Avoiding Mistakes When Doing Word Studies

Robert Plummer teaches Hermeneutics and Greek at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, did missionary work in China, Israel, and Turkey (among other nations), and bears a striking resemblance to Luke Skywalker (as this photo link will demonstrate: http://www.sbts.edu/theology/faculty/robert-plummer/ ). This excerpt is from his book 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible, which I would highly recommend with a few caveats.


"Word Study Tools

Never before in the history of Christianity has there been less need for word studies than today. With the multiplicity of many excellent English Bible translations, readers of the Bible have the fruit of scholars' painstaking research. At the same time, it is a healthy desire for Christians to want to suck the marrow from every word of Scripture. However, as noted above, an uninformed linguistic euphoria can result in distortions of the text, rather than greater understanding. The following represents two common dangers when it comes to word studies.

1. Illegitimate Totality Transfer. All words have a range of meaning, and the nuances of each particular use cannot be read into all other uses of the word. That is, if the reader takes the totality of what a word can mean and reads that potentiality as a reality in every word occurrence, he has illegitimately transferred the totality of the word means onto each instance (thus, the label 'illegitimate totality transfer'). People tolerate erroneous linguistic approaches to the Bible that they would never accept in ordinary speech. For example, imagine the howls one would encounter if he said "You just used the word cell to describe your phone. By that, I take it that your phone is a small room of incarceration, that your phone is a wireless device, and that your phone is a microscopic blob of protoplasm." Obviously, only one of the potential meanings of "cell"  is intended. Yet, how many times have we heard a similar litany of potential meanings from a preacher presented as the "real meaning" of a word in the Bible? One can see the danger of tools like The Amplified Bible, which provides several possible meanings of most words. Without further instruction, such tools lead one down the path of illegitimate totality transfer.

2. Etymological Fallacy. Etymology is the study of the ancestry of words. Thus, the etymological fallacy is to wrongly believe that knowing the history of a word gives us deeper insight into its current meaning. There have been periods in biblical scholarship when even well-trained scholars were taken in by the siren-song of etymology. More commonly, in popular preaching, one hears the etymology of a word sometimes given as "what this word really means." To illustrate the foolishness of the etymological fallacy to my classes, I give illustrations from the English language. For example:

• When you hear the word tuxedo, undoubtedly, you think of the Algonquin Indian word for "wolf," from which the word tuxedo was derived. Unconsciously, you almost hear yourself saying, "There goes that dapper wolf!" 
• When your neighbor speaks of spraying herbicide on dandelions in his yard, you think about the underlying French words dent de lion ("tooth of the lion"). You might ask, "Those roaring weeds are sinking their sharp incisors into your lawn again, eh?
• Your wife says she is cooking lasagna for supper. You can't help recalling that the word lasagna ultimately derives from the Greek term for "chamber potty" (lasonon). "Going to dish us up another one from the toilet?" you innocently ask.

The reality is that words mean what the writers intended them to mean in the historical context in which they were written. The ordinary use of language (a word's potential range of meaning) constrains the possible meaning unless the author clearly points out that he is using the word differently than the way it would normally be understood. Thus, in the early twenty-first century, to say that someone is wearing "gay clothing" (without further qualification) means something quite different from what it meant when the translators of the KJV chose that expression when translating James 2:3 in the early seventeenth century. 

In spite of all these warnings against the misuse of word studies, they can be helpful in clarifying the nuances of important words. IN the case of a very rare word where we have few or no other instances of the word in the same time period, it can be legitimate to appeal to etymology to help us determine its meaning. Also, proper names (the names of people and places) often are presented in Scripture as being informed by their etymology. The most reliable and accessible word study tool for those lacking knowledge of Greek and Hebrew may be Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words.

Robert Plummer, 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible