Proclaimer Blog
How to understand Greek words
It has come to something when the letters pages of the Times carry discussions on the meaning of words. In response to an article from Tom Wright about the Women Bishops vote, a Classics professor from Liverpool responded. Wright had asserted that the word authentein in 1 Tim 2.12 occurs nowhere else in the NT (true) and therefore we must be cautious about building an entire theology on its meaning. The professor – Christopher Tuplin – maintained that the word can be understood from contemporary sources where it is more common. NT Greek, he argued, is not a language in a vacuum. (Tuplin, it should be noted, is no Christian complementarian – quite the reverse).
It's an interesting debate – and one I'm not immediately going to get drawn into. There's enough ink spilt on this already. But it did get me thinking about how we determine the meaning of Greek words. Here are some ideas:
context drives a lot. Most words have a range of meanings and how they are best understood depends on the context in which they are used. peirasmos can mean trials, tests of temptations – and although there is overlap between these meanings, the precise meaning you allocate to each use of the word in, say, James 1, matters a lot.
- NT use of words helps. How is the word used elsewhere? This, again, is a great help. I think we should always try to use internal evidence before external. Are there obvious places where the word is used clearly? Clearly, if words have multiple meanings, then it is not as straightforward as saying a meaning in one place must be the same as a meaning in another, but it can be a help.
- external use of words. How is the word used elsewhere in contemporary literature? A lexicon which covers both NT use and external use is a help here – I use the majestic BAGD (expensive, but a great tool: £99 on amazon, £90 via Logos). By the way, to those who say going externally usurps our doctrine of clarity – that's a serious rewriting of the doctrine of clarity which has always involved ordinary means (see, for example, the Westminster Confession Chapter VII)
- use experts. On the whole, Bible translations are compiled by experts in language. That is a good thing for which we should thank God. They have already done all of the work above – thinking through context, NT use, external use. On the whole, in our English translations, their work is very reliable. Preachers should be cautious of sentences beginning, "I know our Bibles say [ ] but what this really means is [ ]" Am I being too provocative to say, most of the time, you're likely to be wrong?
And, if you're interested in the letter, here it is:
Sir, Much as I should like to believe that I Timothy ii, 11-12 does not refuse to allow women to teach men, I cannot see that “serious scholars” have any excuse for disagreeing about the meaning of the salient part of the text and Tom Wright (Opinion, Nov 23) ought not to suggest otherwise. The Greek text plainly says “let a woman learn quietly and in all submission; I do not permit a woman to teach or to have power over a man”, and it contains no words that “occur nowhere else”. The verb translated as “have power over” does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament, but its meaning is unproblematically established by its use (and the use of its cognates) in other Greek texts; New Testament Greek is not a different language, hermetically sealed from the Greek of other texts and documents. (If one wants a word that really occurs nowhere else, try instead the one translated “daily” in the Lord’s Prayer.) The interesting thing about I Timothy ii is not what it says (which is beyond debate) but the fact that it says it. One does not need to issue diktats against things that one cannot imagine happening. Paul’s pronouncements in favour of female subordination are just another sign that (as Tom Wright points out) the early Church community was inclined to value women and even that, had things developed without hindrance, a different configuration of teaching practice might have emerged more quickly. Meanwhile, the fact that progress can be a very messy and far from unidirectional thing does not forbid the belief that fulfilling the “promise of transformed gender roles” in an episcopal context might be a piece of progress whose time has come.Professor Christopher Tuplin Dept. of Classics and Ancient History, University of Liverpool