On 25/08/2003 05:18, furuli AT online.no wrote:
Well, actually I was not entirely agreeing with Jim on this. My point was that the meaning of a word like "soul" apart from a specific textual context may be quite unrelated to the meaning of it in a particular context in the Bible. If you ask some people what "soul" means out of context they will refer to a style of music. But if the same people read this word in context in the Bible, they will understand it in a totally different sense. Not meaningless out of context, but misleading out of context, which is potentially worse. If people know something is meaningless, they know they have to look elsewhere for the meaning. If something seems meaningful but the meaning is incorrect, people don't realise that they are misunderstanding.
Dear Peter,
I have often wondered if those who say that a word does not have meaning without a context (or is "meaningless without specific textual contexts,") have for themselves defined the key word they are using, namely, *meaning* . Therefore I ask you. Is "meaning" the same as "reference", or is it "concept", or is it something else?
Would you really say that the bare Hebrew words such as $eleg ("snow"), )i$ ("man") and QF+AL "kill" are without *meaning*, like the word gobbledygook written in Hebrew characters would have been for the Hebrew mind? If these words have meaning without a context, would not the same be true with NEPE$?
Best regards
Rolf Furuli
about words being "meaningless without specific textual contexts".
--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
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