L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #223 FL anachronistic tagging

MJ. Smith

Another tip of the day (TOTD) series for Logos/Verbum 10. They will be short and often drawn from forum posts. Feel free to ask questions and/or suggest forum posts you'd like to see included. Adding comments about the behavior on mobile and web apps would be appreciated by your fellow forumites. A search for "L/V 10+ Tip of the Day site:community.logos.com" on Google should bring the tips up as should this Reading List within the application.

This tip is inspired by the forum post: L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #220 FL tagging error or difference of opinion? - Logos Forums

This is a case that was argued in the forums. Logos made the change requested by some users; I was on the losing side arguing for historical accuracy rather than Christian interpretation.

If you are looking for the original meaning of the Bible text to the author or the audience, the concept of Holy Spirit as a divine being and third person of the Trinity was not available in Old Testament times. The earliest one could place the concept in proto-Trinitarian form and debatable interpretation is 2nd Temple literature (Book of Enoch, Wisdom of Solomon, Dead Sea Scrolls). Therefore, all the results found in the Old Testament for the search argument person:"Holy Spirit" are Christian interpretation not the original meaning of the text. Think of Alexander Schmemann's concept of reading the Old Testament through the Cross. In other words, the tagging is anachronistic.

A forum example of the issue created:

I hear lots of preachers stating the “first mention”. 

It might be instructive to search for “first mention” (with quotes) in your Library  e.g. "“He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth” Luke 1:13–17... . The account contains the first mention of the Holy Spirit..."   Richards, L. (1990). The 365 Day Devotional Commentary (p. 714).

1. Perform a Search of "Holy Spirit"
1. the "first mention" in Luke does occur at Lk 1:15, but
2. the "first mention" in the NT occurs in Mt 1:18 and
3. the "first mention" in the Bible occurs at Ps 51:11
2. Perform a Search of person:"Holy Spirit"
1. the "first mention" in the Bible occurs at Gen 1:2

The text quoted does not clarify the context of "first mention". Even if one assumes it is related to the birth account, Mt 1:18 has a strong claim to being "first".  person:"Holy Spirit" shows the application of "Holy Spirit" to "Spirit of God" in Genesis.

Logos/Verbum defense:

Hi MJ:

In the best case (we all make mistakes), we would start with a more literal meaning. Whether it's hyperliteral or simply literal depends on the task, i suppose. In many cases, we're trying to capture (at best) a majority consensus of reputable scholarship, or when that isn't available, at least a responsible and defensible perspective. 

In this particular case, many English translations have "Spirit of God", so I don't think we're innovating here (and the Bible Sense Lexicon has both wind and spirit (God), which is only applied in the Hebrew Bible: but we also have Holy Spirit as the referent, to your point). Just as a translation has to squeeze a treasure house of meaning and nuance into the thimble of a single word or phrase, we often have to squeeze the same wealth into a single annotation (but at least without the requirement for fluid expressions, sounds good read from the pulpit, etc.). 

Calling this sensus plenior annotation goes a little too far for me: but we always face the split/join trade-off:

• Splitting everything lets you describe it more particularly, but makes it harder to find things that are "the same"
• Joining everything lets you find things, but doesn't necessarily do justice to their differences. 

We're constantly evaluating this tradeoff, and there's no One Right Solution: we just do the best we can given our constraints. 

Is this done consistently throughout the OT?

Perhaps more consistently for BSL senses (which don't annotate most proper nouns, however), because it came later. But even here, these two types of annotations serve slightly different purposes:

• Referents probably capture more of the "who is this" from the perspective of a modern reader (I'd be uneasy claiming we've captured the meaning known to God! But I understand what you mean.)
• BSL captures a more literal lexico-semantic perspective