Beware Thayer's in Blue Letter Bible!

I have long introduced students to Blue Letter Bible because 1) it's free and 2) it gives you a quick way to see all the instances where a Greek or Hebrew word is used in the respective testament. I also take time usually to point out that there is very little difference between the Greek behind the KJV and the Greek behind all the other versions.

However, I also warn them not to pay attention to the dictionary stuff in BLB, the "Outline of Biblical Usage" and Thayer's. This material goes back to an era of RAMPANT word fallacies, fallacies that are proclaimed from pulpit and televised sermon Sunday after Sunday. This is the Kittel generation.

Kittel's 10 volume Theological Dictionary is useful for background information on words, but it is the embodiment of fallacious and sophomoric semantics. These German scholars assumed that because the German language compounds etymology - Hand-tuch, Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, Heilsgeschichte - that Greek and all languages thought this way.

But, of course, it is DEFINITIVELY and obviously true that not all languages or language speakers even consider the etymology or history of a word when they use it. Only the most poetic and clever of us try to "stand under" something when "under-standing" something. Most of us just use the word. It is even a wild goose chase to picture a wild goose when using this dead metaphor. Words take their meaning from their current context, not from their history.

So to sin is not to miss the mark. The church is not the collection of those who are called out--at least not semantically. By all means, continue to use illustrations like these. Just know that it's a fun blast from the past, not the real meaning. The word ekklesia didn't mean anything of the sort at the time of the NT. Agape is not a special kind of love that only Christians have. I hate to burst everyone's bubble. It may be true that Christians need to have a higher love than the default human, but this truth doesn't come from a magical word.  And abba isn't Daddy.

Preach the same truths you were, continue use these myths as illustrations. Just know that the truth you are preaching is true because it's true, not because the words actually mean those things.

I came across an example of the overload fallacy this week, based on Thayer's in BLB for Philippians 4:10 - "I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that once again now you revived in your thinking about me."  Thayer's says this about the word anathallo, the word I've translated as "revive" here: "to shoot up, sprout again, grow green again, flourish again." Someone was explaining this word as pointing toward a flower that comes back to life.

There are two potential fallacies I see in this line of thought. First, Thayer's may be fine to say this word means to "shoot up." But if you are good at words, you will know that just because anathallo historically comes from ana and thallo doesn't in any way guarantee that the meaning of the compound will be the meaning of these two parts put together. That's called the etymological fallacy. All of Thayer's definitions look like etymological put-togethers. again-sprout, again-flourish. "Revive" is a fine translation.

The flower illustration is exactly that, an illustration. Someone might say, "This is a word you could use if you wanted to talk about a garden coming back to life." What you can't do is take the meaning a word has in one sentence in one context (gardening) and then assume the word will take that flower power to a completely different sentence in another context.

The meaning comes from a word in context, not from the word by itself.

For more on word fallacies, see other party poopers like James Barr and D. A. Carson.