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Analysing a Biblical Text: Some Important Linguistic Distinctions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Vern S. Poythress
Vern S. Poythress
Affiliation:
Westminster Theological SeminaryChestnut Hill Philadelphia, Penn. 19118
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Extract

Sometimes exegetes differ from one another not so much because they have seen different data but because they are in fact looking for different types of ‘meaning’. For this reason, it is useful to classify different types of analysis of a text, and different types of ‘meaning’ resulting from such analysis.

The need for such classification has increased with the progress of biblical scholarship. Biblical exegetes and theologians have long had to deal with questions like ‘What is the meaning of this word of Scripture?’ and ‘What is the meaning of this verse, paragraph, section, or book?’ The intrinsic difficulties of recovering meaning from dead languages and sometimes unfamiliar cultural settings are often challenge enough. But, as increasing refinement and exactitude are sought, another kind of difficulty can arise, namely a difficulty with kinds of ‘meaning’. Is it indeed true that there is always only one meaning which is the meaning of a text? Is this the case even in poetic passages that may suggest or allude to new perspectives and comparisons without explicitly teaching them?1 Moreover, supposing that someone has arrived at ‘the meaning’ of a text, how is he to communicate this to someone else? In a commentary? In a sermon? In a form like Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament? Or perhaps even in the form of a painting or a new social and political organisation?

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 1979 , pp. 113 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1979

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References

page 113 note 1 cf. the Roman Catholic discussion of sensus plenior, Brown, R., ‘The Sensus Plenior in the Last Ten Years’, CBQ, XXV (1963). pp. 262–285.Google Scholar

page 113 note 2 cf. the foundational remarks of Austin, John L., Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), pp. 23–43Google Scholar; Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968)Google Scholar; and work in philosophical hermeneutics like Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of California, 1976)Google Scholar, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury, 1975)Google Scholar; Hirsch, E. D., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven–London: Yale, 1967).Google Scholar

page 114 note 1 Downing, , ‘Meanings’, What about the New Testament?, ed. Hooker, Morna and Hickling, C. (London: SCM, 1975), pp. 127–142.Google Scholar

page 114 note 2 cf., e.g., Sawyer, John F. A., Semantics in Biblical Research (London: SCM, 1972), pp. 4–27Google Scholar; Fohrer, George et al. , Exegese des Alten Testaments. Einführung in die Methodik (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1973)Google Scholar; Richter, Wolfgang, Exegese als Literaturwissenschaft. Entwurf einer alttestamentlichen Literaturtheorie und Methodologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971).Google Scholar

page 115 note 1 Saussure, , Course in General Linguistics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) (French original, 1915).Google Scholar

page 116 note 1 Barr, , ‘Etymology and the Old Testament’, OTS, XIX (1974), pp. 21–22, 28.Google Scholar

page 119 note 1 Sometimes, of course, a situational factor does lead to a change even in the middle of a speech. A speaker may adjust to puzzled looks from his audience. As some have argued, Paul may have adjusted to new information from Corinth when he began 2 Corinthians 10. Such factors are properly included under synchronic analysis of the situation.

page 122 note 1 Conzelmann, Hans, The Theology of St. Luke (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

page 123 note 1 Farrer, Austin, A Study in St. Mark (London: Dacre, 1951), P. 347.Google Scholar

page 124 note 1 cf. Hirsch, pp. 1–23, 218, for an attempt to specify more precisely the speaker's meaning. ‘Verbal meaning is, by definition that aspect of a speaker's “intention” (in a phenomenological sense) which, under linguistic conventions, may be shared by others’ (p. 218). Unconscious implications are included (pp. 220–4).

page 125 note 2 Wimsatt, William, The Verbal Icon (London: Methuen, 1954), pp. 3–18.Google Scholar

page 125 note 1 Hirsch's preference for author meaning is based on a lively feeling for this problem (Validity in Interpretation, pp. 3, 25).

page 125 note 2 Wimsatt, pp. 3–18, 19–39.

page 126 note 1 I assume here that 2 Thessalonians is Pauline.

page 126 note 2 Some reply is due to Hirsch's arguments that discourse meaning must be speaker meaning (Validity in Interpretation). Hirsch is largely occupied with defending the idea of an original historically-fixed meaning over against later interpretations. My use of the diachronic/synchronic distinction shows that I am fundamentally sympathetic with him. Moreover, I would stress that discourse meaning takes into account everything that the intended audience would know about the speaker. Hence their estimate of the speaker's intention is very much in the foreground. If the speaker is an effective speaker, the audience will understand him well enough and we can ignore the difference between speaker meaning and discourse meaning. But Hirsch is aware that a speaker may ‘bungle’ (pp. 233–4). He admits that in this case a difference exists between the speaker's meaning and ‘What the speech community takes it to mean’ (p. 233). This distinction is all that I'm concerned for. But Hirsch argues further that, even in this case, since the parole is the parole of the author, the meaning must be the meaning of the author. This is a petitio principii which assumes rather than demonstrates that meaning must be located primarily with the author. If we accept Hirsch's own theory that meaning is a ‘type’ distinguishable from any particular act of ‘intending’, there is no reason why we cannot describe ‘What the speech community takes it to mean’ as also a ‘meaning’. The problem is more general than what Hirsch considers. Even if the author does not ‘bungle’ seriously, yet he may commit infelicities. Even when a speaker is basically successful, he may not succeed in communicating all the nuances that he wanted, even though those nuances could have been communicated had he chosen his language more carefully.

page 129 note 1 On the identification of borders of ‘emic’ units, see Pike, Kenneth L., Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, 2nd ed. (The Hague–Paris: Mouton, 1967), pp. 76–78.Google Scholar

page 129 note 2 This has been theoretically grounded by K. Pike (ibid., pp. 25–149) and confirmed by work on sociolinguistics of conversational interchange (Klammer, Thomas P., ‘The Structure of Dialogue Paragraphs in Written English Dramatic and Narrative Discourse’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1971).Google Scholar

page 135 note 1 The French Confession of Faith (1559), III; the Belgic Confession, IV; The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, VI; The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1, 2.

page 135 note 2 Sawyer, Semantics in Biblical Research; Childs, Brevard S., Exodus (London: SCM, 1974).Google Scholar