Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed asks:
Here’s my question: How do you teach students to do word studies? But, here’s the kicker for me. All the student has is (1) a Bible [NIV, TNIV, NRSV, etc] and (2) a computer. There was a day when more had bound concordances; that day is no longer. So, how do we get a student from an English word to the original language word and a listing of all the references to that original language word in an English translation?
Numerous commenters on his blog have mentioned a variety of helpful compuer-based and online resources but in this post I want to list several ideas for doing word studies in the Bible when you don’t have a computer.
Read the Bible
This is a really revolutionary idea. Read the Bible. The whole enchilada. Open it up at “In the beginning” and keep going until you get to “Amen.” Word study is of limited value if you don’t have the big picture in view.
Read an idiomatic translation
Anyone can produce a word-for-word translation. Grab an interlinear and get to work! But producing an idiomatic translation requires an understanding of the Biblical languages and an ability to communicate those ideas in understandable English. An idiomatic translation will show you the meaning of words in their context where a literal translation won’t. Why is that? Because there is not a one-to-one correspondence between words in different languages. Words have multiple senses and a word-for-word translation conceals that fact making you think that you understand a word in every situation when you actually don’t.
Need suggestions for an idiomatic translation in English? Try the Contemporary English Version, or the Good News Bible, or the New Living Translation. These are all excellent translations.
Compare versions and see where they differ
You’re not looking for differences so that you can find out which translations are wrong. The truth is most translations are pretty much the same. There are small differences in wording but by and large they all express pretty much the same information. When you look at two different translations and they sound quite different there are a couple possible reasons:
1. One is literal and the other is idiomatic.
In this case, the literal translation can give you a hint as to what the Greek or Hebrew looks like. But the idiomatic translation can tell you what it means.
2. They are saying basically the same thing but using a different expression.
Language is complex. There are many ways to say the same thing. If the translations differ it doesn’t mean one of them is wrong. Every major translation on the market was produced by a team of experts. Despite what the conspiracy theorists think, the translators weren’t trying to put across some hidden agenda. Instead, they wanted to communicate God’s word as accurately and clearly as possible. Dare I say that in most cases the translators are a lot smarter than we are! So don’t be quick to criticize their work. Try to make your own translation. That’s a quick way to realize the difficulty of the task.
While we’re on the subject, consider praying for and supporting the hundreds of Bible translations being done around the world. For most languages of the world, people don’t have any translation of the Bible. Of the 6,000 languages in the world, less than 2,000 have the New Testament or full Bible. What are we whining about?
3. There is not agreement on what a phrase means.
By and large, people put too much confidence in translations. A translation is not the Word of God. It is a translation of the Word of God. But for most of us it is the closest thing to God’s inspired word that we have. If translations were not an adequate expression of God’s message to us he would not have used translation to proclaim his message. Amazingly enough, in many cases, the Bible is itself a translation. Jesus’ words in the Gospels are recorded in Greek but he was likely speaking in Aramaic.
A helpful way of putting this in perspective is to think about the Greek word logos. Most often people translate this word as word, as in “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.” But another way of translating logos is using the English word message. God was interested in communicating a message to us, that is, the Gospel. The actual words change from language to language, but the message is the same.
Scot’s original post was about doing word studies. For a number of reasons I am not fond of doing word studies. First, word studies tend to take words out of context and create meaning based more on the understanding of the translation language rather than the original text. Second, word studies tend to make connections that don’t exist in the original texts. If you list all the verses that use the Greek word sarks meaning flesh, or cosmos meaning world you are likely to try to arrive at a single definition for these words even though their meaning varies greatly depending on context.
McKnight mentioned something in his post that you didn’t address, David, and that’s the use of a bound concordance (for the purpose of those without electronic texts). All of your concerns about word studies mentioned especially in your last paragraph are valid. I recommend especially Moisés Silva’s book, Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics for more on that subject.
Having said that when bound concordances were more prevalent, the average layperson at church could be shown how to use these tools for responsible word studies, especially if they had Greek and Hebrew dictionaries in the back. I still have on my shelf exhaustive NASB (1977) and NIV concordances. Both have original language dictionaries. The NASB uses the Strong’s system (albeit updated and corrected) and the NIV uses the Goodrick-Kohlenberger system. But I haven’t touched either one in years! The fact that they’re even on my shelf merely demonstrates I have difficulty getting rid of reference books.
When did I stop using them? I guess it was in the early nineties when two things happened: (1) I went to seminary and studied the biblical languages for myself in addition to getting introduced to better tools and (2) I began using electronic texts that had a concordance and underlying meanings built in.
But back to your post…couldn’t the value of word studies for a word like cosmos which you mention help in understanding that there IS more than one meaning to a biblical word. If memory serves, there’s about five different uses/meanings for cosmos in the NT. If someone tried to demonstratethat it only had one meaning many of the verses wouldn’t make any sense.
I think a lot of times we want to pat the person in the pew on the head and say, “Don’t worry about the Greek or Hebrew; just leave that to me.” But I feel there has to be room for responsible instruction in how to use some of these tools. Your more serious believer will discover them invariably anyway. I know a little knowledge can be dangerous, but no knowledge at all seems somehow worse. I believe it’s great, for instance, that Bill Mounce is teaching Greek to laypeople in his church. I don’t think we should ever force that on people, but if there are genuinely interested folks, why not?
Reason #4 for translations to differ significantly is, of course, text-critical decisions—sometimes the available original-language manuscripts differ on the reading, and different translators will make different decisions about which reading is “more likely” (in their view) to be the original.
Pastor Rick Warren uses something called S.P.A.C.E.P.E.T.S. It’s a study tool for further revelation. (This is taken from Saddleback Church’s Class 101 study information. Pastor Rick thought of this technique in his own personal studies.)
Ask yourself these questions, after reading Scripture. What is God telling you?
Sin to confess
Promise to claim
Attitude to change
Command to keep
Example to follow
Prayer to pray
Error to avoid
Truth to know
Something to thank God for
I try to imagine thinking about “space pets” every time I read the Bible…
Nice post, David. I think I’ll have to link to it. You say several things more people need to hear.
Low-Tech Bible Study
Lingamish has gone back to Africa to continue helping a Bible translation project there. But he continues to blog wisely. I like what he blogged on today about Low-Tech Bible Study.
[...] Low-Tech Bible Study By Eddie What is the best way to study the Bible? According to Lingamish it is to study the Bible! Nice and simple. This post has a number of very good things to say about how to read the Bible and the value of different types of Bible study. Language is complex. There are many ways to say the same thing. If the translations differ it doesn’t mean one of them is wrong. Every major translation on the market was produced by a team of experts. Despite what the conspiracy theorists think, the translators weren’t trying to put across some hidden agenda. Instead, they wanted to communicate God’s word as accurately and clearly as possible. Dare I say that in most cases the translators are a lot smarter than we are! So don’t be quick to criticize their work. Try to make your own translation. That’s a quick way to realize the difficulty of the task. [...]
Thanks, Wayne for the plug. I have to admit that I didn’t answer Scot’s original question since I was looking at “low tech” means. But I do a lot of word studies aided by computer. Just this morning I was looking at “icon” in Col. 1:15 and it was extremely valuable being able to look at other uses of the word in the New Testament. Maybe someone needs to post on how they do word studies.
Nice post, Dave. Even though I use computer tools heavily to do my word studies, I still made room in my luggage for two hardcopy concordances when I came to Austria for a semester.
I also find I hear things in Scripture in German that I don’t hear in English just because the church jargon is different. One of my favorites is ’sich bekehren’ = ‘repent’, more literally ‘convert yourself’ and because the root ‘kehren’ = ‘turn’ (and BTW ’sweep’) is so obviously present you get the hint of turning to God/away from sin, too.
Not being a linguist, I don’t even think about a lot of what is posted here. I do find it informative. I usually read the NIV or NASV and just accept what I read. I like the idea of just reading from front to back to get the whole context of the Bible. Reading recently in Amos I found ideas that pertain to where I am today. I believe we really need to absorb the Old Testament as it seems to apply more to believers lives than the New Testament.
Keep posting.
Thank you Lingamish, I also enjoy this blog … very simple and effective method. I like I like
How do we pray for and support the work of Bible Translation? I know the answer, but I was wondering if you would tell us