Episode Details

In the wake of my post a few weeks ago about the ‘blunder in our Bible reading’, some of you asked some thoughtful questions about the value of word studies and word searches. The questions were so helpful, in fact, that I thought a few more sentences about words were in order …

I was suggesting, you may remember, that we have a habit of overusing and misusing word studies. Given that meaning is made in sentences (and only in sentences), we need to prioritise reading the sentences in front of us, and not chase words all over the Bible to see what connections we can make to our passage.

Hang on, said some thoughtful correspondents, is that the crying of a baby I hear that has been thrown out with the bathwater? Surely word studies are of some use! Are you trying to make us feel guilty every time we chase up a cross reference, or look at how a word is used in other places, or do a word search on all the uses of that word in the Bible?

In the comment thread, Callan asked whether it was reasonable (for example) to think that Paul’s use of the word ‘minister’ (diakonos) to describe himself in Eph 3:17 had some relation to the saints being equipped for the work of ‘ministry’ (diakonia) in Eph 4:12. Is it OK for us to see that connection and make something of it?

Given it’s part of the same discourse, very likely yes. As I pointed out in the original post, the closer two repeated words are to one another in a discourse the more we are likely to notice the repetition as readers and ponder whether the author is referring to the same thing, or ‘saying’ something through the repetition. That’s the key point—whether or not there is a connection is determined by what the author is doing in the sentences and in the discourse that is made up of those sentences, not through the cleverness of our Bible software. In this case, Callan is right I think—the activity the saints are being equipped for in 4:12 is part of the same mission that Paul has been appointed to in 3:17, and the repetition of the root diakon– helps us to notice that, along with the unfolding logic of the whole discourse of which 3:17 and 4:12 are part.

All the same, the mere fact of repetition doesn’t necessarily have any significance. I used the word ‘point’ twice in that last paragraph (‘pointed out’ and ‘key point’), without meaning anything by it.

What about when words and connections are a little further apart? As a case study, Callan points out that the words ‘Lord’, ‘visitation’, ‘compassion’ and ‘death’ are used in Zechariah’s song in Luke 1. When we come to Luke 7, we find Jesus described as the ‘Lord’ acting from ‘compassion’ to rescue a boy from ‘death’, and the people declaring in response that ‘God is visiting his people’. Is Luke wanting us to remember the song of Zechariah as we come to Luke 7? And does the repetition of these words alert us to this?

Again, it is pretty plausible to think that Luke is weaving this theme through his narrative, not only because we’ve noticed this striking repetition of words, but because that’s how narrative discourses work. Narratives usually make meaning not by presenting a logical argument but by stitching a story together in various ways—for example, by placing incidents in relation to each other, or by characters carrying forward a plot and developing or changing in the course of the narrative.  One of the common devices of narrative is to raise themes and ideas in the opening incidents of the story, and then return to them repeatedly as the story unfolds (e.g. think of the way that the overture to John’s Gospel wheels out so many of the themes and ideas that John returns to as he unfolds his story).

Is this happening in Luke 1 and 7? Very likely. And can word searches and word studies he