Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament: A Supplement to the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains

by Eugene Albert Nida, Johannes P. Louw

Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament <> Paperback <> J.P.Louw <> SocietyofBiblicalLiterature

Genres: Biblical Studies, Linguistics

168 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1992

Reviews

[Nicholas Meriwether · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work essentially gets under the hood of the methodology behind Louw and Nida’s Lexicon of the Greek New Testament. It is full of helpful linguistic reminders for both the translator and the exegete. One of the main distinctives of Louw-Nida is that it is grouped by semantic domains, not merely syntactic categories. Some of the most helpful reminders in the book are the following: 1.) lexical meaning is determined by context. This is both true syntactically in the sense that collocations and idioms have distinct meanings from the bare lexeme, as well as culturally in the sense that meanings are connected to one’s own culture and background. Even some people use the same word to mean something slightly different or more specific within a words semantic range (e.g. Paul and Matthew using δικαίου derivatives) 2.) Word boundaries are fuzzy. When does a mountain become a hill? When we talk about ‘earth’, do we mean the whole planet, the people on the planet, the ground under our feet, the dry land (opposed to underwater), and how many other words could we use interchangeably or without much distinction? Fuzzy word boundaries are a feature of all languages, and New Testament Greek is no exception. Overlapping semantic ranges may keep us from making precise and clear cut distinctions between every word, but that is also how we speak every day. In translation in theology, this feature urges us to be more attentive to context of the Bible and avoid ‘word theologies’ that perpetuate the so-called ‘dump truck fallacy’ (i.e. that every use of a particular word includes every possible meaning of the word). At many points there are extended examples from the Greek New Testament illustrating this concept. 3.) Definitions > glosses. One word equivalents across languages (or glosses) are helpful for concisely learning another language, but insufficient for understanding a word in its entirety. These come from usage in context and in componential analysis - what are the strictly necessary features of this word that associate it with a particular slice of reality? What are the contrasts? Word boundaries are not so fuzzy that they are indeterminate, so forming these associations from usage are important. There was also discussion about the lexical sense of the word vs the extended uses vs the figurative uses. What is always true about a word, and how is this usage extended in different contexts? The more peripheral a meaning is, the more marked it needs to be by the context to communicate that it is the less common meaning. There are especially helpful reminders for religious domains, noting how the technical uses of words to describe theological or trans-empirical realities are often in a context of their own in the religious text of the New Testament corpus. This book has plenty of cautions, reminders, and helpful guidelines to discerning meaning, lexicography, and translation.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Main takeaway: When it comes to deriving meaning from biblical words, context is king.

[Brice Jarvis · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Literal translations of the New Testament which employ "flesh" to render Greek σάρξ in each and every context have sometimes been responsible for a serious misunderstanding of Paul's teaching. For example, largely because of a literal translation of the Pauline Epistles, one psychiatrist wrote a treatise on Paul's preoccupation with sex.” p.59

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changing. Read this book.

Any Christian could benefit from this work although prerequisites are a working knowledge of biblical languages and translation theory.

B. Grizenko