Etymology is controversial by its very nature. It relies sometimes on hints of connection rather than actual historical reports of connection to establish the meanings of words. That is the case with holy. In Hebrew and in Greek, there is no historical statement that explicitly says that what scholars have determined is the etymology of the words for holy, is in fact the etymology of the words we translate as holy. Not only that, but scholars who have chosen between whole and separate, like Norman Snaith, admit their choice is controversial. He is not the first one to recognize this. Andrew Murray, a great Reformed pastor, admitted the same, when he made his choice. So what are we to do? I think we are to keep moving forward.
Sometimes to move forward, you have to move backward. That is sometimes good in the game of Monopoly and in the real game of life. So, in this case, in order to move forward, we need to move backward with regard to the idea that holy means separate, when scholars examine the original languages of Hebrew and Greek. It would be nice to just remain certain that holy means separate, but sometimes the only way to attain true certainty is to allow uncertainty to enter into the picture. Then we can attain real certainty.
The first step backward, before moving forward again, is to admit that the idea that holy means separate is controversial. This is seldom or maybe never mentioned in lexicons (technical dictionaries) for Hebrew and Greek. We have to deal with the fact that Gesenius, who became seen as an authority in his Hebrew lexicon in the late 1800s, which meant many lexicons are just copies of his views, rather than further research of his views. But Snaith and others are telling the truth, when they admit their conclusions are controversial and not without some uncertainty. This admission though does not have to undo us.
The reason that it does not need to threaten us is, because it then frees us to look at the whole process of etymology in a way that is renewing to our minds. 1 Chronicles 1:24-31 outlines what we know is a genealogy of human beings, though not the geneology of words, as is the case of etymology. What we learn is that there is a history moving from Shem (Semites/Semitic people) to Abraham (the first known Hebrew) to Isaac (Abraham's promised son) that is continuous. Yet from Abraham to Ishmael, there is a break in that continuity, as Ishmael and his mother are sent out from Abraham's household. I learned to pay attention to these kinds of details from my grandmother's analysis of family trees. I grew up hearing all about genealogies.
This is significant, not just in terms of human genealogy, but also in terms of the geneology of words. In the etymology of holy, it is as though we are following what I will call reverse history, because the movement is not from predecessor to descendant, from Hebrew to Arabic, but from Arabic to Hebrew. Or maybe more accurately, as though Hebrew and Arabic came from the same generation. But human genealogy says that history moved from Abraham, whose family tree speaks Hebrew, to Ishmael, whose family tree speaks Arabic, rather than history moving backwards to Abraham. The current view of etymology is problematic, based on what we know explicitly about history. And this history is not uncertain, but certain. What can be added is that not only is it dangerous to proceed backwards from descendant to predecessor, but it might be safer to go back further to another predecessor. We know that in Babylonian, a predessor to Hebrew, there appears to be a word that is very similar to the Hebrew word for holy, that has the meaning of shine, which is the basis for the meaning of wholeness. There is also another Hebrew word that clearly has this same meaning, that is a possible predecessor for the word we translate holy.
The other thing that explicit history tells us is that Ishmael's influence would no longer be that of an insider, but that of an outsider. If Hebrew can be known from what we know in Arabic, then we want to be sure there could not be any outsider corruption. The danger is that when Ishmael moves away, the probability of language change increases. There is now a greater possibility of outsider influence. This problem I would describe as outsider borrowing versus insider inheritance. I wish we knew the meaning of holy from Isaac's descendants rather than from Ishmael's, because language change increases with geographical distance, as a general rule. Leaving and going out geographically is significant to the process of change and the loss of continuity. This I learned when studying linguistics as an undergraduate.Yet that is not all that I learned. I had the good fortune of studying under Dr. Don Larsen, a linguist, who was working on language continuity related to geographical location. Unfortunately, he never published his material. But I was lucky enough to analyze his material before he would consider publishing it. I recommended he publish it, but I don't think he wanted to get laughed at, like happened to Galileo and to Copernicus in the history of science. His enthusiasm for his material did not get away from him, like it might have for Galileo, but instead something was holding back his enthusiasm.
What Larsen developed was a history of core words, from the perspective of demographic data. His method is that he plotted the relative locations of languages, based on their relations on a map, rather than using the idea of oldest in terms of dating by what was called glottochronology. This is why Larsen's 5 phyla (large language families) are different from the linguist, Morris Swadesh's 5 phyla. I think Larsen feared he would be laughed to scorn like Swadesh was, even though his method was quite different. What is significant for etymology, is that Larsen's work points out that change is greater with geographical distance and less with closer proximity.
So though uncertainty may threaten to undo us, when we say that there are flaws in concluding that holiness is separation, not all hope is lost. We can begin renewing out minds by examining etymology, like we examine genealogy. And we can also realize through languages all around the world, that geography is a factor in language change. So what comes directly before in history is more certain to give us back our confidence and what stays in close proximity is more certain to give us back our confidence in what a word means. That is why I trust the etymological possibilities from Hebrew and from Babylonian, more than I do the possibilities from Arabic. It just makes better sense both in terms of time (genealogy) and place (geography). The relationships seem tighter. Our steps backward into uncertainty can make it possible to take steps forward that lead us into certainty. May God bless you and your day.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
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