Confused about the Guides
I have a question concerning the Guides. If we are trying to use Exegetical Guide to find out the Hebrew and Greek definition by using the Word by Word section and when we have discovered the definition it is the same or almost the same word as the English word in our English Bible. For Example if we are doing a Word by Word on John 4:10 and we are looking up the word living in the verse; the lemma word is zao~ and the definition is – to live. Which I think is the root word for living. So similarly I have come across several words I have looked up and the definition is the same as the original English word in the verse. In this case the original word to lookup was – “living” and the definition was “to live”.
So my question is why go through all these analysis if one is going to come back with the same meaning as the original word. It seems we are coming back to where we started from. Even if we do a Bible word Study on the lemma zao~ which means to “to live” , majority of the translation ring is taken up by the definition “to live” and if we click on part of the ring which means to live, that part flies out; and several verses are listed and John 4:10 is one of those verses with the word living highlighted. I am no farther in my understanding of the word living after I had done all these investigations than I began with when I read from John 4:10 concerning the word living.
It seems like there is no need to go through these investigations if it is going to come back and tell you the word means the same as what one read in the text.
Please help me understand. Thank you!
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Roy, perhaps we undervalue the work of translators. Most words in our versions, thinking especially of word-fror-word translations, are the same or very similar. The transfer of the word and its meaning from Greek, for instance, to English is relatively straight forward. Such in the case you point out above.
Here's something to consider for your next study. Examine a verse/passage with your 5 preferred Bibles, and see if you can notice where they may differ on a certain word or phase. Now do some investigation to find out why the translators struggled with this particular word/phrase. I think this would be more fruitful then examining all the words.
Personally I do find understanding the meaning of certain key words from the original language enriches the study and adds depth to the conveyance of meaning. Seems to me that the more valuable commentaries center on this activity. Of course once we understand what it says, then what it means, the process remains incomplete until we realize how it applies to us and whether we will be obedient to its teaching. Now that seems to me the more challenging part of any Bible study.
Best regards
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Roy Daniel said:
It seems like there is no need to go through these investigations if it is going to come back and tell you the word means the same as what one read in the text. Please help me understand.
It is much more complicated than you stating, and no answer in the forum is going to really be sufficient. Words have a range of meanings, and they change over time. Just as a quick check, if you think you are always going to come back with the same answer, why are there differences in English translations?
One thing I will agree with - word studies can be pointless or dangerous without a grasp of the languages (Paging George, Come in George [;)]). Personally I have a very basic knowledge of the original languages, and am very cautious with word studies. Nevertheless, with my understanding, it drives me crazy to hear a preacher spend 20 minutes "verifying" biblical words as you have described. Indeed, it IS pointless. Worse yet is when a Pastor will build a sermon around a bad understanding of the languages. For example: In Romans 1:16, Paul writes that the Gospel is the POWER (δύναμις / dynamis) of God for salvation. Preachers will pick up on the word power (dynamis) and start talking about dynamite (wow, thats powerful!). The problem is that there is no way Paul could have dynamite in his thoughts since dynamite was invented in the 1860's!
I suggest you read some books on translation and original languages. Here are some suggestions:
Greek for the rest of us – William Mounce
Exegetical Fallacies – DA Carson
How Biblical Languages Work: – Silzer & Finley
How to Read the Bible for All its Worth - Fee & StuartmacOS, iOS & iPadOS |Logs| Install
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To expand a bit on what has already been said consider this. The Exegetical guide provides more that just word meanings. The morphological information is often helpful in understanding the text. The occurence graphs are sometimes helpful.
Words have meaning and word choice often has significance. For example there are 11 different lemmas used in the NT that are all translated living, live, etc. Why did John choose this particular word? Where else did John use that word and in what context? Where did other writers choose that word and in what context?
What did the author say? What did the orginal hearers or readers understand when he said it? These are two questions that can really only be answered completely when you have gone through a sound hermeneutical / exegetical process that includes studying what was orginally said.
I, like many, have very limited knowledge of the orginal languages. With Logos guys like us can use the tools the program offers (including the exegetical guide) to study them (to a certain extent) in spite of our ignorance.
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Roy Daniel said:
It seems like there is no need to go through these investigations if it is going to come back and tell you the word means the same as what one read in the text. Please help me understand.
Welcome [:D]
alabama24 said:It is much more complicated than you stating, and no answer in the forum is going to really be sufficient. Words have a range of meanings, and they change over time. Just as a quick check, if you think you are always going to come back with the same answer, why are there differences in English translations?
Thread => The word grace and Strong's numbers includes:
Caution: English is not Greek. Proper names tend to have a one to one correspondence between languages to identify a person, place, or thing. Other words often have a different range of meaning. Greek has the verb ἀκούω (Strong's # 191) with meaning "I hear"; missing for this verb is a nuance with case usage. The verb ἀκούω with accusative case means hearing with understanding (e.g. Acts 9:4) while usage with genitive case means heard sound, but not understand (e.g. Acts 9:7).
Greek has a wider range of verbal expression than English. Thread => Greek part of speech search includes link to wiki Extended Tips for Visual Filters => Examples of visual filters that shows a number of Logos Greek Morphology visual filters, which can be used in English and Greek resources with appropriate tagging.
Fredc said:I, like many, have very limited knowledge of the orginal languages. With Logos guys like us can use the tools the program offers (including the exegetical guide) to study them (to a certain extent) in spite of our ignorance.
+1 [Y] about limited knowledge of original languages. Thankful can see range of Greek verbal expression in Logos 4 using morphological visual filters.
Likewise Thankful for power of prayer and meditation plus Holy Spirit guidance.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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alabama24 said:
it drives me crazy to hear a preacher spend 20 minutes "verifying" biblical words as you have described. Indeed, it IS pointless. Worse yet is when a Pastor will build a sermon around a bad understanding of the languages.
[Y][Y] - and if I had more thumbs, they'd be up also
I am in the final stages of a PhD in NT Greek and have had preacher friends who assumed I constantly explained Greek words in my sermons. In fact, I seldom do. There are times when it gives a unique insight, but most of the time the English translation carries the same or a very close idea. I use Greek a lot in preparation, to help me make sure I understand the passage (and then, generally, I find more help in syntax rather than in word studies).
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alabama24 said:
it drives me crazy to hear a preacher spend 20 minutes "verifying" biblical words as you have described. Indeed, it IS pointless. Worse yet is when a Pastor will build a sermon around a bad understanding of the languages.
I agree, but then, whole theological positions are based upon a word or a phrase……and it is not just pastor's that show support for these bad theological positions, going to great lengths 'verifying' that they are true when the points they make are as far-fectched as the theology they propose........
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This is a general rule with many exceptions -- check out John 5:25.
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Hi Roy - it sounds to me as though you haven't got a particularly good lexicon. I just looked up zao in BDAG, and was going to paste the entry here to demonstrate but it's too long - it gives numerous examples of how the word is translated in different situations. . If you right-click on the Greek or Hebrew word, then click "lemma" in the resulting box, the bottom of that window gives you all the lexicons you have and clicking on one of these will bring up the lexicon entry for that word.
If you want to do language work, it is worth investing in BDAG for Greek, and HALOT for Hebrew as a start. You can buy them as a bundle, but it's quite expensive (although indispensable in my view).
Bible Word Studies do sometimes provide a simple way of seeing the different ways in which a particular word is translated (see below for didaskein) but usually just provide a starting point for research.
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Roy Daniel said:
I have a question concerning the Guides. If we are trying to use Exegetical Guide to find out the Hebrew and Greek definition by using the Word by Word section and when we have discovered the definition it is the same or almost the same word as the English word in our English Bible. For Example if we are doing a Word by Word on John 4:10 and we are looking up the word living in the verse; the lemma word is zao~ and the definition is – to live. Which I think is the root word for living. So similarly I have come across several words I have looked up and the definition is the same as the original English word in the verse. In this case the original word to lookup was – “living” and the definition was “to live”.
There's a lot of good stuff that's been said here already. I'll try not to repeat what's been said. I would add that any 'personal translation' that changes the meaning of how a passage is commonly translated should be treated with great suspicion.
In the specific case you mention above, I was most helped by a casual conversation I had in Spanish with someone who mentioned "agua viviente" (living water) but not in a Biblical context. He was talking about running water, as opposed to stagnant water. When I returned to my study, I wondered if the Bible's use of the phrase 'living water' meant running water, instead of non-running water. I checked a few passages, and a commentary or two, and found out that it did!
All that to say, sometimes merely knowing the meaning of the words isn't enough to understand the meaning. in John 4, Jesus is contrasting well water (not stagnant, but not running water either), with living (running) water, and is using an intentional play on words to say more than might have been immediately obvious to the woman He was talking to. Our problem, as English speakers, is we hear the 2nd meaning, but not the primary, missing the subtlety in the conversation.
Now, I do word studies. I do them a lot. But when doing them, it's absolutely essential to look at the words in their context, as words always convey meaning in context. For the above you might do a phrase search (in English) of "living water" and look at the original language behind the translation. You'll probably not find much of interest there. But what might be helpful is to look at other places where "living water" is found, and see if my conclusions (e.g.) are right or wrong.Searching in English will give different results depending on your translation, even this can be helpful (e.g., ESV Song 4:15 has "living water" where NIV84 has "flowing water" - interesting, isn't it.).
Another way to search is to do a lemma search for zao and find any verses that also contain the lemma for the word translated "water" (hudor) But you'll only find one other verse (John 7:38, BTW Rev.7:17 uses zoe the noun form of zao - so even a lemma search would miss that one).
Back to my Spanish interaction. Speaking 2 languages has made me more sensitive to the idea that there is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between words and meaning. If you have something said in English and translate it into Spanish, it will probably require more words -- but so does translating a thought originally expressed in Spanish into English. Words have meaning in the context in which they are spoken, but also in their culture. Some words have so much meaning, or such a wide range of meaning that several words would be needed in another language to translate the meaning carried in the given context. NOTE: translators already know this! That's why the same word might be translated differently, depending on the context. Consider it dangerous to disagree with them - they're experts in these things.
One final thought: word studies sometimes yield nothing new, and confirm what we thought we knew. That's a good thing. Sometimes such studies open other possibilities, or nuances, that enhance our understanding. That's good too (assuming we're not reading into the context what isn't there). And sometimes somebody says "what this word really means in the original is...", and we can do a word study to confirm, or deny the 'new and improved' meaning. Word studies have their place. I like them and use them frequently. But they should always be done in the context of a well-rounded knowledge of the original language, translation challenges, other scholarship (read some commentaries too!), and, if I may emphasize these two, the Christian community and prayer.
"That's all I have to say about that" Or, to say the same thing in Spanish, "Ya."
Help links: WIKI; Logos 6 FAQ. (Phil. 2:14, NIV)
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Richard DeRuiter said:
In the specific case you mention above, I was most helped by a casual conversation I had in Spanish with someone who mentioned "agua viviente" (living water) but not in a Biblical context. He was talking about running water, as opposed to stagnant water. When I returned to my study, I wondered if the Bible's use of the phrase 'living water' meant running water, instead of non-running water. I checked a few passages, and a commentary or two, and found out that it did!
Thankful for UBS New Testament Handbook Series with translation and cross-cultural insights:
Keep Smiling [:)]
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alabama24 said:
I suggest you read some books on translation and original languages. Here are some suggestions:
Greek for the rest of us – William Mounce
Exegetical Fallacies – DA Carson
How Biblical Languages Work: – Silzer & Finley
How to Read the Bible for All its Worth - Fee & StuartTotally agree with these suggestions. Concur with what everyone has said, especially the bit about not being an expert, but getting into the original languages can provide some rich rewards. Just know though your limitations, and use your commentaries, theologies etc to always check anything you discover to ensure you are not taking the text out of context, if you do all you'll be left with is a con.
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