READING TIME: 3-6 MINUTES
November 15, 2019
What is the correct way to do a word study?
I. An Overview of Word Studies
A. Important Steps
1. Choose the significant word in the passage you are studying. Look for repeated words (indicating a “recurring theme” or “central theme”), theological terms, a word that is central to the meaning of the verse (e.g., “Lord” in Romans 10:9).
2. Identify the Greek or Hebrew word that is behind the English word by using either a software program or an exhaustive concordance (e.g., NIV Exhaustive Concordance).
3. Discover its “semantic range” (i.e., a bundle of meaning or range of meaning). You can do this by using a Bible concordance. Words do not have a so-called “literal” meaning, but they have a range of meanings. This is not just true of Hebrew and Greek, but it’s true of every language. Languages are not a “code.” A one-to-one correspondence does not exist between languages, and this is especially true of vocabulary. A very helpful concordance for the NT is The Greek-English Concordance to the New Testament, by John Kohlenberger. You can also use a reputable Greek and Hebrew lexicons to determine the range of meaning of a particular word (see the list of lexicons below).
4. Look at the context. So, by now you have located the Greek or Hebrew word, learned its semantic range, so now you need to figure out what it means in the particular verse you are studying. Is there anything in the immediate context that would give a clue as to the particular nuance used in the verse? If you cannot find anything in the particular verse to help you with its nuance, then look at the entire paragraph. If you cannot find anything in the paragraph, then keeping going out further (like concentric circles). Word, verse, paragraph, same book, books by the same author, OT or NT, Bible, and extra-biblical sources.
B. Things to avoid
1. Anachronism. This is when you define a Greek (or “Hebrew,” but it’s more commonly done with Greek) word using an English word derived from that Greek word. One of the most common examples is when a pastor talks about the “power of God” and adds the comment that this word “power” is dunamis from which we get our word “dynamite.” This is not only backward but it is also incorrect. The English language did not even come into existence until the 2nd millennium A.D. Despite the origins of words, the definitions do not work backward. God’s power is never pictured in the NT as something that blows things apart.
2. Avoid the “root fallacy.” This is the incorrect belief that a word’s meaning is the sum of its components. While this is sometimes true, most of the time it is not. Consider the English word butterfly. If it is split into its component parts “butter” and “fly” then one would conclude that a butterfly is an insect that lives exclusively on dairy products (from Louw 29). Likewise, what kind of nuts do you use when making doughnuts? Such examples might seem crazy, so why are people fooled when the same mistakes are repeated using Greek (see Silva 23-24, 65)?
3. Avoid the “illegitimate totality transfer.” This means the unjustified inclusion of all the possible meanings of a word regardless of the limitations of the context. The Amplified Bible is particularly guilty of committing this fallacy (see Silva 25). When attempting to determine the meaning of certain biblical terms, such as sin, righteousness and propitiation appeal is often made to the word’s non-biblical usage. When you are doing word studies, it is important that the meaning in the present context be given precedence over all other considerations. The context of a word is the determining factor in deciding which one of the many possible meanings the word is to be used. This context includes not only the function of the word within a sentence or paragraph but also the historical and cultural context of the writer and original audience (see Louw 14-15).
4. Realize that theological concepts are larger than a word. It is untrue that agape means “self-sacrificial love” and phileo means “love between a brother and sister.” Those words, in and of themselves, simply do not mean that. Languages are not that simple. It is not the word that conveys this meaning, but it is the concept of biblical love as illustrated by God who infuses agape with this particular meaning in the biblical context. For example, in the book of John, both Greek words are used of God’s love for man (3:16, 16:27); of the Father’s love for the Son (3:35, 5:20); of Jesus’s love for men (11:5, 11:3); of the love of men for men (13:34, 15:19); and the love of men for Jesus (8:42, 16:27). Plus, John loves using synonyms.
5. Be careful with an excessive examination of Greek and Hebrew words which can lead to a neglecting of the importance of the context from which the words derive their meanings (see Silva 138-139). Our main effort should be concentrated on learning more about the concepts that the words signify rather than concentrating on the words themselves. Someone studying the concept of “hypocrisy” with a concordance would miss an importance passage (Isa. 1:10-15) simply because it does not contain the relevant word even though it does add to our understanding of the concept (see Silva 27-28).
6. Good quote: “For example, we would learn much more about the doctrine of sin by John’s statement, ‘Sin is the transgression of the law,’ than by a word-study of [harmartia]; similarly, tracing the history of the word [hagios] is relatively unimportant for the doctrine of sanctification once we have examined Romans 6-8 and related passages” (from Silva 27-28).
7. Note: a good tool for the NT is: The Greek-English Concordance to the New Testament. With this book, you look up a Greek word based on its lexical form and you can see every place the Greek word occurs in the NT, but the verses are listed in English. This concordance is very different from others. In regular concordances, if you look up “Lord,” the entries list all the places where the English word “Lord” occurs. However, there may be several different Greek words that are translated “Lord,” and kurios (Greek for “Lord”) may not always be translated with “Lord.” So, these are the limitations of a regular concordance. But with the concordance listed above, you know you are looking at every place the same Greek word occurs, regardless of how it is translated (for more information about word studies, see chapter 24 in Mounce).
Sources Used
Bradshaw, Robert I. “Language.” http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_language.html#13.
Carson, D. A. Exegetical Fallacies. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996.
Fee, Gordon D. Fee, and Mark L. Strauss. How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding and Using Bible Versions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.
Hitchcock, Mark. The End: A Complete Overview of Bible Prophecy and the End of Days. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2012.
Louw, J. P. Semantics of New Testament Greek. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1982.
Mounce, William D. Greek for the Rest of Us: Using Greek Tools without Mastering Biblical Greek. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007. See chapter 24 for more information about word studies.
Silva, Moisés. Biblical Words & Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983.
Recommended Hebrew and Greek Lexicons
Arndt, William, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Holladay, William Lee and Ludwig Köhler. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, M. E. J. Richardson, and Johann Jakob Stamm. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill, 1999).
Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene Albert Nida. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, electronic ed. of the 2nd edition. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996).