My daughter is married to a man who loves to take things apart, just to see how they work. I enjoy doing that too,
but Joe can put the machine back together again . . . with no parts left over!
Preachers and other
Bible students share the same instinct when they are studying a Greek word. How often have you heard your pastor say,
"This word is made up of two Greek words"? Then he launches into an explanation of how the two original words
combine to make the newer, bigger term.
When you dismantle a Greek word to look at its component
parts, you are studying etymology. More simply, you are analyzing the history
of a word, checking to see if it was originally formed by combining other Greek words. (Of course, not all words are
formed from smaller words, but Greek does have a remarkable number of such combination terms.)
Is
this a legitimate way to study words? Of course!
One example is the word homologeo, usually translated "confess" or "acknowledge." If you check a reference
source such as the Strong's Concordance, you will find a notation saying that
comes from two Greek words, homologeohomos ("same") and logeo ("to speak, say"). Put the two ideas together and you get the commonly-expressed idea
that homologeo means "to say the same as." In reality, that is a useful
way to think about the term. When we confess our sins, we are agreeing with God that our actions really are sinful,
and we are the ones who committed them!
However, the field of etymology contains a few pitfalls,
so we need to use caution when we make statements of this sort.
1. We may misunderstand the
meaning of the original words. Take the English word supervisor for instance,
It's easy to see that it comes from the words super and visor. Can't you see some future linguist deciding that visor
means "an eye shade" and super means "higher quality, extremely good"?
Thus a supervisor becomes an extremely high quality eye shade!
2. We may find that a word
has multiple meanings, including some that are remote from the root words. Suppose you decide the undertaker comes from the words under and take, describing someone who takes a corpse under the ground. How will you explain the origin of a phrase
like "I will undertake this task?" Perhaps you plan to run it into the ground?
3.
The biggest problem is that the word you are studying may have originated several centuries earlier than the New Testament,
and the meaning could have changed during that time. You can see this process working in English:
1 Thessalonians 4:15 in the King James Version
"We who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them
which are asleep."
The same verse in the
New American Standard Bible
"We who are alive and remain until the
coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep in Jesus."
In 1611, the word prevent meant "to
come before." It was formed from the Latin words (:before") and venire
("to come"). However, English has changed in the last 400 years, so the word has flipped to almost the opposite
meaning. The same thing can happen in Greek, so we should be cautious when we talk about the etymology of a word.
The
key: Usage trumps etymology.
To find out what a word means, look at the
way it is used. Follow the patterns we have described elsewhere, studying all the places where it is found. Once
you have done your research on usage, you can take a look at the word's etymology or history.
Sometimes the meaning has changed, so history is of little help.
In other cases, the
etymology will give you a vivid, easily-understood way to describe the meaning of the word.
By all means, take
the word apart. Tell people when "this word is made up of two Greek words." But be sure you can put
it back together again. Do your homework; don't depend on etymology alone.
NOTE: For a fuller discussion
of this issue, see D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, pp. 28-33. He uses the
term root fallacy to describe the misuse of etymology.
