Quote of the Day

If you're one of the three people who have read this blog before, you know that sometimes I complain about people misusing Greek and Hebrew when studying or teaching the Bible. One of my pet peeves is when big points are made based solely on a study of some particular word in the original language. Today I ran into an excellent explanation of why this isn't a good idea in John Feinberg's book No One Like Him:

"How do we use Scripture to determine the meaning of each attribute [of God]? A typical method defines a divine attribute by appealing to the meaning of the biblical term that names the attribute. Hence, if we understand the etymology and basic 'dictionary meaning' of terms that speak of God as eternal, loving, wise, etc., we automatically know what the divine attribute is.

This strategy for defining the divine attributes is seductive (as well as very popular) but methodologically flawed. It confuses defining a term with defining a concept.

. . . In order to understand the concept a writer wants to communicate, we must understand his words as he uses them in a particular context. That means that we are not likely to ascertain any thought pattern (concept) associated with the word by looking at it in isolation from a specific sentence, and certainly not by looking at the root words from which it is derived."