Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie AT sagus.com>]

At 10:22 AM 4/3/99 +0200, Rolf Furuli wrote:
 
>When we deal with a word, we need to differentiate between its letters,
>what it denotes and the concept it signals, and when we use lexica we also
>need to find all the English glosses which are suggested for the particular
>word. James Barr criticized Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New
>Testament because it did not differentiate between "Wort" and "Begriff" and
>because it mixed theology and linguistics. When we use lexica we should
>therefore try to differentiate between linguistic and theological evidence.

Kittel's Theological Dictionary is precisely that: a theological
dictionary, presenting a very interesting theological analysis of words. It
does not claim to be a lexicon in the sense that BAGD, Louw&Nida, or
Liddel-Scott-Jones are lexica. In a theological dictionary, theology is
fair game, but anyone using a theological dictionary should realize what it
is. You don't use such a beast for objective linguistic analysis.

>The only gloss found in BAGD and Liddell & Scott for PRWTOTOKOS is
>"firstborn", so to translate  "his is the primacy over all creation" as
>does  Revised English Bible, is contrary to these two lexica. This
>translation accords with Louw & Nida, but as I showed in a previous post,
>their comments on PRWTOTOKOS (similar comments are not found in any other
>lexicon), has no support at all except their own theological interpretation
>of Col 1:15.

First off, all three lexica make similar comments, as I mentioned in my
last post. In BAGD, it says that in some contexts "born" no longer seems to
be part of the force of "firstborn". What happens if you remove it? You
come up with "first", or primacy, which is what Louw&Nida are saying.
Liddel-Scott-Jones suggests that the use of PRWTOTOKOS in this passage is
metaphorical, and in the same breath mentions a usage of PRWTOTOKOS in
reference to Homer. I have not managed to get my hands on the reference, so
my suspicion that the reference may refer to either (1) Homer as being the
first of the known Greek poets, or (2) Homer as being the greatest of the
Greek poets may be wrong, but this is what I understood when I read the
definition in Liddel-Scott-Jones.
 
You see the glosses as normative? And now you want to go beyond saying that
a translation must not contradict the lexica, and say that it must use one
of the glosses directly in its translation? That goes against the way that
the people who wrote the major NT lexica intended for them to be used. In a
phone call, Frederick Danker, the "D" in BAGD, emphasized to me that the
glosses were not the important part of a lexicon, and that to use a lexicon
like BAGD well, you have to look carefully at the use of the word in the
passages cited to get a deeper understanding of the meaning. This is pretty
to see in the layout of BAGD, which does not even offer a gloss for some of
the senses (see, eg, the entry for EN). Danker also, incidentally, said
that Louw&Nida is a very good tool, but a different tool, than BAGD, and
that it is closer to being a dictionary - a place to look up definitions.

It's also not surprising that individual usages are important for
understanding a word that occurs only about 10 times in the LXX and GNT.
Colossians 1:15 is sufficiently important to the understanding of the
word's meaning that it is mentioned by all three lexica that I looked at,
even the one for classical Greek. The importance of this passage comes from
the fact that it can not be understood literally - Jesus was *not*
physically born before all creation - and forces us to investigate other
possible meanings.
 
Incidentally, I find the constant dismissive references to "their own
theological interpretation" to be a little silly. Any interpretation of the
meaning of the word PRWTOTOKOS in Colossians 1:15 is going to be
theological, and we do need to interpret meaning to understand how words
are used. There is a problem if people are blinded to evidence because of
their theological presuppositions, but any intepretation of Scripture is
going to be theological at times.

Jonathan

 
jonathan AT texcel.no
Texcel Research
http://www.texcel.no