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Surprising Rendering in Bible Sense Lexicon

Beloved Amodeo

The Sense for panta is given as "each" the word translated as universe in the ESV Heb 1.3. My first reaction was that this was an error, but after further investigation, I saw that this was a very deliberate choice the reasoning for which I did not follow. Would someone like to explain this choice as I do not understand how this sense can be a singular as the word means all or every?

Further, there are some surprising entries under Lemma, ish, isha, ehad, and geber. Even tis seems like a stretch. What supports these choices?

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Comments

Graham Criddle

Would someone like to explain this choice as I do not understand how this sense can be a singular as the word means all or every?

The sense doesn't imply singular - it is defined as "every one considered individually". So it refers to more than one thing and that every one of them is counted and recognised.

In Heb 1:3 - it is "the all / every" and so "each" seems to make sense, at least to me!

Beloved Amodeo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1014643#Comment_1014643

"each" seems to make sense

There's some irony here[:)]

What I don't understand here is how they arrived at this sense from the Greek. Is it each and everyone or each and everything? Also, Graham would you care to comment on the lemmas listed?

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1014647#Comment_1014647

Is it each and everyone or each and everything?

I'm no linguistics expert so I'm afraid I'm missing the distinction.

Also, Graham would you care to comment on the lemmas listed?

Again it looks reasonable to me - a couple of examples

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1014647#Comment_1014647

<snip />

What I don't understand here is how they arrived at this sense from the Greek. Is it each and everyone or each and everything? Also, Graham would you care to comment on the lemmas listed?

The Bible Sense Lexicon analysis was performed by looking at each Greek word in its biblical context (but still consulting and comparing to traditional lexicons) and determining the predominant sense it was expressing. The question you've posed presumes a (semantic) contrast between "all people" and "all things": i'm not sure framing the question that way is appropriate in Greek (and i'm not a Greek scholar).

In Heb 1:3, "universe" seems like a reasonable translation of the sense of "all things (that exist)". But focusing on the English label "each" for the BSL sense may be misleading: it's better understood as

there is a sense that has adjectival semantics and can be briefly and approximately described as "(used of count nouns) every one considered individually"
this sense is expressed by a variety of lemmas in their contexts in Greek and Hebrew, as listed here. These may not carry exactly the same semantics (if such a thing is even meaningful): but they are "alike enough" that it's useful to group them together into a single sense.
this sense is distinct from other senses based on (a multitude of factors that are hard to summarize).

Beloved Amodeo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1016686#Comment_1016686

<snip />

What I don't understand here is how they arrived at this sense from the Greek. Is it each and everyone or each and everything? Also, Graham would you care to comment on the lemmas listed?

The Bible Sense Lexicon analysis was performed by looking at each Greek word in its biblical context (but still consulting and comparing to traditional lexicons) and determining the predominant sense it was expressing. The question you've posed presumes a (semantic) contrast between "all people" and "all things": i'm not sure framing the question that way is appropriate in Greek (and i'm not a Greek scholar).

In Heb 1:3, "universe" seems like a reasonable translation of the sense of "all things (that exist)". But focusing on the English label "each" for the BSL sense may be misleading: it's better understood as

there is a sense that has adjectival semantics and can be briefly and approximately described as "(used of count nouns) every one considered individually"

this sense is expressed by a variety of lemmas in their contexts in Greek and Hebrew, as listed here. These may not carry exactly the same semantics (if such a thing is even meaningful): but they are "alike enough" that it's useful to group them together into a single sense.

this sense is distinct from other senses based on (a multitude of factors that are hard to summarize).

I appreciate greatly yours and Grahams response. I will admit you, Sean's response is more of what I was looking for as inspecting the passage in Heb 1.2 panton is rendered with the sense = entire while panta in Heb 1.3 is given as each both having lemma pas. I found this to be quite surprising and felt that it presented something to be learned.

Beloved Amodeo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1016698#Comment_1016698

Sean,

In light of your comments, the following comment by Ellingworth is interesting:

Τὰ πάντα is probably synonymous with πάντων in v. 2, and with the “aeons” in the same verse. Westcott considers the use of the article to imply “all things in their unity”;

Ellingworth, P. (1993). The Epistle to the Hebrews: a commentary on the Greek text (p. 101). Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press.

This implies to me that the senses should match in each case to remain consistent with the scholar's view in this case. Do you agree?

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1016705#Comment_1016705

Sean,

In light of your comments, the following comment by Ellingworth is interesting:

Τὰ πάντα is probably synonymous with πάντων in v. 2, and with the “aeons” in the same verse. Westcott considers the use of the article to imply “all things in their unity”;

Ellingworth, P. (1993). The Epistle to the Hebrews: a commentary on the Greek text (p. 101). Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press.

This implies to me that the senses should match in each case to remain consistent with the scholar's view in this case. Do you agree?

I appreciate Ellingworth's point: but the BSL isn't intended to be a close exegetical analysis of every word (if it were, it would have taken at least 20 years instead of 2!). It does aim to capture contextual lexical semantics in enough detail to be useful, however.

Unlike nouns, which have a hierarchical arrangement, we don't yet have a good system for showing the similarities among adjectives. Clearly these two senses have a fairly close relationship.

Jeremy Thompson

Beloved:

I can't speak to the Greek annotation directly since I didn't do it, but my guess is that this has to do with the word being plural. If that is the case, the shift in meaning is being taken as a function of morphology rather than as a part of the lexical semantics. This is in line with the structure of the article on πᾶς in BDAG where the meaning of "everything" is a subsection under the meaning of "each, every, any" (see section 1.d). In that article, the meanings of the word are seen as functions of morphology; i.e., whether it's used with a noun that has or does not have an article, whether it's used as a substantive, etc.

Jeremy

Jeremy Thompson

As pertains to the Hebrew lemmas, I can say that those are well established usages. For 'ish for example, BDB lists the usage near the bottom of its article where it says "often distrib. = each, every". The examples are followed by a plus sign indicating that only a sampling of the times that the word occurs with this meaning are included.

Beloved Amodeo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1017410#Comment_1017410

Jeremy and Sean,

Your comments and observations have expanded my understanding of how BSL is used in Logos. Thanks so much for taking the time to document your views. I hope others have benefited from this discussion.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1017496#Comment_1017496

Jeremy and Sean,

... I hope others have benefited from this discussion.

Yes, though not in a good way. The first clue, was the ESV anachronistic rendering. The second, the 'sense' that lives in the language, not the religion, and lastly the 2 year quote. I'm sure our linguistics lady with her cute dog is going to get me. I better hide.

Totally unrelated (the word), but you might be surprised, tracking down the verse's sitting down at the right hand allusion. Turns out, Enochian (echos to be fair).

Liam Maguire

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1017496#Comment_1017496

I hope others have benefited from this discussion.

Very much so. Thank you (all) for sharing.

Daniel Bender

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1017496#Comment_1017496

I hope others have benefited from this discussion

Enjoyed reading this discussion. Thanks to each of you.