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How does Philo, the ancient Jewish philosopher, conceive of the origin of evil in each individual person compared to the Stoic understanding in which he operated?

A excellent point of comparison is Philo’s use of a “double trunk” or “double branch” metaphor, in which he suggests that there is a single root producing two opposing trunks of a tree. This metaphor, and the idea of internal rather than external vice and virtue, are also found in a few Stoic writers.  

This is surprising, because it flies in the face of typical Stoic thinking. This makes the comparison even more interesting, and potentially fruitful.

Philo’s “Double Trunk”

In De Congressu 82, Philo pairs both virtue and vice:

And as time goes on, whenever we are about to become adolescents, coming out of the age of childhood, immediately [we] produce a double trunk from one root—virtue and vice—and while we form an apprehension of the two, we choose one of them: the good-natured choose virtue, and the opposite choose vice (Congr. 82).  

He then offers an allegorical commentary on Abraham’s relationship with Hagar and Sarah. In this commentary, Philo charts the growth of Abraham (i.e. the exemplary Stoic wise man), from a childhood ruled by his passions, to an adulthood free of error.

A defining choice presents itself to the adolescent person: one can choose either virtue (ἀρετή) or vice (κακία). These are synonymous with good and evil, and are represented in Philo’s metaphor of a double trunk (τὸ δίδυμον στέλεχος) growing out of one root (ἐκ μιὰς … ῥίζης). The metaphor is employed again in terms of a “branch” elsewhere (Ebr. 8b), demonstrating the importance of “choice” in Philo’s consideration of the moral formation of human beings.

Interestingly, the image of a double branch recurs in other contexts where vice and virtue are not explicit, but implicit in the additional metaphors that Philo utilizes. For example, in De Agricultura 30 the double branch is mentioned in a comparison between a shepherd and a cattle-feeder. These two figures represent, respectively, lesser (φαῦλος) and superior (σπουδαῖος) persons.

Quod Deterius 108 is another example, where the simple laborer (ἐργάτης) and the true farmer (γεωργός) are contrasted, again using the branch metaphor (Det. 104; cf. 109).

These passages generate important questions regarding Philo’s view of the relationship between vice and virtue. The great Alexandrian philosopher is at a crux: on the one hand, Philo agrees that virtue and vice are mutually exclusive; human agents cannot “put off or put on both virtue and vice at the same time—when someone might take off the one, he must, taking it up, assume the opposite” (Ebr. 7). On the other hand, Philo states that both vice and virtue are planted within each person and each person is tasked with choosing which “branch” to cultivate in their own life (Ebr. 7, 9; Congr. 82; Det. 105, 108).

This has serious implications for Philo’s view of God. Although God is absolute in everything (e.g., Her. 188), God’s chooses to provide humans with a “mixed” nature, thus allowing them to choose their own path (cf. Spec. 1.214; Deus 47-48).

The crux in Philo’s thinking raising an important question, which is the subject of inquiry in this article: how does Philo’s conception of the origin of evil in each individual person compare to the Stoic understanding? This question is significant, because Philo’s writings exhibit a strong indebtedness to Stoic philosophy, which he attempts to harmonize with his own biblical (i.e. 1st century Jewish) worldview.

Major Stoic thinkers on vice and virtue

What is readily apparent when reading the Stoics, however, is that Philo’s perception of the origins of virtue and vice is distinct. He does not take the course of some of Stoicism’s preeminent thinkers, including Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Diogenes Laertius, Cicero and Seneca.

According to Cleanthes (ca. 330–230 BC), there was no commonality between virtue and vice and that nature gave only seeds for virtue (SVF I:566).

For Chrysippus (279–206 BC), a student of Cleanthes, vice did not arise from within man and destroy him. Rather, there were external forces such a bad company (κατήχασις) and physical trials (πράγματα φύσεως) that caused human degradation (SVF III:229a).

Diogenes Laertius (ca. 3rd century AD) agrees: “the logical animal is sometimes distorted through the persuasions of outside trials (πράγματα) and sometimes through association with bad companions (κατήχασις)” (7.89, SVF III:228).

In short, vice is external, virtue is internal. 

Stoics outside the Party Line

There are, however, notable examples of Stoics who departed from the typical view of vice, and saw it as internal to the human agent. For example, the poet Menander (341–290 BC) writes:

Oh Parmenes, there is nothing good in life, just as a tree is growing from one root, but it also produces evil right next to good, Nature brings forth good out of evil (Fragment 407).

Menander indicates here that good and evil are both products of conflicting natures arising from a single root (δένδρον ἐκ ῥίζης μιᾶς). Not only does the tree produce good and evil, it does so right from the beginning; there is no indication of neutral period of development.

Notably, this very passage was read by Themistius, the great philosopher and rhetorician (317–390 AD), in a manner that accords with Philo:

It seems that each of the human goods has been covered with danger, that there is nothing unmixed with the opposite, and one of the comic poets correctly says, “There is nothing good in life, just as a tree growing from one root, evil always springs forth next to it.” This is the thing that is destroying many, for they are not able to easily take up the better from the base things. (Orat. 22).

Posidonius (135–51 BC) is another example. Writing just before the time of Philo, he contradicted previous Stoic doctrine with respect to the nature of man, particularly concerning the origin of vice. As Galen records:

Posidonius does not think that vice comes from outside of man without having a root (ῥίζα) in our own souls, from which it shoots forth (βλαστάω) and grows, but the extreme opposite: for he thinks there is a seed of vice in us ourselves. And we all do not need to flee from the worst so much as to pursue those who are pruning and prevent the growth of vice within us. For it is not, as the Stoics say, that the entirety of vice comes into our minds from outside, but the worst of men have the greater part of vice from themselves, and only a very small part of the influence comes from the outside (Frag 423 lns. 58–65).

On the question of the origin of evil, Posidonius sees vice coexisting with virtue internally, growing from a single root. Each person faces a decision: they can choose the better course and prune the worse, or they can allow the growth of vice to choke out the life of the better.

On the question of the development of evil, Posidonius is yet again aligned with Philo: children are ruled entirely by their passions.

Notably, this view is reflected in Chrysippus, who saw children as virtuous when simplistic. As Galen writes:

Chrysippus naturally has difficulties with the origin of vice; he can’t say what its cause is, nor the manner of its constitutions, and is incapable of discovering how children err; for all of which Posidonius too reasonably censures and refutes him. For if it were really true that children had a natural affinity to morality right from the beginning, vice could not arise internally from themselves, but would have come to them from an external source only (Kidd, Fragment F169C).

Philo agrees that children are ruled by passions (Congr. 81) and that they begin having the self-control to choose in adolescence. He does, however, admit that many will still choose the worse (Congr. 82).

Perhaps surprisingly, the eminent Plutarch (AD 46–120) reflects a position shared with Posidonius:

But all of these men agree that virtue is a particular power of the governing portion (ἡγεμονικός, cf. Philo Ebr. 8) of the soul and a faculty engendered by reason (λόγος), or rather, that reason which is itself agreeing with virtue and is firm and unshaken. They even think that the passion-driven and non-reasoning part of the soul is not distinguished from the rational by any difference of its nature, but is the same part, which, indeed, they call “intelligence” (διάνοια) and the governing part (ἡγεμονικός); it is, they say, transformed and changes both during its emotional states and in the alterations brought about according to an acquired disposition or condition and thus becomes both vice and virtue (SVF I:202).

Here, although Plutarch does not employ the image of a double trunk to depict virtue and vice, he agrees that they cannot be separated in their origin—both are internal to humankind.

This is a significant step away from the typical Stoic position, which held that nature (or the gods) had predisposed humankind towards virtue alone in its act of planting seeds within individuals, seeds that could only be turned to malicious ends due to external forces.  

Why the Comparison Matters

What value has the above comparison brought to our understanding both of Philo and of the Stoics? What does it really matter to us today that Philo and a few of the (renegade?) Stoics utilized the metaphor of a double trunk/branch, and that vice and virtue were understood as coming from within a person rather than without? I suggest that there are two observations we can make at this point:

1. Although the “double trunk” metaphor appears in both Philo and Menander, there is no reason to suppose that one borrowed from the other, or that they did not come to the imagery on their own. There is too much speculation involved to make a case either way. However, the differences between the authors should be exploited to gain further nuance in our understanding of both the Stoics and Philo.
2. Ancient thinkers were concerned to plumb the depths of human morality, which necessitated answering the question of the origin of evil. Both the origin and development of vice and virtue, whether from within or outside of human agents, was a major concern, but each school arrived at different answers. The question is, why? The hope of comparison is gaining ground on such questions that might not be achieved otherwise.
3. Within the Stoic school there was disagreement on even the most fundamental issues. Each writer’s nuanced position warrants study on his own terms. Just as we now recognize that there was no monolithic entity called “Judaism” but rather a fragmented collection of ideas and writings in the Second Temple period, so is the case with Stoicism.

The study above has only touched the surface, by juxtaposing one Jewish philosopher influenced by Stoicism, and a handful of other bona fide Stoics, at one possible point of comparison. A fascinating study might compare Philo with just one member of the Stoic school, thus allowing for a deeper analysis of their similarities and differences.

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Jared W. Saltz is a PhD candidate from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati, OH) and on the Biblical Studies Faculty at Florida College (Temple Terrace, FL). His current research focusses on Hecataeus of Abdera. He is a happy husband and delighted father of two precious girls (5 and 2).

Study Philo and other ancient Jewish texts in depth with Joel Willitts and Logos Mobile Ed. theLAB readers receive 20% off! Get the course for only $303.99 using coupon code: LABWillitts20.

You can also get the entire 1,140 volume Perseus Classics Collection for free on Logos, including Greek and Latin grammars and commentaries.

 

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Bibliography

Arnim, Hans von. Stoicorum veterum fragmenta vols 1-4. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta.  Stutgardiae: in aed. B.G. Teubneri (1964-).

Armstrong, Arthur Hilary. Plotinus Ennead vol 3. Cambridge: Harvard, 1999.

Geljon, Albert-Kees and David T. Runia. On Cultivation. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Hoek, Annewies van den. Clement of Alexandria and his use of Philo in the Stromateis: an Early Christian Reshaping of a Jewish Model. Leiden: Brill, 1988.

Jaeger, Werner. Two Rediscovered works of Ancient Christian Literature: Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius. Leiden: Brill, 1964.

Konstan, David. “Of Two Minds: Philo on Cultivation” in Runia, David T., Gregory E. Sterling, David Winston, and Ronald R. Cox. 2010. The Studia Philonica annual: studies in Hellenistic Judaism. Volume XXII. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature 2010.

Long, A. A. Hellenistic philosophy; Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. New York: Scribner. 1974.

Pohlenz, Max. Die Stoa vol. 1-2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978.

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Not since the Reformation has there been a challenge to the five solas as persistent and potentially persuasive as Matthew W. Bates’ third book, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017). This book has generated a groundswell of controversy that continues to build as more theologians, pastors, and laypeople are exposed to Bates’ nuanced proposal.

Bates’ thesis, at once radical and obvious, is this: in the New Testament writings, the Greek word pistis, or “faith,” is better translated as “allegiance.” He does not intend for every instance of pistis in our Bibles to be retranslated, but for him, there are specific contexts, especially in Paul and the Gospels, in which the only reasonable rendering is “allegiance,” as in the kind of fidelity or loyalty that one would give to a king.

Since Jesus is now the reigning King of the Cosmos, the pistis of believers, directed to Jesus, can only legitimately be explained as the proper attitude of loyal subjects before their sovereign ruler.

1. Matt, it’s a great pleasure to have you as our first guest author on the relaunched Logos Academic Blog. Although we have done a few author interviews here in the past, this is our first of the “Hot Seat” series. I hope this doesn’t make you nervous, even though perhaps you should be.

Me… nervous? No, of course not. /breathes twenty-six times into a paper bag/ Feeling fine. I just like how brown bags smell. Golly it is warm in here. Could you open a window? Thanks. I’m grateful for the invitation. It’s an honor and a pleasure.

2. It strikes me as both commendably bold and yet disconcertingly dangerous that you have written a book that attempts to bridge the typically disparate spheres of everyday Christians and biblical scholars. Why didn’t you simply write this book for one or either audience, or perhaps begin with a technical monograph full of footnotes, and then follow up with a popular version of your thesis?

Salvation by Allegiance Alone is a book about the things that matter most—faith, the gospel, and salvation. So, from the get-go I was certain that this should be a book for scholars, students, pastors, and pew-sitters. However when I was writing I kept wondering, Can I deliver?

I feared that it would prove impossible to write for such a varied audience. Scholars do not want to wade through basic information that everyone in the field already knows. Packed prose and footnotes are preferred. Proposed advances should be modest within a carefully delimited scope.

Meanwhile the ordinary Christian wants nearly the opposite: personal stories illustrating the essentials, spritely prose, and practical advice. Footnotes are the kiss of death. Students and pastors form the middle ground but have unique interests and needs. When in doubt I kept the middle in mind.

Yet I recognized that in trying to make this book all things for all people, it would prove fully satisfying to no one. Despite the hazards, I jumped. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, it is not always a bad idea to seek to become all things to all people—especially for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:22-23).

As the final product has rolled off the press, I have felt emotionally overwhelmed. The quality and quantity of initial feedback has confirmed to me that it was worth the effort.

I am convinced that both church and academy need to rethink faith, the gospel, and salvation. I hope my book proves to be a thoughtful entry point.

3. In your introduction, you mention the nearly 10 years of development and composition of your proposal in Allegiance. Can you pinpoint a specific moment in time or period in your life that acted as the catalyst for the ideas you write about in the book, and what changes have occurred, for better or worse, in the issues that stimulated this work?

About half the creative energy for Allegiance came from material that I studied when I was an M.C.S. student at Regent College in 2001-2004. I read N. T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, and quickly followed that up with Wright’s larger works, The New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and the Victory of God.

  

Wright helped me recognize the degree to which my ideas of faith, sin, repentance, works, “heaven,” the kingdom of God, and the like were constructed through sixteenth-century Protestant categories rather than first-century.

My PhD coursework and candidacy exams at Notre Dame gave me the opportunity to continue to learn more about Second Temple Judaism and the New Perspective on Paul. But this involved deepening rather than recalibrating.

A second breakthrough came when I was working on my PhD dissertation. My dissertation focused on Paul as an interpreter of Scripture. I performed spadework on several passages in which Paul gives the content of the gospel, especially Romans 1:2-4 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-5. I noticed how much the gospel centers on Jesus as a sovereign ruler.

At the same time I began to reflect on the comparative neglect of this motif in popular and academic descriptions of the gospel. But in terms of my writing, I couldn’t pursue the matter as I needed to finish my PhD study first. The dissertation was eventually published as The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation (Baylor University Press, 2012).

Meanwhile my first book had opened up another fruitful area of inquiry. I had determined that the Apostle Paul used a technique to interpret the Old Testament known as “prosopological exegesis.” This technique was somewhat known among studies of early church Fathers, but biblical scholars had not ever (to the best of my knowledge) clearly identified its use in the New Testament.

This technique involves finding surprising speakers in the Old Testament, and I felt that it had underappreciated Trinitarian implications. So even though Allegiance was on my heart, I felt my second monograph needed to be The Birth of the Trinity (Oxford University Press, 2015).

After finishing The Birth I was free to pursue the topic that had first intrigued me as an M.C.S. student. Final pieces of my “allegiance alone” thesis were put into place as I conducted research and wrote. I’m sure I’ll have occasion to discuss some of the more important scholarly influences as our interview continues.

4. You are, by any account, an extremely busy academic. You have a family, you are active in your church, you teach a heavy class load each year, you manage your own interview podcast, you have a blog, and you have published and continue to publish articles in some of the top-tier peer-reviewed journals in the world. How do you approach the craft of research and writing with such a busy schedule, especially for a book that requires engagement with both popular Christianity and elite biblical scholarship?

My life is indeed overflowing. I’m very grateful! However, you short-changed me in your question. I don’t merely “have a family.” For I have six—yes, that’s right—six (!) children. Any time-management skills I possess are mostly owed to my wife, who is a saint. Literally.

Okay, I get a little credit, because I am usually at the office working by 6:15am when I could be sleeping. So I do get an early start. During the semester I teach several mornings a week, but my most productive writing time occurs early in the morning on the days when I teach only in the afternoon. Large swaths of my summer break have also been devoted to writing.

Since it is hard to squeeze in research between teaching and family, the secret for me is caring—deeply and passionately caring—about the topics that I choose to research. If I am not convinced that the topic utterly matters, I’ve found that I’ll never find the motivation. So I can usually tell if a future project is a good one by touching a thermometer to my heart.

As to how I approach the craft, I am an investigator. I don’t know the answer yet when I am writing, but I have caught the scent of something tantalizing. I need to figure out how and why these ideas fit together. Writing helps me ferret out the answers and to clarify them—for myself and hopefully for others too.

When approaching a topic, and even when writing certain portions, I ask myself, Why do I care about this? Why would anyone care about this? I’ve found this helps keep me from being a dreadful boor, if not to others, well, then, at least to myself!

Good research writing shares the mystery, has a plot, and tells an evidence-based story.

5. Your personal journey of faith is very interesting, beginning in a KJV-only church (which you speak about with great affection and felicity) to doing a PhD at Notre Dame and now teaching in a Roman Catholic university. You mention your ecumenical practice of praying the Hours every morning with fellow faculty (and students?). Prayer is an essential component of the Catholic scholarly tradition, and I’m curious to know how prayer functions in your vocation as a writer and scholar.

It would take too much time, and we’d probably need several counselors (just kidding… maybe…), if I were to tell my whole story. Suffice it to say that although my journey out of hyper-fundamentalism has involved intellectual and spiritual wrestling, much as with Jacob’s battle with the mysterious angel, I’ve never found God to have unduly withheld his blessing.

Some who have made this journey are bitter. I’m not. I am grateful that early in my life numerous folks cared enough to share about Jesus with me, even if some of the packaging surrounding those ideas was goofy. I learned to love Jesus and the Bible, even if the strong-anti-intellectualism and fear of science within fundamentalism was confusing. Taking a B.S. degree in physics helped me sort some of this out.

Meanwhile God provided me with the right mentors at the right time—faithful Christians who were serious scholars. Professors Roger Mohrlang and Jerry Sittser at Whitworth University, Professors Gordon Fee, Rikk Watts, and Iain Provan at Regent College, and Professors David Aune, Gary Anderson, and Brian Daley at Notre Dame. More could be mentioned, but these were especially important to my journey.

Today I have a heartfelt affection for the center of the Christian tradition. I still hold what is usually termed a “high view” of Scripture as God’s inspired Word, but I feel like I have made progress toward integrating that with other fields of inquiry.

I still have lots of questions, but unlike within fundamentalism, I see further learning as a delight rather than a nagging worry that the intellectual center might not hold. As a Protestant it has been very enriching to study and serve as a professor in a Catholic context, especially as the Catholic theological tradition has often excelled at holding together faith and reason.

As to my teaching and writing vocation—which is really just part of my larger attempt at being an ordinary Christian disciple—I try to pray each day. Sometimes this is private, sometimes corporate as I join students and faculty in praying the morning office liturgically.

Not going to lie to you and say that I am always on top of my prayer game. Striving to do better there and in all aspects of my service to Jesus the King. Hopefully it is two steps forward and only a step-and-a-half back.

6. The claims that you make in Allegiance are strong, yet they are obviously driven by a heart deeply concerned for the Western church. Do you hope that your book, and its identification of allegiance as the missing component of Christian life and experience, will be the impetus for a new reformation of sorts, perhaps even a counter reformation that brings Protestants and Roman Catholics closer to a point of reconciliation? If you had your way, what would this New Reformation look like, how long would it take to reset the parameters of Christianity and the global church, and upon what doctrinal and practical pillars would it stand?

A new Reformation? Wow, that sounds ambitious. And I can’t decide if it sounds terrifying or exhilarating as I contemplate all the perils and possibilities of what a new (or counter?) Reformation might look like today. And I do spout witticisms, engage in polemics, and drink beer, but not nearly as well or as much as would be necessary for me to play the role of a Luther!

But inasmuch as the Reformation fractured the church, yes, I dream that my book will stimulate unity. I think this dream of unity is something all the faithful have burned into their hearts. Jesus prayed for it, so we know that God desires his church to be one.

“One” does not necessarily entail a hierarchical unity under a single leadership structure—other possible modes of unity must be considered too—although I would contend that true unity must ultimately be visible to the world.

As our conversation unfolds over the next several sessions, I anticipate we’ll be able to speak more about what doctrinal and practical matters could help the church move in the right direction.

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Matthew W. Bates is Associate Professor of Theology at Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois. Bates holds a Ph.D. from The University of Notre Dame in theology with a specialization is New Testament and early Christianity. His books include Salvation by Allegiance Alone (Baker Academic, 2017), The Birth of the Trinity (Oxford University Press, 2015), and The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation (Baylor University Press, 2012). He also co-hosts OnScript, a popular biblical studies podcast.

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Did you know that God is a name-caller? That Yahweh identifies people with derogatory terms? This is nowhere more evident than in the Old Testament Prophets.

The Insult

Isaiah 41 is a chapter in which the God of Israel takes the nations to trial. He comes at them with full force in the first four verses (ESV):

Listen to me in silence, O coastlands;
let the peoples renew their strength;
let them approach, then let them speak;
let us together draw near for judgment.
Who stirred up one from the east
whom victory meets at every step?
He gives up nations before him,
so that he tramples kings underfoot;
he makes them like dust with his sword,
like driven stubble with his bow.
He pursues them and passes on safely,
by paths his feet have not trod.
Who has performed and done this,
calling the generations from the beginning?
I, the LORD, the first,
and with the last; I am he.

Then from verses 5–7 the trial turns to nothing short of taunting, as noted by Brevard Child’s in his commentary on Isaiah.¹ Yahweh characterizes the nations as frantic fools who look to idols for defense, though these idols themselves cannot stand on their own—they must be nailed down!

The coastlands have seen and are afraid;
the ends of the earth tremble;
they have drawn near and come.
Everyone helps his neighbor
and says to his brother, “Be strong!”
The craftsman strengthens the goldsmith,
and he who smooths with the hammer him who strikes the anvil,
saying of the soldering, “It is good”;
and they strengthen it with nails so that it cannot be moved.

Yet just as abruptly as the language turns aggressive, a host of discourse features interrupt the flow and redirect the discourse into more soothing terms.

The Comfort

From verses 8–9 the God of Israel paints a glowing picture of what he thinks about his people. And only after he fleshes out this portrait does he instruct them on how to respond to his arrival.

God begins by referring to them with the second person pronoun אַתָּה (you). The fact that God is able to refer to Israel with a pronoun implies that they are at the front of everyone’s mind. No introduction—such as, “that nation called Israel”—is needed. He can call them out simply with “As for you!”

Left-dislocation

The Hebrew pronoun אַתָּה (you) is part of a construction called “left-dislocation” (see image below), which in this context calls attention to a shift in the discourse: previously God was discussing the nations and their response to his coming, but now he moves on to Israel and the response he expects from them.²

Once this shift is signaled—instead of going straightaway into the instruction אַל־תִּירָא (You must not fear)—God proceeds to mold Israel’s self-image with eight different expressions.

Although the first term is less significant and merely functions to arrest attention, the ones that follow are increasingly more robust recharacterizations:

יִשְׂרָאֵ֣ל (Israel)
עַבְדִּ֔י (My servant)
יַעֲקֹ֖ב (Jacob)
אֲשֶׁ֣ר בְּחַרְתִּ֑יךָ (you whom I have chosen)
זֶ֖רַע אַבְרָהָ֥ם (offspring of Abraham)
אֹהֲבִֽי׃ (My friend)
אֲשֶׁ֤ר הֶחֱזַקְתִּ֙יךָ֙ מִקְצ֣וֹת הָאָ֔רֶץ (you whom I grasped from the ends of the earth)
וּמֵאֲצִילֶ֖יהָ קְרָאתִ֑י (and called from its remotest parts)

To catch the full significance of this montage of expressions it must be noted that none of the eight are necessary to make sense of God’s command in verse 10: “Fear not, for I am with you”.

Every one of these characterizations could have been omitted and still the instruction to not fear would be intelligible, both in terms of who is being addressed (i.e., Israel) and what God wants them to do (i.e., avoid succumbing to fear).

Overspecification and Changed Reference

In discourse terms, we are looking at multiple cases of “overspecification” and “changed reference.” Here are two brief definitions:

1. Overspecification: A description of individuals or ideas that is more specific than required to identify the intended referent. This extra information is often thematically loaded and prompts the reader to think about the referent in a specific way.

2. Changed Reference: the use of a different expression to refer to an established participant in order to recharacterize or highlight thematically important information about that participant in the discourse.

So why did God say these things? It becomes immediately apparent that every piece of prefacing information serves some other purpose. This purpose can be summed up in one word: assurance.

The Assurance

Although the nations respond to God’s coming with panic, God is quick to assure Israel they have no need to respond in this way. They are “Israel” and “Jacob”, not the nations; they are God’s servants and friends, not his enemies; they are sought after, chosen, and called by God; they share a specially privileged ancestor.

In short, Israel is everything the trembling nations are not.

But true to life, sometimes when fear or insecurities are pulsing, we don’t hear the truth as we ought to. Yet the God of Israel knows our frame. He continues by affirming once more how he cherishes his people:

Why Discourse Matters

It’s true that much of this interpretive work might be gleaned from a slow and careful reading of the text, without an awareness of such discourse labels as “overspecification” and “changed reference.”

However, applying models of discourse grammar, like what’s found in the Lexham Discourse resources, illuminates many of the devices we already intuitively perceive. That illumination enables identification, leading to appreciation and finally articulation of the routes biblical authors chose to take to get their point across.

In the case of Isaiah 41, the total effect of all these discourse devices and the content they embody testify to the relentless devotion God has for his people—so much so, that by affirming his benevolent relationship with Israel, God removes every reason to fear before commanding them not to.

And that, undoubtably, is an assurance the church can grasp today, thanks to God’s demonstration of love and devotion to Israel long ago, and not so long ago in Christ.

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Kristopher Lyle holds a BA in Biblical Languages and Sociology from Houston Baptist University, and an MA in Biblical Hebrew from the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) under the supervision of Christo van der Merwe. His research focuses on applying cognitive linguistic frameworks to our understanding of the biblical languages. He received the SASNES award for his MA thesis in 2013, and has since contributed to the Lexham Discourse Handbooks series and authored multiple articles on Biblical Hebrew lexical semantics.

Are you new to discourse analysis, or ready to take your exegesis to the next level? Then you need to check out the exceptional, pioneering works authored by the scholars at Logos, including Kris Lyle’s Lexham Discourse Handbooks on Colossians and James, and the unprecedented 15-volume Lexham Discourse Bundle with datasets.

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I am pleased to introduce the publication of our first book review here on the relaunched Academic Blog. We are honoured to have Katie Woolstenhulme contribute this first review for us. Here, Katie critically examines Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden’s recent monograph, Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

Stigmatizing the Childless

Modern Western society espouses values of acceptance and tolerance of all people, regardless of religion, race, gender, personal life-choices, or disadvantages of any kind, whether physical, social, economic, political, or psychological.

Yet lived experience rarely matches this ideal, and individuals and groups regularly find themselves ostracised on the basis of just such factors. Those without children provide one example, as they do not meet society’s expectations of what a “family” should look like.

The choice not to have children is an increasingly popular one, especially for women who may wish to focus on pursuing a career; feel a child limits their freedom to live the life they desire; or simply do not feel ready to begin a family. Contrasting with those for whom childlessness is a choice are the clinically infertile, those who cannot have children even should they desire them.

Society may claim to champion freedom and support the disadvantaged, but the stigmatisation of the childless is very real.

Reconceiving Infertility

This issue forms the basis of Candida Moss and Joel Baden’s re-examination of biblical texts surrounding fertility in Reconceiving Fertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness. In a world where fertility treatments, IVF, sperm donors, and adoption appear frequently in the news and are part of our everyday vocabulary, it is shocking that those suffering from infertility are made to feel guilty and inadequate for a condition beyond their control.

In their despair, these individuals may turn to religion, hoping to find there some encouragement in their desperation. However, the Jewish and Christian traditions have firmly entrenched the need for humans to “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28), with barrenness and childlessness being most commonly regarded as a curse, or even disobedience of a divine command.

With a firm underpinning in scholarly literature and exegesis, Moss and Baden challenge such assumptions, highlighting the diversity of biblical traditions about fertility and thus reclaiming the Bible as a source of hope and authority for all.

Introductory Issues

The introduction to this work is itself an invaluable contribution to discussions of the topic, not just within the narrow realms of biblical study. Moss and Baden deftly highlight the relationship between childlessness and the gender stereotypes that continue to dominate in modern society.

Angela Merkel and Traditional Roles

A number of issues are covered. Using Angela Merkel as a test case, the authors explain that women are berated, facing charges of unwomanliness, if they do not become mothers. Ironically, feminism, for all its virtues in liberating women from roles assigned them by patriarchy, makes it difficult for women to subsequently desire traditional roles as wives and mothers.

Notions of the blessing and divine command of fertility, manifested for example in 2014 by the Pope’s chastisement of married couples choosing to remain childless, fuel stigma, as do societal benefits for those with children, such as tax breaks. Setting (in)fertility within the context of gender and culture recognises the issue’s pervasiveness throughout all aspects of life.

Childless or Infertile?

The introduction also fulfils the important task of defining terms. “Childlessness” refers to those without children, offering no background or explanation of how this has come to be. “Infertility,” on the other hand, is a medical condition diagnosed only after a couple that has been trying to have children consult professionals.

Moss and Baden see “infertility” fitting the modern category of a disability, as it is inherently bound up with the social and cultural context of the sufferer. In differentiating between “childlessness” and “infertility,” Moss and Baden draw attention to the complexities of this topic. This sets the reader in good stead as the study turns to biblical and postbiblical interpretations of fertility and family life.

Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible

The first set of biblical case studies tackled by Moss and Baden are the barren matriarchs of the Hebrew Bible: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel (Genesis), the wife of Manoah (Judges) and Hannah (1 Samuel). This chapter offers three main observations.

First, in the ancient world, barrenness was catastrophic. It left the childless without social security, and prevented the continuation of a family’s line and name.

Secondly, God was responsible for childbirth because all aspects of life were religious, fundamentally relying upon divine action or inaction.

Thirdly, and most importantly, in most biblical cases of barrenness, including the five stories mentioned above, barrenness goes unexplained and is not punishment for sin. Rather, it is the natural state of woman before God intervenes to allow pregnancy to occur.

In returning to these most ancient narratives, Moss and Baden challenge assumptions that the infertile are somehow responsible for their misfortune. Already hope is offered to modern readers: the Bible may comfort and not condemn those suffering childlessness.

“Be Fruitful and Multiply”

What do such revelations mean for the command and blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply,” given several times in Genesis? In their second chapter, Moss and Baden argue that this command is rather more limited than most interpreters assume.

The command is offered to specific individuals (Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob) at specific times (all prior to Israel’s emergence as a nation) and is related to national growth, rather than individual procreation.

In fact, building on Carol Meyers, the authors claim that Eve’s curse at Genesis 3:16 is the introduction of fertility, rather than painful childbirth, as procreation was unnecessary in the Garden of Eden where humans were to live forever.

The first blessing, “Be fruitful and multiply” cannot therefore envision immediate and enforced reproduction. Infertility curses are common in Ancient Near Eastern literature but the Hebrew Bible never offers barrenness as a curse in opposition to blessings of fertility.

The chapter concludes by explaining that infertility was a recognised part of life in the ancient world, and evidence for this may be seen in the Bible and the Babylonian epic of Atrahasis. The roots of Jewish and Christian tradition provide voices contravening the divine requirement for all individual human beings to procreate, a fact often neglected in religious discussions of fertility.

Mother Zion and the Eschaton

Deutero-Isaiah nationalised the image of the barren matriarch, portraying Zion as both childless and as a mother. For Moss and Baden, it is only at this point that the biblical barrenness tradition offers real hope and comfort to those suffering from infertility today. Whilst the five barren matriarchs all saw the miraculous reversal of their barrenness within their lifetimes, Mother Zion’s fecundity is transferred into the eschatological future.

Comparisons with later literature enrich this chapter, highlighting the impact of Isaiah’s transformation of the barren matriarch figure from supporting role to protagonist. Whether the eschaton features the barren being made fertile or the fertile becoming barren, postbiblical Jewish interpretation and rabbinic literature attest to the innocence of the infertile. This condition is not punishment for sin, but may even be a sign of the eschatological age within our present world.

Having laid the necessary foundations in preceding chapters, Moss and Baden here provide the true fruits of their labour, as they demonstrate the Bible’s ability to speak comfortingly to the infertile. Particularly helpful for the scholar also is the careful treatment of Zion, the most developed that I have seen in relation to the topic of barrenness.

Roman Adoption and the Gospels

The second half of Moss and Baden’s study focuses on the New Testament and early Christian conceptions of fertility and the family. Wider cultural phenomena of the time are used to illuminate the Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus Christ’s sonship. Roman, especially imperial, adoption demonstrates that legitimate familial bonds do not have to be biological.

This is used to explain God’s proclamation of Jesus’ divine sonship at his baptism in Mark, as well as Jesus’ status as “Son of David,” emphasized in Matthew and dependent upon (non-biological) paternity through Joseph.

In John, the concept of “adopted” family is extended to Christians more generally as Jesus passes responsibility for his mother’s care over to the Beloved Disciple, asking him to treat her as his own.

Based on Luke’s presentation of Mary, mother of Jesus, Moss and Baden liberate her as a role model for all women, fertile or infertile. Mary is barren woman (akin to the Old Testament matriarchs), virgin, slave (doulos) and mother.

Moss and Baden successfully show that the ancient world provided diverse conceptions of family and of gender roles. If such alternatives were available even in the ancient world, why do we insist upon a narrow and unitary model of the family today, condemning those who do not adhere to it?

Graeco-Roman and Pauline views on the Family

Paul’s views on marriage are often summed up by the quotation: “it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (1 Corinthians 7:9). For Moss and Baden, Paul’s views on family life hinge as much on cultural context as on his belief in the immanence of the eschatological age, when earthly relationships would no longer matter.

Within Roman society, marriage was viewed positively and even as necessary for advancement in public roles. The Emperor Augusta, for example, in policy not dissimilar from that witnessed in modern society, rewarded men who had families, but penalized bachelors.

Equally, celibacy was seen as a virtue, the epitome of self-control. Moreover, the Greek philosopher Plato argued that the ascent of the soul could not occur with the distraction of earthly pleasures; the Stoics too encouraged continence.

This chapter undeniably provides a useful historical overview and comparison of Graeco-Roman and Pauline attitudes to marriage, chastity, and the family. However, it loses the clear focus of earlier chapters, where ancient material was continuously made relevant for people living in the modern world.

This chapter’s key arguments, namely that chastity and infertility were sometimes equated in the ancient world, and that Paul places less weight on marriage and thus on procreation (which in turn necessitates his elevation of chastity), feel strained and of little practical support to the presently childless or infertile.

Infertility and the Eschatological Age

In the final chapter, Moss and Baden again return to the eschaton, this time from a Christian perspective, and some of the study’s focus is regained. This chapter argues that infertility is a sign of the eschatological age, according to early Christians.

The story of the haemorrhaging woman as told in Mark 5 uses language of drying up, language commonly associated in Greek medical literature with barrenness. The authors thus suggest that the woman is made infertile, indicating the world to come.

Similarly, the eunuch who converts to Christianity in Acts 8 undergoes no physical transformation or “healing,” thus his infertility is unproblematic for entering the eschatological age.

According to various Church Fathers, the body will be resurrected in the end time but there will be no sexual desire and no procreation. Present barrenness hints at this perfected state and celibacy may be understood as virtuous because it imitates it.

This chapter reminds us that even if infertility is irreversible in the present, it is not punishment and there is hope for the future.

The Bottom Line

Moss and Baden’s Reconceiving Infertility is a long overdue re-examination of biblical and early Jewish and Christian interpretations of infertility and childlessness. It successfully highlights the Bible’s relevance for the modern world and allows a multiplicity of voices to be heard beyond the prevailing view of fertility as blessing.

The study covers a lot of ground well, considering biblical perspectives, early interpretations, and wider contextual influences. Its value to both academics and a wider audience is clear, as it engages in linguistic and historical critical study, whilst maintaining accessibility and lucidity in its use of ancient material to address a problem faced by many today.

Some material could be addressed more fully, for example the barren matriarch narratives in the Hebrew Bible, whose nuances and details offer endless interpretive possibilities. Understandably, however, space for such development is limited in a synoptic study such as this one.

Finally, it is worth noting that Mary Callaway’s Sing, O Barren One, cited also by Moss and Baden, is the principal study of barrenness traditions from the Hebrew Bible to rabbinic midrash. Reconceiving Infertility may be seen to complement that earlier work, as it delves into further sources, particularly Christian; further illuminates the historical backgrounds of different traditions; and demonstrates how Jewish and Christian traditions may speak positively to the childless and infertile today.

Katie Woolstenhulme recently submitted her PhD in Theology at Durham University, completed under the supervision of Professor Robert Hayward. Her thesis focused on the portrayal of the biblical matriarchs in the classical rabbinic commentary (midrash), Genesis Rabbah. Prior to this, she studied at both Durham and Oxford University. Her research interests lie particularly in biblical studies and in early postbiblical interpretation. She is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Society for Old Testament Study, and has presented at both of their annual conferences.

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You can find a host of helpful monographs, dictionary articles, and word studies on the topic of fertility/infertility on the world-class biblical research platform, Logos 7, which includes a full complement of search tools and resources powerful enough for both the elite biblical scholar and the industrious church pastor. 

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“Revisionist history” is inherently redundant, since all history is revised.¹ As George Bernard Shaw writes: “History is always out of date,” and is rewritten to lie, to burn, and to stick in our throats.² That is to say, a revision may seek to humiliate and harm—especially when the social stakes are high. And the higher the stakes, the more prone the historian is to oversimplify, castigate, and construct binary oppositions.³

Conversely, a revision may seek instead to avoid hurt by glossing over and excluding shameful details, so that (ironically) history can serve more as an activity of forgetting than of remembering—not an “accidental amnesia” per se, but “a deliberate ‘not remembering’, or perhaps a ‘remembering otherwise.’”⁴ In this sense, borrowing from Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein, rewriting history can involve repression with the result that the past is presented as it ought to be rather than how it was.

Finally, a revision may also be used to express regret, to work through trauma, to bear the weight of the past, or to achieve closure.

Nationalistic Revision

When one adds a nationalistic sentiment to the revisionist mix, however, there is an apologetic tendency that leads to a retractable notion of time in which historical events are annulled, bulldozed clear, or compensated for.⁵ At this point, “No fact, no event, and no aspect of history has any fixed meaning or content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact can be recast.”⁶

In short, then, to cite Marnie Hughes-Warrington, histories may be “pushed aside, turned upside down, suspended, incised, truncated, overwritten, punctured, stretched and collapsed.” They are rewritten when considered to be “too narrow, too broad, too big, too small, too distant, too close, too dynamic and too fixed.” And, with each revision, “boundaries are drawn and redrawn, setting down rules of engagement or non-engagement with others.”⁷

Sinai and Jewish Identity

When it comes to the ancient history of the Jews, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Sinai tradition.⁸ Within that tradition, Exodus 32–34 contains one of Israel’s most embarrassing mistakes as well as one of her most comforting promises.

In Exodus 32, as the Lord was ratifying Israel’s covenant with Moses, she was worshiping the golden calf. In Exodus 33–34, however, God mercifully renews the broken covenant, reaffirms his relationship with the people, and promises his constant presence with the nation.

Exodus Remembered (Selectively)

In light of the above conclusions regarding revisions, it should come as no surprise that, in their recounting of Exodus 32–34, certain authors have tended to stress one of these events over the others, to remember them otherwise, or to go so far as to omit one of them altogether.

The tendency occurs as early as the juxtaposition of Psalms 105 and 106. While the former hymn celebrates divine deliverance and omits the reference to the golden calf, the following psalm, in its retelling, makes no mention of the renewal but stresses instead Israel’s idolatrous act.

This canonical juxtaposition in Psalms indicates—as Francis Watson writes in Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith—that Israel’s Exodus and wilderness narratives “can legitimately be read in both of these fundamentally different ways: as testimony to divine goodness, and as a dire warning of the consequences of sin.”⁹

John Barclay has surveyed the different ways a number of later authors revised the narrative of Exodus 32–34.¹⁰ For instance, despite a promise not to leave out any significant event in his history of the Jews, Josephus conspicuously skips over Israel’s worship of the golden calf—even though he surely knew the story.

According to Barclay, Josephus probably omits the event because the narrative contradicts his theological aim to present the Jews as completely faithful so as to demonstrate how the Hebrews’ history was essentially formed by the notion of human action and moral reward.

Over against Josephus, Pseudo-Philo tells the entire story—the fall and renewal— in a brutally candid expose cum highly hopeful promise. Pseudo-Philo presents the ups and downs of Exodus 32–34 as a recurrent pattern exhibited by Israel to encourage her that the Lord’s covenant remains intact despite their abject failure.

In light of these other Second Temple treatments, Barclay then proceeds to discuss Paul’s treatment of Exodus 32–34 in Romans 9–11. Barclay infers that, over against Josephus’ revision, the apostle alludes to the Sinai event to remove any trace of human worth in Israel’s election and to reduce divine choice to the Lord’s gracious will.

As with Pseudo-Philo, Paul uses the very moment that causes one to question Israel’s election as the opportunity to establish it. Paul goes beyond Pseudo-Philo, however, by finding within the narrative not only hope for Israel but for the nations as well. Despite human disobedience—of Jew or of Gentile—for Paul, the text bears witness to a “salvific power, a creative force that vivifies (and will vivify) Israel, and that is now unleashed in Christ to establish the new creation.”¹¹

Three New Dialogue Partners

Whereas Barclay compared Second Temple treatments of Exodus 32–34 to help better understand Paul’s use of the narrative in Romans 9–11, I want to suggest another line of approach. Recently, at the University of Durham’s New Testament Seminar, I presented a paper (which will also be given in fuller form at ISBL in Berlin this summer) that places the Gospel of Matthew’s approach in handling Exodus 32–34 side-by-side with that of the Wisdom of Solomon and the Epistle of Barnabas.

I chose the author of Wisdom and the author of Barnabas as dialogue partners with Matthew because these three represent somewhat contemporaneous works, and since the First Gospel was likely written sometime between the composition of the other two.

Without getting into the details (in the interest of space), my working conclusion is that these authors engage with Exodus 32–34 in different ways for similar purposes. For instance, whereas Wisdom accentuates Exodus 34 and ignores Exodus 32 to demonstrate Israel’s faithfulness (see Wisdom 15), Barnabas highlights Exodus 32 and skips over Exodus 34 to instantiate Israel’s faithlessness (see Barnabas 4). In comparison to Wisdom, Matthew 17 also alludes to Exodus 34 in the gospel’s account of the transfiguration.

But whereas Wisdom does so to underscore Israel’s faithfulness and status as God’s people in the face of the nations’ idolatry, Matthew does so to present Jesus as the new Moses and his disciples as the new Israel. As did Moses, Matthew’s Jesus suffered reproach at the hands of stiff-necked Israel and stood alone as their mediator willing for his name to be blotted out, as it were, for their sake.¹²

Like Barnabas, however, Matthew 17 also draws upon Exodus 32 in the gospel’s narrative concerning Jesus’ outrage when he returns from the mountain to find the disciples’ lack of faith. While Barnabas does so to highlight the church’s faithfulness over against apostate Israel, Matthew does so to excoriate not Israel but Jesus’ disciples.

After the disciples’ ultimate failure—their abandonment of Jesus—Matthew draws one final time from Exodus 33–34 at the Great Commission (among other parallels, of course) to present the disciples as a renewed Israel ready to go to the nations.

While none of these three works qualify as historiography, and despite their own different genres, the conclusions about revisionist history above still resonate. For instance, there seems to be a growing consensus among scholars of Wisdom, Matthew, and Barnabas that the social stakes behind the respective works were high.

Thus, the tensions in each book and their consequential revisions of Exodus 32–34 can be seen in light of the authors’ struggles to explain the history of redemption with respect to Israel and the nations in response to their respective social-historical settings.

Redrawing Boundaries

What I attempt to demonstrate in my paper is that each author uses Exodus 32–34 to draw and redraw the boundaries for God’s people as well as to set down the consequential rules of engagement with the non-elect.

For Wisdom, this means excluding the embarrassing exploits of Exodus 32 and remembering Israel’s past selectively. Therefore, in an apologetic thrust, the author of Wisdom annuls, bulldozes over, and compensates for Israel’s history. Moreover, his nationalism fuelled by the persecution of his people leads him to an eventual binary opposition between God’s “righteous ones” and non-Jews.

Barnabas takes the opposite view, and uses the event of Exodus 32 to humiliate Israel and (to revise the words of George Bernard Shaw) to stick her history down her throat. Switching metaphors, the author of Wisdom hides the skeleton of the golden calf deep in Israel’s closet while Barnabas brings it out and puts it on display. Wisdom establishes Israel as the people of God; Barnabas denies them that very notion.

But what about Matthew? In contrast to both of these works, the evangelist retells and recasts the Exodus 32–34 stories. Matthew brings out Israel’s bones but disguises them in new clothes. His reworking of Exodus 32–34 thereby both bears the weight of history and achieves closure.

That is to say, for Matthew, Israel’s history is the church’s history so that the disciples’ current events are the culmination of Israel’s past choices.¹³

In this collective past, with its bearings on their present commission, Christ-followers find not only their values but also their identity. Matthew’s revision of Exodus 32–34 shows that the issue is not whether either the Jews or the gentiles are God’s people: God’s ecclesia is comprised of both elect Jews and converted gentiles. With his retelling, then, Matthew gathers up the transient and fragmentary parallels of Israel’s past into Christ and his church in order to transcend them all.¹⁴

This is a work in progress, and I welcome your comments, questions and constructive criticism.

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Joseph R. Dodson (Joey) is an associate professor of Biblical Studies at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He completed his PhD at the University of Aberdeen and was a guest researcher at the University of Tübingen. He has written a number of articles for academic journals such as Catholic Biblical Quarterly and the Journal for Jewish Studies as well as essays in various volumes such as Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination, and Reading Romans in Context. He is the author of A Little Book for New Bible Scholars with E. Randolph Richards, and The ‘Powers’ of Personification: Rhetorical Purpose in the ‘Book of Wisdom’ and the Letter to the Romans. Moreover, he is the editor of Paul and the Second Century with Michael F. Bird; Paul and Seneca in Dialogue with David E. Briones; as well as Paul and his Greco-Roman Philosophical Tradition with Andrew W. Pitts. His wife, Sadie, was his elementary school sweetheart, and they have five children: Mattie Mae, Kinnon Scott, Aidan, Iain, and Caspian. You can follow Joey on Twitter @jrrdodson.

Read and research the ancient authors mentioned above in both their original languages and in numerous English translations on the Logos 7 platform, where you will find Josephus, Philo, Pseudo-Philo, Wisdom, Barnabas, and Matthew all fully tagged and searchable.

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This is the second of a two-part series on words and their meanings.¹ Part 1 discussed the difference between “words” and “concepts.” In Part 2 we will examine the interaction of “context” (the words surrounding a particular word) with “semantic range” (the complete gamut of how a word is being used by the speakers of a particular language at a particular point in time).

Introduction

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I chose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”²

“Context is king” runs the common mantra in biblical studies, and to a certain degree this is true. Yet the “king” cannot rule without some sort of legitimization from the people, and that’s where “semantic range” comes in. If “context is king,” then “semantic range is parliament,” for semantic range represents the will of the people.

In other words, language is a social construct.³

Consequently, without denying the existence of idiolect,⁴ anybody who wishes to communicate must make sure that how they use a word has at least some overlap with how their dialogue partner uses it.

Individual Lexicons

I will illustrate this with two examples from the adventures of a former missionary to Japan (one quite talented in language!) who is very dear to me (and granted permission for these stories to be posted).

In the first example, this missionary was preaching on Jesus’ statement “I am the Light of the world.” To illustrate, he spoke of spelunking during his college days, noting how dark it was in a cave without a light, how easy it was to get lost in a cave (even when he and his friends had a map), etc.

Confused expressions greeted him, for rather than using the word hora-ana (“cave”), he accidentally used the word ana-guma (“badger), thus regaling a dazed audience with tales of how, in his college days, he would get lost exploring the insides of a badger, despite having a map of the insides of the badger, etc. Obviously context was not enough to prevent miscommunication.

In the second example, the missionary had both context and etymology on his side, but to no avail. Attempting one day to witness to a lady, who had a young boy with her, the missionary endeavored to make friends with the young boy, who was clearly scared of the foreigner. Gesturing at the young boy, the missionary attempted to say, “He seems not to like me” by combining the word for “dislike” (ya) with the adjective for “seems to be” (ra-shii).

Unfortunately, when combined in such a manner vocally, the resulting word was radically different and did not possess “seems to dislike” as part of its semantic range. What the missionary said to the horrified lady was, “He seems to be morally repugnant.” The lady stalked away in shock, much to the missionary’s confusion.

What of Context?

In other words, context is not enough to facilitate clear communication, if in fact a word is not being used in accordance with how others use it. The assertion that “Context is King,” then, is in and of itself insufficient. As E. D. Hirsch states,

It is sometimes said that ‘meaning is determined by context,’ but this is a very loose way of speaking. It is true that the surrounding text or the situation in which a problematical word sequence is found tends to narrow the meaning probabilities for that particular word sequence; otherwise, interpretation would be hopeless. And it is a measure of stylistic excellence in an author that he should have managed to formulate a decisive context for any particular word sequence within his text. But this is certainly not to say that context determines verbal meaning. At best a context determines the guess of an interpreter (though his construction of the context may be wrong, and his guess correspondingly so). To speak of context as a determinant is to confuse an exigency of interpretation with an author’s determining acts. An author’s verbal meaning is limited by linguistic possibilities but is determined by his actualizing and specifying some of those possibilities.⁵

From a slightly different perspective, NT scholar Daniel Wallace aptly states, “Often linguists say that the word being examined should have the meaning of ‘X’ with ‘X’ being only what one can determine from the context. But this is an unreasonable demand on any word. If every word in a given utterance had the meaning ‘X’ then we simply could not figure out what any utterance ever meant.”⁶

When we examine a sentence, then, each word is not a blank slate, “x,” to be filled with whatever context demands of it. Rather, each word has, at that moment of time, a number of concepts that it can point to based on how people are, at that moment, using the word. Furthermore, the concepts the word reflects, as well as the very form of the word, may change over time. This is why etymology should not be relied on except in rare circumstances.

Consequently, communication can only occur when substantial overlap exists between how one person uses a word and how another person uses a word. Context will delineate which of the possible meanings is the correct one.⁷ Yet if neither of them are drawing from the possible meanings of the semantic range reflected in that language (or at least that particular dialect), miscommunication occurs.

 

Enter Semantic Range

Consider the following sentence: “Little Jimmy has been getting quite good at the violin. Do you want to come see him play in tomorrow night’s performance?” Now, the average speaker of English will be fully aware that “play” has multiple meanings, but can there be any doubt what the word means in this context? The word “violin” and the expression “tomorrow night’s performance” both make it clear that Little Jimmy is not throwing a football or sitting down to a friendly game of monopoly.

Yet, on the other hand, what would happen if in the above sentence the speaker replaced the word “play” with “belch”? The listener would most likely be confused and ask for clarification (or flee away in horror), simply because the word “belch” is not a word associated with the structured performance of musical instruments (at least not in the kind of concerts I’m familiar with!). We cannot force the word “belch” to mean what people usually mean by “play.” Despite what Humpty Dumpty claimed, it is the masses, not the individual, that determines the meanings of words.

In other words, when we have conversations with other people, we usually try to use words in such a way that they will understand. Exceptions do exist, especially in poetry, and since words do change meaning it is clear that somebody, somewhere, had to try something new; language is not static. For a fascinating discussion of this very point, see Peter J. Leithart’s book, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture.⁸

Nonetheless, radical semantic change is slow and not easily detectable within small periods of time—we usually do not wake up one morning to realize that “professor” has suddenly become slang for “communist infiltrator.”

Bible Study and Semantic Range

So how does this practically affect our study of words in the Bible? First of all, serious study should not overly rely on lexicons at the expense of the literature of Koine Greek. As John A. L. Lee has convincingly demonstrated, too often lexicons do not conduct original research but merely repackage the work of those that have gone before.⁹ Obviously lexicons are helpful tools; my point is that they are not infallible.

Secondly, in order to understand a word’s semantic range, its use in Koine should be examined in the following order: 1. the NT itself; 2. the Septuagint; 3. Josephus; 4. other 1st century writers such as Philo, Plutarch, and the various papyri (if you have access to how a word is used in the papyri, this should trump Plutarch and other “fancier” writers since the papyri represents how the common man and woman of the day spoke and wrote).

After the NT, the LXX and Josephus take priority simply because they represent Jewish authors writing in Greek about biblical matters, and thus can be expected to possess significant parallels with the NT authors. Furthermore, as far as the LXX goes, we have to assume that the apostles had thoroughly immersed themselves in both its message and terminology.

Consequently, when the Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus as our ἱλαστήριον (Rom 3:25), one should naturally expect that he wished to invoke images of the actual physical Mercy Seat in the OT tabernacle, which is almost exclusively how the word is used in the LXX (cf. also Heb 9:5).¹⁰

Semantic Range and Context

Yet although one should look at semantic range in addition to context in order to determine meaning, ironically one cannot understand the semantic range of a particular word in the Bible without looking at its use in various other contexts. Yet when looking at a particular context, the reader should already know the semantic ranges of most of the words in order to understand the meaning of a particular word.

Occasionally, a sentence will be too difficult to puzzle through precisely because the reader does not know the semantic ranges of words or the significance of specific syntactical constructions. Consequently, when learning both written and vocal languages, one must always work from the simpler to the more complex, gaining insight as one continues to immerse oneself in the language.

This can be illustrated with a “tourist” analogy. At the most primitive level of communication, a completely lost foreigner looking for the train station in Tokyo would probably not (contrary to popular perception) resort to raising his voice, but rather to gestures imitating a train (“charades”).

Having established, through the use of gestures, that “train” is denshain Japanese, he can now make educated guesses as to the words surrounding densha in a sentence, especially those words that occur frequently in simple contexts. Some of his guesses will be wrong, but his guesses will improve the more he is immersed in the language. As his understanding of the meaning of both words and sentences improves, so will his ability to make educated guesses regarding the meaning of new words within different contexts.

Furthermore, his guesses will be more likely to be correct in simpler sentences than in complex sentences. After all, the English word “car” would be more easily understandable to a non-native speaker in the sentence “The car was in an accident” (accompanied by gestures) than “Tony Stewart short-shifted his car while expertly slipstreaming past the lead.”¹¹ So, when examining how a word is used in a particular biblical text, how a word is used elsewhere in simpler and non-controversial texts is better evidence than how a word is used in complex and murkier texts.

Thus the more comprehensive one’s grasp of the language (i.e., semantic ranges and syntactical constructions), the more likely somebody can determine from a specific context the meaning of a particular word. Both a knowledge of context and semantic range are necessary; once again, if “context is king,” then “semantic range is parliament.”

Goodbye Etymology?

Since we are relying on semantic range and context to determine meaning, very rarely do we have to worry about etymology, the history of a word. Etymology simply does not factor into the way society normally uses language. For example, as a baby develops and learns the meanings of words, he or she does not do so based on an inherent knowledge of the history of a word,¹² but rather based on how people in the same room are using the word!¹³

To be sure, a baby experiences trial and error: “da-da” may alternately refer to a toy truck, an older sister, or even the family dog before the baby “gets it right.” At no point in the development of a child, however, does he or she stop and think, “I will use this word based on how the word was morphologically constructed 500 years ago.” Generally speaking, neither do adults.

Having said that, etymology can be helpful in two cases. First, “The etymology of a word may help to determine its meaning, but only if it can be demonstrated that the speaker was aware of that etymology.”¹⁴ Secondly, for extremely rare words or words such as θεόπνευστος which appears nowhere else in Greek literature prior to the 2 Timothy, etymology may be our only clue as to its meaning.¹⁵

Compound Word Fallacy

Notwithstanding rare examples such as θεόπνευστος, a corollary to the etymological fallacy is the idea that a compound word automatically has the same semantic range as the combination of the meanings of the two words it derived from. Granted, obviously there will be a connection. Yet with compound words, the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts.

In other words, προστρέχω, for example, should not be understood as: “=[semantic range of πρός] + [semantic range of τρέχω],” as if the compound word would automatically have the meaning of “running in accordance with something” instead of “running up to someone or something.”¹⁶ As Turner and Cotterell state, “We should not, however, be beguiled . . . into thinking that compound lexemes always are, or even usually, bear a meaning that is little more than a summation of the separate meanings of the elements of which the word is composed.”¹⁷ Compound words must be studied in their own right, not on the basis of their morphology.¹⁸

Summary

In summary:

1. Words and concepts are different, and their relationship will change over time
2. A single word can point to different concepts at different times (rarely at the same time)
3. Multiple words can point to the same concept (which means you need to study more than one word to understand a concept)
4. Both a knowledge of semantic range (how a word is used elsewhere) and context are key to determining meaning
5. Etymology can be helpful but should only be used as a last resort in determining meaning.

One final point for the linguistically-inclined (or any “gluttons for punishment”). Language is fluid, and as we pointed out earlier, there are some brave souls who will use words in ways they haven’t been used before. In other words, as Relevance Theory points out regarding the interrelation between words and concepts, these relationships may be somewhat modified on the fly to create what Robyn Carston calls an “ad hoc concept.”¹⁹

So anybody can, in theory, utilize words to create a new concept for the listener or hearer (by “new” I mean “one which the reader had not thought of before”). Carston gives the example of somebody who uses the expression “Ken’s a (real) bachelor,” which would not point to the normal meaning of “bachelor” as simply an unmarried man, but rather to a different concept, that of a particular lifestyle.²⁰

Furthermore, an author may use a word in an unfamiliar way and then use multiple words to explain what he or she means, or even introduce a totally new concept to somebody with multiple words, and then associate that concept with a specific word or phrase (e.g., Paul Bloom gives us the excellent example of teaching somebody who is not a hockey fan the meaning of “hat trick”).²¹

No doubt this happens in the NT, but it is not the word itself which introduces a radically new concept, but the explanation surrounding the word. This, then, brings us back full circle to Barr’s point: theology is generally performed at the sentence level, not the word level.

Suggested Readings

Thanks again for reading my posts on The Meanings of Words, part 1 and part 2. If you want to learn more, here is a list of suggested readings:

Barr, James. The Semantics of Biblical Language. Reprinted. Eugene, OR: Wipf&Stock, 2004.

Black, David Alan. Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek: A Survey of Basic Concepts and Applications. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995.

Bloom, Paul. How Children Learn the Meaning of Words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

Carson, D. A. Exegetical Fallacies. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1984.

Cotterell, Peter, and Max Turner. Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1989. (Note: if you could only afford one book on this list, I would recommend Cotterell and Turner over the others (with a close second being Black, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek).

Carston, Robyn. Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

Green, Gene L. “Lexical Pragmatics and Biblical Interpretation.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50 (2007): 799-812.

_______. “Lexical Pragmatics and the Lexicon.” Bulletin for Biblical Research 22 (2012): 315- 333.

Gutt, Ernst-August. Relevance Theory: A Guide to Successful Communication in Translation. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1992.

Hirsch, E. D., Jr. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

Lee, John A. L. A History New Testament Lexicography. Studies in Biblical Greek 8. New York: Lang, 2003.

Leithart, Peter J. Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009.

Lyons, John. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Warning: of all the books listed here, Lyons is easily the most technical! Approach at your own risk!

Silva, Moisés. Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics. Revised and Expanded ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994.

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Paul Himes is professor of Bible and Ancient Languages at Baptist College of Ministry (Menomonee Falls, WI). He received his Ph.D. in New Testament in 2014 under Dr. David Alan Black at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Foreknowledge and Social Identity in 1 Peter (Pickwick, 2014).

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Learning a new language—whatever language that might be—takes time and effort. German is no different. Some might even say that certain features make it a more difficult language than others. This is partly due to the fact that German is an inflected language; it has a host of irregular verbs, the gender of nouns is not readily apparent from their endings but must be memorized, and there are those tricky issues of verb placement and separable prefixes.

Thus, German is the bane and solace of many biblical scholars of whatever subdiscipline. Actually, that statement needs qualification. For those scholars and students who have little to no familiarity with German, learning to read this modern language is a challenge. German scholars often have the advantage of learning English as schoolchildren. But for Americans, Brits, and others native English speakers, we often have a challenging road ahead.

So we need help to master German, or we miss out on a huge part of the conversation over the Bible that has been happening since at least the Reformation (and those guys mostly wrote in Latin; yep, you might get to learn that one, too). Indeed, legitimate research without engaging with German theologians is, well, illegitimate.

Essential resources

Because German is such an important modern research language, most PhD hopefuls and candidates know well Helmut Ziefle’s Modern Theological German: A Reader and Dictionary. Ziefle’s work provides a natural segue from acquiring the language through grammars, such as April Wilson’s Learn German Quickly or Hubert Jannach and Richard Alan Korb’s German for Reading Knowledge, to the rudimentary ability to translate a passage.

What better way to develop a biblical or theological student’s ability to read German than introducing her to familiar excerpts from the Bible and famous theologians? Ziefle’s reader does just that.

As a reader, Modern Theological German curates individual texts and supplies novice readers with definitions for terms or idiomatic phrases they have probably not yet encountered. At the conclusion of each excerpt, Ziefle tests reading comprehension and understanding of grammar with multiple choice questions and sentence translations. Included in the back of the volume is an answer key for all the exercises as well as a handy dictionary for reference.

The reader, dictionary, and answer key make this one of the friendliest tools available to students of theological German. But in my own studies, I’ve found that owning this resource in Logos Bible Software can make it more accessible if you commit to the following three suggestions.

Schedule it

First, I’ve found that a regular study schedule is crucial for obtaining and maintaining a new language. Weekly, if not daily time spent translating and reviewing vocabulary is imperative. And with Logos, I can create a reading plan for Modern Theological German that will sync with my calendar and remind me exactly when to start the next lesson. (You can access my reading plan by joining the Faithlife group Modern Theological German.)

If you don’t like to clutter up your calendar, you don’t have to use the “export to iCal” option. Instead, check the Logos homepage once you’ve created the reading plan and simply click on your next reading.

Once clicked, Logos will open the resource to precisely the scheduled reading and indicate where to start and stop.

With a schedule in place, I can get to work every day right away.

Lay it out

One thing I thoroughly dislike about working with print copies of a language grammar, reader, or workbook is the constant flipping of pages. Flip to the back to check the dictionary. Flip back to the spot I’m working on. Then check my answers in the back of the book. Oops, lost my place. More flipping to find it. Ugh.

But with Logos, I can open multiple copies of the same book, which means I can have the reader, dictionary, and answer key open all at once.

To do something similar with the paper copy of Modern Theological German, you would have to rip the book up into three separate parts, lay them side by side, and hope you don’t lose any pages in the meantime.

Hyperlink it

The last thing I love about Modern Theological German in Logos is the “Send Hyperlinks Here” feature.

When enabled, double-clicking a word within the reader will tell Logos to look first in that dictionary before going any where else in the software. It saves loads of time, which is perhaps the most valuable resource of all for any biblical scholar (much more valuable than German, certainly).

With these simple features, I’ve been able to hone my ability to translate German without the frustration of missing a scheduled reading or the repetitive and time wasting tradition of keeping my place as I flip back and forth, back and forth within the volume.

If you’re a biblical or theological student learning German for a PhD program—or just because German is an essential language for serious biblical and theological research—this is an excellent resource made better in Logos that will strengthen what you have learned and give you confidence in your studies.

Jacob Cerone is currently earning a PhD in a New Testament at the University of Munich (Ludwig Maximilians Universität), where his German skills are daily being put to the test (and improving rapidly). His interests include the Septuagint, New Testament, and Early Christianity. Jacob also works for Faithlife as a member of the Logos Pro Team.

An earlier version of this post was originally published on Jacob’s blog, ἐνθύμησις.

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