James Barr

THE SEMANTICS OF BIBLICAL LANGUAGE

SCM PRESS LTD

UXORI DILECTISSIMAE

© Oxford University Press 1961

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334 02323 8

First published 1961

by the Oxford University Press

Reprinted six times

This edition first published 1983

by SCM Press Ltd

26–30 Tottenham Road, London N1

Preface

Only a little need be said about the occasion and purpose of this book. It is a main concern of both scholarship and theology that the Bible should be soundly and adequately interpreted. In recent years I have come to believe that one of the greatest dangers to such sound and adequate interpretation comes from the prevailing use of procedures which, while claiming to rest upon a knowledge of the Israelite and the Greek ways of thinking, constantly mishandle and distort the linguistic evidence of the Hebrew and Greek languages as they are used in the Bible. The increasing sense of dependence upon the Bible in the modern Church only makes this danger more serious. The fact that these procedures have never to my knowledge been collected, analysed and criticized in detail was the chief stimulus to my undertaking of this task myself.

The book is written mainly with the instructed theological public in view. Some small knowledge of Hebrew grammar and vocabulary is presupposed. Hebrew words are transliterated on a simple system, in which for example certain differences between vowels are not marked; Hebrew script is used only where special reasons require it. With Greek the opposite is done, and words are transliterated only in special circumstances. The few words of modern Hebrew which occur are transliterated by a system different from that used for the biblical language, as any speaker of the modern tongue must surely find most natural. I apologize to readers who may feel that I have used technical linguistic terms excessively or injudiciously. If I had used them less, the argument would have needed many tiresome circumlocutions. If I had used them more I might have made the argument more precise and satisfying at certain points; but I should have required a lengthy outline of linguistic method in order to define and locate my terms before approaching my special subject at all.

It remains to record my thanks to those who have helped me. On the theological and philosophic side I have been greatly assisted by discussion with my colleague Rev. John McIntyre, Professor of Divinity in this university, and with Rev. Donald D. Evans, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion in McGill University, Montreal. In linguistic questions the criticism and advice of Mr Trevor Hill of the Linguistic Survey of Scotland has been of the greatest value. My former ...