Hermeneutics

The Little Words: Greek Grammar, Discourse, and Interpretation

Here’s the short version of this post: I helped write a book on Greek and biblical interpretation and it’s coming out soon. Also, you should buy it.

I have mentioned this project once or twice before, but I thought it would be sensible to bring it up again, as the book will be released soon. “What is an ‘interpretive lexicon,’ anyway?” This has been a fairly common question in my life for the past several years. Generally the question comes from family and friends who ask “what I’m up to these days.” Needless to say, “Writing a book on Greek” does not usually help explain myself.

But I should clarify. Most of my work – and that of my co-authors – was closer to compiling than writing. Although there is an introduction that explains the purpose of the book and how to use it, the vast majority of the book is a reiteration of other books.

Now, paradoxically, that is precisely the value of this lexicon. Students of biblical studies, pastors, and professors well know the vast array of resources available when it comes to studying the Greek text of the New Testament. So the point of our work in this lexicon is to condense a handful of the key texts and present them succinctly. In essence, our hope is that this lexicon is a simple but powerful exegetical tool; the fulcrum, so to speak, for the interpretive lever.

So let me attempt to answer the question by addressing the two aspects of the book: 1) the Lexicon and 2) the Interpretive.

The “Lexicon”

There are three major resources condensed into this slim volume (~96pg). They are the following:

  1. BDAG (and BAGD) – Anyone familiar with New Testament Greek will know the Walter Bauer’s Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der übrigen urchristlichen Literatur. Okay, you may not know it by that name. But that is where this work started before Wilbur Gingrich translated and adapted it with the help of William F. Arndt in 1949. In a second edition in 1979, known as “BAGD,” Frederick W. Danker replaced Arndt to expand the work. The most recent edition in 2000 added still more material and was coined BDAG (i.e. Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich).

In our Interpretive Lexicon the word entries provide glosses keyed to both BDAG (’00) and to BAGD (’79), since they differ from one another often, so that when you go to look up a word you see a succinct chunk of information along with the page and section references to both versions of Bauer. The idea is that our entry provides the essential lexical information, with a quick link to the definitive NT lexicon should the exegete need greater detail. Naturally, this may be a frequent need, which is why we have so tenaciously included information from and about BDAG/BAGD. We encourage careful cross-referencing.

 The “Interpretive”

Thus far the “Lexicon.” Now for the “Interpretive.” As indicated by the subtitle of the book, it is focused on what linguists often call “function words.” In my experience, students usually think of these as the “annoying little words,” since there are so many of them and they are so difficult to define strictly. Unlike the more easily definable (and memorizable) “content words,” such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, “function words” are what fall in between, namely prepositions, adverbs, particles, relative pronouns, and conjunctions.

Another way to think about function words is as “connecting words,” since their job is to indicate the ways that ideas are connected in  the flow of thought of a text (spoken or written). And it is for that exact reason that these “annoying little words” are in fact stupendously important for interpreting scripture. If we are serious about understanding scripture, then we must understand how the flow of thought progresses. This is one of the tasks of interpretation, and function words are at the heart of it all. That is the rationale behind the other two resources included in our Interpretive Lexicon.

2.  Wallace’s Greek Grammar – Students of NT Greek will also well know Wallace’s Greek Grammar, a heavy-weight text that is rightly considered a standard in exegetical work. In this Grammar, Wallace focuses on syntax, which makes it perfectly suited to our lexicon, not to mention the fact that it is also published by Zondervan. For every word that we treat in the Interpretive Lexicon, if there is any discussion by Wallace we cite every page reference at the end of our entry. Again, the idea is that wherever the exegete is in need of greater detail, he or she has quick access to the industrial strength resources.

3.  Harris’s Prepositions and Theology – Finally, for even greater accuracy with one of the most significant Greek parts of speech – prepositions – we have also included Murray J. Harris’s work. In my experience, this resource is not as well known as it should be, so hopefully our lexicon will bring it to attention. Essentially, Harris discusses each Greek preposition (and even “improper” prepositions) in detail. As the book’s title implies, the meaning of a preposition can and does have profound impact upon theology. Consider, for example,  the importance of the preposition ὑπέρ (hyper), which in the genitive case connotes “for, on behalf of,” to discussions of atonement.

Discourse Matters & A Sample Entry

To give an idea of what an entry looks like, here is a sample. You may notice the boldfaced letters and symbols that occur in each numbered category. garThese boldfaced symbols and letters are extremely significant and form the backbone of the lexicon’s functionality. Some of you will be familiar with discourse analysis. Perhaps more of you will have heard of John Piper’s “Bible Arcing” (see BibleArc).

I only want to mention this here as a primer for another post coming up. There I will discuss more about discourse analysis (which goes by many names), how function words fit into it, and what the bold letters and symbols mean in our entries. Stay tuned!

Review of J. Ross Wagner

Der Prophet Jesaja

In a previous post I briefly discussed J. Ross Wagner’s book Reading the Sealed Book: Old Greek Isaiah and the Problem of Septuagint Hermeneutics, FAT 88 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck / Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013). This I did partly because I was in the midst of reading the book itself for the present review and found portions of it so helpful, but also because I had also recently announced a series on the blog overviewing major contemporary translations of the Septuagint.

As I mentioned, the “issue” of LXX hermeneutics – determining how the Greek translator understood and rendered his text, and how later readers understood and applied that text – is central to one’s “approach” to translating the LXX into a modern language. This will hopefully become more clear as I review the major projects.

Wagner falls closest to the approach of NETS, although he makes certain caveats that distinguish his own perspective on key issues. In my estimation, some of these caveats are what create problems, at least in his stated methodology. Nevertheless, his actual treatment of the text at hand (Isaiah 1) is detailed and well executed. He has certainly advanced the state of the conversation on Greek Isaiah.

The Review

With that said, I post my review of Wagner here in full..

Wagner, the “Sealed Book” and LXX Translation

Wagner and the Sealed Book

In this post I want to preempt a book review I am working on of J. Ross Wagner. Reading the Sealed Book: Reading Old Greek Isaiah and the Problem of Septuagint Hermeneutics. FAT 88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck / Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 295. ISBN 978-3-16-152557-5. €99.00 (hardcover). There is so much to talk about in this book, a review of it is almost impossible without vastly understating its contents. What I wish to focus on here, however, is his introductory material where Wagner discusses common approaches to LXX interpretation, or hermeneutics. While this may sound arcane, it is actually quite relevant for the LXX novice, since each of the (now four) major modern translations of the Septuagint take a different approach to their work based on their answer to the question: “How should we translate this translation?”

If you are interested in LXX studies, you need to know about this debate, since it is foundational to almost everything else in the discipline. What I will do here is highlight some of Wagner’s introductory material and interject my own “translation” of the technical details for a less familiar audience. This will pair nicely, I hope, with the series I’m working through right now on the major contemporary LXX translation projects (see this initial post).

Production & Reception

Wagner defines “LXX hermeneutics” as both “how to characterize the translators own interpretation of his source [text]” and “how a modern reader is to interpret the translated text” (2n8). This definition encapsulates the two central issues at almost every point in LXX studies, namely production and reception. The first – production – deals with the hypothetical Jew who sat down one day (or week or month) to actually translate (i.e. produce) a book of Hebrew scripture into Koine Greek; what was he looking at in his source text, what did he understand as he read, what did he mean by the words he wrote?

The second issue – reception – deals with what anyone else did with the translation he produced, whether that be read it, interpret it, apply it, translate it (again), and so forth, regardless of whether this agrees with the translator’s intentions. In other words, good LXX scholarship differentiates between what the translator read and understood and meant in his translation on Day 1 from what some later reader of the translation reads or understands (rightly or wrongly) on Day ‘n’. The first is difficult to prove, and the second is difficult to defend, unless that reader is you.

Two Questions in Translation

Two questions need answering in the face of the difficulty. First, we must ask to what degree “the textual-linguistic character of the LXX/OG translations conforms to target-language models” (3). In other words, how did the translator’s work stack up against original Greek literary compositions in his own day? To what degree were they similar or different, and how?

How would the LXX have compared to Greek works in the Library of Alexandria?

With this first question, we are on one level dealing with the perceived competency of the LXX translator(s) for their task, regardless of their intent. This question is primarily descriptive in terms of the qualities of the Greek itself. Part of what makes answering this question so difficult is that there are plenty of places where the Greek of the LXX is basically incomprehensible as Greek, yet because we know the Hebrew text “behind” that translation we can make sense of it as a translation of Hebrew. On the other hand, there are plenty of instances where the LXX translation is fabulous Greek as Greek (meaning in terms of stylistic flair and tone), yet it departs from the Hebrew (at least as we have it in the Masoretic Text).

At this point we have bumped into the second question that needs answering (they are related, but distinct), namely the intended relationship between Greek and Hebrew texts. In other words, was the Greek translation meant to stand on its own two feet? Or was it meant to be read always with the Hebrew original in hand (or at least in mind)?

On one side some scholars say the Greek text exists to serve its Hebrew “parent” text, and to represent it as accurately as possible for the Greek-speaking audience who (possibly) no longer knew Hebrew. Other scholars, however, view the LXX as an independent text, distinct from its Hebrew “parent” and aiming to interpret it for the Greek-speaking audience. Does the Greek translation of a given book of the Hebrew OT “mirror” the Hebrew (e.g., in word count, word order syntax, tone, etc.)? Is it the Hebrew text in “Greek clothing”? Or is it crafted to represent the Hebrew and pay more attention to easy Greek reading and style? Clearly translator competency comes into play meaningfully in these answers.

Yet another way to ask the second question is whether 1) the translation aims to preserve the textual form of the Hebrew at the expense of being good Greek (text-centered approach), or 2) the translation aims to preserve the textual meaning of the Hebrew with less concern for textual “shape” (reader-centered approach). The former views the Hebrew text as central, the latter the Greek reader as central. The former understands the LXX to be a means of preserving the Hebrew, while the latter understands it to be a means of conveying the Hebrew.

Modern LXX Translations

As we will see in the following posts in the Contemporary LXX Translation Project series, these are the main contours that will differentiate the various projects. Stay tuned for further refining and clarification! I will probably post my full review of Wagner eventually as well.