See Vern S. Poythress, “Extended Definitions in the Third Edition of Bauer’s Greek-English Lexicon,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45, no. 1 (2001). BDAG’s definitions for verbs begin, as a rule, with ‘to …’ and this practice seems to imply that certain emboldened glosses for verbs that do not begin with ‘to …’ are not meant to be taken as definitions.
39
usage where semantics can refer to a linguistic theory or a linguistic discipline (generally it is the “linguistic study of meaning in language”).85 Traditionally, ‘semantics’ is broader for the exegete
than for the linguist. The linguistic usage appears, from an exegetical perspective, to have become rather constrained to the point where it excludes various context-bound ‘semantic’ features such as connotations, discourse meanings, and ‘implicatures’ with which ‘pragmatics’ is now concerned. Pragmatic theories also seem, from the present exegetical perspective, to be too narrow in their concern for distinguishing between ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implied’ (as though what a sentence ‘means’ can, or should, be distinguished from what the speaker means to imply within a given context. Thus pragmatics not only diminishes ‘semantics’ but, effectively, replaces one dichotomy (a syntax-semantic dichotomy) with another (a semantic-pragmatic dichotomy).86
Sperber and Wilson’s contribution is no less promising for the current thesis (their ‘relevance theory’ supposes that meaning is as recovered by the addressee according to whatever requires the least effort in processing by automatically selecting whatever is most relevant).87 Relevance
theory is less applicable for the modern interpreter trying to ascertain what ancient hearers of a parable or readers of a poetic text might be meaning. Interpretation might now require more than the minimal amount of processing to recover the intended meaning.88 So we require (not a
principle of ‘minimum processing effort’ for ‘maximum contextual implications’) rather an assumption of ‘speaker/text redundancy’ whereby a text or discourse is assumed to contain more information than is necessary in order to ensure that meaning is transmitted. More effort given to processing would, then, generate clearer indications of intended meaning for passages of a text that appear initially ambiguous or unclear. Such a perspective is not necessarily at odds with
85 Crystal, Dictionary, 428.
86 Primarily, it was the philosopher Paul Grice who displaced the once popular ‘referential theory’ (that words and
sentences refer to, or map onto, things in the real world) by introducing the complexities of pragmatic ‘implicatures’. However, ‘semantics’, in Gricean terms, is (still) relegated to ‘truth-conditions’ or ‘propositions’ (the ‘truth-
conditional semantics’ of philosophy is beyond the scope of the present thesis).
87 The hearer stops processing when the resulting interpretation meets his or her expectations of relevance. Dan
Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
88 Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009), 82–83, finds
Peter Cotterell and Max Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1989) insufficient for the exegete for a similar reason, namely that for the exegete words often have poetic effects whereby attention to contextual features should not be minimised but maximised.
40
‘relevance theory’ with its shared emphasis on context as determining meaning, according to what is determined to be most relevant (but see also ‘cognitive linguistics’ below).
The thesis does not attempt to use any one of the thirty-two kinds of linguistic analysis presented in the Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis despite its optimistic blurb claim that: “By showing their current and potential applications it provides the means by which linguists and others can judge what are the most useful models for the task in hand.”89 Unfortunately, it is not easy to
know which model would be most useful to the task of analysing a portion of a Gospel text. Even the editors admit that: “Current linguistic analysis has turned into an extremely complex field and imposing a rigid classification of theoretical concepts and orientations has become increasingly difficult and controversial.”90
Linguistic theory within exegesis and New Testament studies has remained somewhat isolated from contemporary theories in linguistics. One finds no discussion whatsoever of linguistic theory in exegetical introductions such as Fee;91 Gorman (besides the mention of “Lexical,
Grammatical and Syntactical [sic] Analysis” and the unusually grouped “Semantic or Discourse Analysis”)92; none in Bock and Fanning (besides two footnotes mentioning ‘semantics’ all pre-
1980’s);93 and none in the recent third edition of Hayes and Holladay (besides the discussion and
bibliography on ‘grammatical criticism’, where five authors are given, none recent).94 Instead,
89 Bernd Heine and Heiko Narrog, eds., Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2010), 1.
90 Ibid.
91 Gordon D. Fee, New Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors (3rd ed.; Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 2002).
92 Michael J. Gorman, Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers (Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2009), 235, speaks of the latter’s ‘goal’ to: “Use modern tools of linguistics to analyze the deep structure and other semantic features of discourse units.” Many linguists would not speak of ‘discourse units’ as having ‘semantic features’ but rather ‘pragmatic’ or ‘discourse’ features (but see further below). The point is that Gorman’s view appears ignorant of recent linguistic theories.
93 Darrell L. Bock and Buist M. Fanning, eds., Interpreting the New Testament Text: Introduction to the Art and Science of
Exegesis (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006), 138–9, n4 and n5.
94 John H. Hayes and Carl R. Holladay, Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner’s Handbook (3rd ed.; Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 2007), 89, (bibliography), namely: James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1987); James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language; George B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980); Arthur Gibson, Biblical Semantic Logic: A Preliminary Analysis (London:
41
what one finds in such introductions are things to avoid, namely warnings about what not to do (to avoid exegetical pitfalls) such as “we should not conclude that an expression found in one historical context necessarily denotes the same thing in another time and place.”95 James Barr
stands as the heroic figure in campaigning for such warnings and exposing the methodological flaws of a previous generation who ‘found’ meanings in words illegitimately. Barr denounced the theological importation of religious concepts into individual biblical words blaming the biblical theology of his day, which he rightly believed should not be allowed to masquerade as
philology.96 Kittel’s ‘theological lexicography’ bore much of the brunt of Barr’s criticisms.97 This
does not mean that Barr developed a clear positive counterpart (of do’s) that might replace the given negatives (don’ts) of the pseudo-philological approach to be ‘undone’ (avoided).
Even when one does find a more linguistically oriented introduction to exegesis, such as that by David Black (1988; 1995)98 which intends to help acquaint budding biblical scholars with the
field of general linguistics,99 it does not advocate an allegiance to, or discussion of, particular
linguistic theories or approaches that are employed outside the New Testament (it does introduce ‘discourse analysis’ or ‘textlinguistics’ for New Testament Greek). Black’s ‘discourse
Sheffield, 2001 [orig. pub. 1981]); J. P. Louw, Semantics of New Testament Greek (Chico: Scholars, 1982); Eugene A. Nida and Charles R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 2003 [orig. pub. 1969]).
95 Hayes and Holladay, Biblical Exegesis, 81.
96 Barr, Semantics. Barr emphasised that the primary meaning of words was to be found within their context. Barr’s
condemnations included ‘illegitimate totality transfer’ and the erroneous assumption of a ‘basic meaning’ continuing over time. In the former case Barr was referring to the assumption that a ‘total’ meaning of a lexeme (derived from a variety of contexts) can be legitimately imported into one occurrence of the lexeme. In the latter case a ‘basic’ meaning is presumed, without evidence, to have persisted over time and to have unduly affected its later use.
97 Ibid., 231: “the great weakness is a failure to get to grips with the semantic value of words in their contexts, and a
strong tendency to assume that this value will on its own agree with and illuminate the contours of a theological structure which is felt to be characteristic of the NT and distinctively contrasting with its environment. The belief that the distribution of the lexical stock of the NT may be directly correlated with the theological realities of God and his acts is both assumed in the method and fostered in the product.” The result of Barr’s critique of Kittel’s methodology is that Kittlel’s lexicon is now less often considered ‘lexical’. E.g. in Lee, History, 369, it is listed under: “Works Not Included As Lexicons.”
98 David Alan Black, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek: A Survey of Basic Concepts and Applications (2nd ed.;
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995).
99 Ibid., “Foreword,” ix, (foreword by Moises Silva) indicates such, i.e.: “A quarter of a century ago, James Barr’s
publications were unique in calling biblical scholars to become familiar with the field of general linguistics and to integrate its results with the work of exegesis…. The vast majority of publications in the areas of exegesis and biblical theology [still] reflect only a superficial acquaintance (if any) with modern linguistics.”
42
analysis’ derives solely from biblical scholarship (namely those from the Summer Institute of Linguistics and “other researchers … Olsson, Louw, Silva, and Cotterell and Turner”).100 We can
compare this situation with the various essays on ‘discourse analysis’ edited by Black in 1992 where what can be said about the essays is that they are written by New Testament linguists, that is, “experts in Greek [New Testament] linguistics” who “attempt to study the organization of language above the sentence level … also … as it is used in social contexts.”101 Such a broadly
defined basis allows for a broad range of approaches (any that look further than the sentence and/or relate the text to a supposed social situation). Therefore, the linguistic approaches of Black et al. are not much different from, or beyond, the grammatical enquiry promoted by Hayes and Holladay:
the language of the text consists not only of words, but also of words arranged in
meaningful combinations. Consequently, grammatical criticism also includes questions of syntax and grammar. Here the exegete deals with the words of the text as they are
combined with each other to form phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, as well as the special problems this creates.102
Such enquiry would naturally include ‘discourse analysis’ since it includes both ‘syntax’ and ‘how paragraphs are formed’. The inclusion of multiple approaches within one approach (here
‘discourse analysis’ within ‘grammatical criticism’) is not uncommon of exegetical approaches. Similarly, the present approach accepts that grammatical analysis can subsume both semantic analysis and discourse analysis (neither having to be kept completely distinct, see §1.5.6 below).103
When Black introduces the hierarchical units of language that linguists study, he does not mention pragmatics.104 This is not necessarily an oversight, it probably suggests that his
100 Ibid., 170. The three other groups are summarised in Mark E. Taylor, A Text-Linguistic Investigation into the Discourse
Structure of James (London: T & T Clark International, 2006), 37, who follows Porter’s grouping of four schools or models (namely: North American/SIL; UK-Australian/Halliday-Hasan; the Scandinavian school e.g. Beaugrande, Dressler, and van Dijk; and the South African school headed by Louw).
101 David Alan Black, Katherine Barnwell, and Stephen Levinsohn, eds., Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Discourse Analysis (Nashville: Broadman: 1992), 12.
102 Hayes and Holladay, Biblical Exegesis, 81.
103 Semantics is not completely distinct from syntax. Cf. Edward Kako and Laura Wagner, “The Semantics of
Syntactic Structures,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5, no. 3 (2001). Likewise, it seems counterintuitive to me, when applying exegesis, to attempt to separate semantics from pragmatics.
104 Black, Linguistics, 9: “Phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics form the nucleus of linguistics, the central
43
perspective of ‘semantics’, somewhat like the present proposal, would already include pragmatic senses.
If we acknowledge that context is the most potent determiner of meaning, it must also be acknowledged that how context is delimited and analysed remains paramount, hence the need for exegesis. Exegesis is charged with making sense of the text.
Whatever is considered most relevant and useful to the exegete is not entirely inseparable from his or her own ‘world’ (hence the three ‘worlds’ of interpretation: that ‘behind’ the text; that ‘in’ the text; and that ‘in front of’ the text).
One’s linguistic theory is not necessarily the greatest determiner for analysing the meaning of words in context. Results are mostly determined by the kind of context one includes within one’s approach. A case in point is the ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) developed by Anna Wierzbicka which “is concerned with reducing the semantics of all vocabulary down to a very restricted set of semantic primitives, or primes.”105 Thenotion of simplified meanings has long
been employed by lexicographers who wish to provide users with definitions that use simpler terms than the terms being defined (otherwise an equally complex definition would only lead the dictionary user to another difficult definition and may lead to circular definitions). If words must be explained using other words then the semantically simpler words can be used to define more complex words. For this reason NSM may seem initially appealing to the lexicographer.106 Also
an advantage of NSM “is its cross-linguistic application…. NSM theorists use the universal primitives found in every language in order to explicate the meanings of words that are not universal.” Furthermore ‘explications’ in NSM are free to incorporate ‘folk theories’ since NSM does not attempt any sharp distinctions “between definitional and encyclopedic aspects of meaning.”107
105 Murphy, Lexical Meaning, 69.
106 Likewise, for linguists, the linguistic production of a ‘metalanguage’ by componential approaches (hence NSM) is
also appealing (since a metalanguage is supposedly less dependent on language in describing language). Ibid., 45.
107 Ibid., 72–73. Here Murphy is not clear if she thinks that weakened boundaries between the definitional and
encyclopaedic in NSM is a strength or a weakness. Later Murphy compliments NSM in that the approach “is very thorough in its taxonomy of different types of countable and non-countable noun.” Ibid., 167.
44
Wierzbicka has recently written a commentary on Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount from the perspective of NSM108 which might initially seem opportune for the present thesis which
examines several lexemes in Matthew’s sermon. Unfortunately very little of her conclusions can be fitted into the present exegetical approach and this is not due to a lack of engagement, on Wierzbicka’s part, with previous commentators (which is relatively adequate). Neither is its incompatibility necessarily due to NSM’s ‘translation’ into the semantic primitive metalanguage. Rather it is the supposed background context used to generate the resulting metalanguage. For example Mt 7:13–14 (‘Enter by the narrow gate’) finds a close parallel in Lk 13:24 and both are ‘explicated’ by Wierzbicka as:
(a) many people think: "I want to live with God" (b) at the same time, they think:
(c) "if I want to do something I will do it (d) if I don’t do it I will feel something bad (e) I don’t want to feel bad things
(f) if I don’t want to do something I will not do it (g) if I do it I will feel something bad
(h) I don’t want to feel bad things"
(i) when someone thinks like this this someone can’t live with God (j) it will be good if you don’t think like this
(k) it will be good if you think: (l) "I want to live with God
(m) because of this if I think that God wants me to do something I will do it (n) if I think that God doesn’t want me to do something I will not do it" (o) it will be good for you if you think like this
(p) God wants you to think like this
(q) if you always think like this you can always live with God
It is not that NSM itself is too challenging for the lexicographer to engage. Wierzbicka’s commentary on Mt 7:13–14 should be relatively easy for an untrained person to follow. It also offers a clear overlap of material with the present study (see especially chapter 6 below). But what is most important to note from this example is Wierzbicka’s supposed background context (for Mt 7:13–14 and Lk 13:24) which means that both texts are taken together as one and then treated as though they go directly back to the one saying of Jesus. She supposes that the saying is an appeal to living “the narrow road of sainthood” since:
108 Anna Wierzbicka, What Did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal
45
Most people are not saints; … Most people take (at least part of the time) "the wide and smooth road that leads to destruction"…. But this does not mean that Jesus was
predicting destructing as the final outcome of most people’s lives. To interpret the gate and road sayings in this way is to misunderstand their genre: they are exhortations, not predictions.109
It is Wierzbicka’s supposed contextual inclusions that have contributed most to determining how the approach generates its results. Combining the Matthew and Luke parallels together and by- passing how the speech is utilized by the authors of Matthew and Luke are two exegetical procedures which stand at odds with the present methodology. The contextual suppositions (as inputted data) concerning the subject matter most shape the semantic outcomes of the
application of NSM, as it would with any linguistic approach, whether componential, generativist, structural, neo-structural, or cognitive.
This is not to suggest that linguists applying linguistic approaches will make any less important contributions to exegesis of Gospel texts. It is simply to point out the necessity of contextual delimitation. The ‘encyclopaedic’ view in NSM is taken further in cognitive linguistics (namely inputting the relevant or salient ‘background’ knowledge of the ‘world’).110 But this may
potentially give the most potent role to alleged background knowledge derived from other ‘foreign’ texts and/or conjectured social backgrounds. For an ancient text, what we need, first of