Holy Means Whole: According to Linguistic Insights and Probable Etymology
The etymology of holy is controversial. Yet I want to work with one of the two possibilities without settling the controversy directly. I will show how what I wrote in the previous piece is relevant to understanding a possible connection with holy. I want to follow up now, so I do not have to repeat much of what I said there. One possible root for holy is that of another Hebrew word which has to do with the idea of shine.
I will follow the order of the components of the chart I showed the last time I wrote. The chart is:
Attribute
Quantity
Possessive
Agency
Constituents
The attribute for this possible root of shine is brilliance. White light can have the character of being bright. The character of other colors is that they are not as bright as the bringing together of all of them into a whole. This is how the idea of shine would be understood in the sense of an attribute like the idea of holy.
The quantity is the entire or full spectrum of light versus the portion of light represented by a color or less than full combination of colors from the full spectrum. White light is the full spectrum. Red light would be a portion of the entire spectrum. This is how the idea of shine would be understood in the sense of an amount.
The possessive is that the sun’s light is white light and this light possesses different colors that are related or connected to each other. These colors can also make up the different colors that are together and form a rainbow’s spectrum of colors. This is how the idea of shine would be understood in the sense of relationship.
The agency is that the white light comes from the sun and is given off by it. It can also be given off artificially. But sunlight is the most complete light in terms of its action for our health and for other living things. The agency for the other colors, besides white light, is that of the prism or in the case of a rainbow the ability of water to refract light. This is how the idea of shine would be understood in the sense of agency (or action).
The constituents of white light are the colors of a rainbow or the colors that appear with the use of a prism. The constituents or parts are called colors. They include colors like red or yellow. A combination of colors is recognized as the parts of white light. These are the visible components we can see and that we can identify by name. This is how the idea of shine would be understood in the sense of constituents or its physical components.
I say all of this to bring out some of the different ways that the idea of “to shine” plays out in its own right, and how it might tie into the idea of wholeness. It makes a very apt illustration of holy, assuming it has the meaning of wholeness. Remember, I am not trying to prove etymology here, but simply looking at the implications from one of two options. I am convinced that the root idea of shine receives some explanation for why different authors, who recognize this same root, might use different words to explain the same thing or use a different slant on the same word, when you view the word through the prism or chart above. Shine can be a good illustration for the meaning of holy as whole from these many angles. May God bless your day.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
Showing posts with label haelan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label haelan. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Holy Means Whole: According to Linguistic Insights into Parts and Wholes
I have confidence we can solve problems that have not been solved in recent history. I get a lot of this confidence from John Beekman and John Callow, both of whom I have never met. Yet I have read their books over and over, and they have had an immense impact on my confidence. Dr. William Smalley first introduced me to their book, Translating the Word of God, back in the early ‘80s. At the same time, I was taught to observe things over and over in order to gain new insights. I learned this principle from Tom Steller and he learned it from Dr. Daniel Fuller’s hermeneutics syllabus. Without this lesson, I doubt that Beekman and Callow’s books would mean as much to me. Through reading their book yet another time, I discovered some brilliant insights on the subject of parts and wholes that have inspired me in the quest to better understand holy in the context of the story of this world’s beginnings, found in the book of Genesis.
In Beekman and Callow’s book they mention that there is more than one way of speaking of parts and wholes. I am going to rely on their scholarly insight. This means I am not going to elaborate on what they wrote, but I am going to expand their treatment beyond their initial insights. I’ll leave reading their insights up to you, since it is easily found in their book under the subject of genitives.
What I got from their insights, in outline form, is that you can speak of parts and wholes under the following subcategories, which I have expanded from other parts of their insights. The categories are:
Attributes
Quantities
Possessives
Agencies
Constituents
Let me define each one a little bit, as to how I am using them, before developing how these apply to Genesis 1:1-2:3. I will handle them in the order they are introduced in the Genesis 2:1-3, rather than in the idealized systematic outline form above, for ease in our treatment of the text. For example, the attribute of holy comes up last.
Attributes are things that sum up the whole of something. My favorite example is the traditional theological phrase, “the sum of all His attributes.” Each attribute is a summary or whole like the examples of righteousness and justice that apply to a whole set of things within their domain.
Quantities are where we quantify parts and wholes numerically in some way. My favorite example has to do with eating pumpkin pie. We may say he ate some of the pie, or he ate the entire pie, or he ate a portion of the pie, or that he ate a quarter of the pie. In each case it is measurable numerically, even if some measures are more imprecise.
Possessives are concerned with a connection between a person or something and another person or another thing. There is a relationship. We might say that is Joe’s sword. We might also say it is Sally’s TV. We might say in theology that love is one of God’s attributes and does not belong to someone else. It belongs to Him and so is a part of Him relationally. The focus is on God relationally.
Agencies are concerned with actions. Actions can be partly done, incomplete, or they can be wholly done, complete. My favorite example comes from the work place. Very often a boss will ask us, if we have done what he asked. What he usually is asking is whether we completed the action he requested. This is very important in discussing work and rest.
Constituents are something that is a part of a whole. My favorite example comes from the animal kingdom. A tail is part of a cat. In the physical world in general, a leg is part of a chair. They are physically seen as connected as parts of wholes. This is where children begin to learn the concepts of parts and whole at a very young age.
The place to begin is to begin where children first begin, when their teachers are their parents, with the constituents. This is very important because we use language to speak about things and to communicate that meaning to someone else. In the Genesis story, one of the major mistakes is to lose sight of what constituents or things are in focus as a reference point. We sometimes read back into a story what the referents or things we think are in focus, when they are not the focus in a story. This is because our brains are wired to seek out what is relevant in a story and we sometimes carry too much of what is explicit in our minds into what is explicit in the story.
The example of this in Genesis is that sometimes the two actions of create and of rest take priority in our minds over these days “in the beginning.” The reason for God making holy “the seventh day” is that “in it” He did the action of rest. It is not because “He rested,” but because “in it He rested.” The thing that is in focus as being blessed is the seventh day, not the action of rest. The way we know this, is that parts and wholes traditionally fall in the order of the part being first and the whole following. We, for example, will say, “This is the tail of the dog.” We know that the dog is the whole and the tail is the part. Sometimes the whole is shifted to the front, but this is still easily identified. We might say, “The dog’s tail.” In Genesis, this shift in order is similar to what we have with dog and tail.
We have that “in [the seventh day] He rested.” We can state it another way to identify the parts and the whole. We could say, “He rested in the seventh day.” God could have done the part of work or the part of finished or the part of rested, but he only part he did on the seventh day is rested. The seventh day is the whole in this context, as it naturally follows rested, when you reverse them based on the word “in” which indicates the part-whole relationship. The only shift in meaning, in reversing the order, is that the emphasis or focus is not as strong on “in it.” By moving that to the front the writer and the translator is trying to demonstrate focus.
It is also critical and in focus that the rest occurred “in [the seventh day]” from a similar angle. The relationship of time is the major referent. Genesis, as an entire book, is focused on relationships of genealogy and on relationships in time, not on actions, yet they are still part of the story.
Another time example is that often the mention of the seventh day adds the implicit information of a week to the story. The problem is that this is not the focus of the story. The focus is not that seven days make up the parts of a week. It is that the “evening and the morning” make up the parts of each “day.” There is no denying that these seven days make up the unit of a week, but there is no reason to see the focus on the quantifying of a week, when the week is not explicit in the context. The constituents that are explicit are more likely to be the ones in focus, and that would be “evening and morning” as constituents or parts of a day, rather than week and seven days as quantities or parts of a week. Another thing here is that the primary unit of time in focus is not the week, but “in the beginning” and “the seventh day” is specific, because it is related not so much to a week, but to the beginning as a quantity.
The reason this matters is that there is a danger in shifting the meaning of the story, when the focus is shifted. The danger in making the week a focus is that then the idea of separation is given inexplicit support, because the one quantity or part of the week, the seventh day, is seen as separate from other parts or quantities of the week, the six days. It is dangerous to change the focus of the section, even if the week will later be a relevant subject in Scripture. As Dr. Fuller would say, let each passage stand on its own before making any connections with something outside of it. Keep your focus on “evening and morning” being the constituents or parts of each “day,” rather than on “the seventh day” being a quantity or part of a week, when it receives no explicit mention in the context.
Next, let’s deal with quantities. Here we will handle the topic of seven days. Quantitatively, there are seven days mentioned in this section of Genesis. Each day is numbered off up to “the seventh day.” Numerically one day out of seven represents one seventh of the entire seven days in the beginning, but again without mention of the week. It is pretty clear that we can talk about these days quantitatively, like we can talk about a quarter representing one quarter of a dollar. There is also mention of “all the host of them” and to “all His work” which indicate a quantity of all versus some. Finally, we also have the action of “blessed,” which is a great word in any culture, whether it be a hunting and gathering culture or a wholistic culture. For a farmer in the agricultural age, it indicated being fruitful versus fruitless, an amount on a tree; multiply versus fail to multiply, important to a seed counter and fill versus don’t fill, important to the size of a field. These quantities are all significant. The quantity or part of ”seventh” is very important in understanding which part or quantity of the seven days God rested in.
It makes sense to deal with agency next since “blessed” is one of the actions. The completion of blessed involves not just being fruitful, but also multiplying and not just those together, but also filling versus incomplete filling. Yet even before this action in the seventh day, God “finished,” then He “ended” and then he “rested.” He did this because His action of “work” was “done.” He had “created” and He had “made.” His action was completed, as shown by all the past action references to the work of created and made. Then with all this complete, he also “rested.” He then completed the action of rested “in the seventh day.” That is when He completed His action of “rested,” somewhat like His action of “finished.” The whole of completed action was very important in the context. So the whole of completed action versus the part of incomplete action is very important when it comes to God’s rest. It shows again the significance of parts and wholes, only this time in terms of action rather than on another level of our outline earlier.
We must deal with possessives, because it is significant that the work that is done is “His work,” not the work of another. Three times in Genesis 2:1-3, it is repeated that it is “His work.” I like to turn possessives into this form, “work of Him,” or explicitly “work of God.” Work is related to God as a part or extension of who He is. Yet it is far from all the parts of who God is relationally. So God is related to work of creation as its sole or whole author.
Finally, it is important to deal with attributes, because we are told that God “made holy” [my translation] the seventh day. We also see that God created things and attributed to them that they were “good” in Genesis 1. Both of these are obvious attributes, because they are qualities that sum up the character of someone or something. That could be why “good” falls in the position of summing things up at the end of some of the days.
What is it that God attributed to “the seventh day” when He “made it holy?” Did He give the day the character of being separate from the other six days, because of rest versus work? Or did He give the day the character of being whole, for resting both evening and morning, as opposed to resting for part of the day, either evening or morning alone? Or did He do both? How can we make it clear?
I think the key to clarity, goes back to our topic of quantities earlier. I always say things are clear or simple when there is only one thing and they are unclear or complex when there is many. So here we have to figure out what is the one thing that is in focus or if there might be two things in focus which means holy is a complex word. If there were not plausible reasons for each position on it’s meaning, then it would all be simple. But unfortunately translators in the English-speaking world have not made it that simple. So let’s simplify things.
Let’s begin with a very short digression. Let’s start with a simple history for the meaning of holy in translation. For many years going back to at least the 1500s, it meant both whole and separate. Whole was primary and separate was secondary. Following this time period, beginning in the late 1800s, it meant separate. Then as a part of this same tradition of meaning in the early to mid 1900s, whole was added to separate as a modifier, so that the idea was that of wholly separate or wholly other. Separate was now primary and whole was secondary. Then, in the tail end of the mid 1900s, whole as it’s meaning became primary, sometimes without a recognition of the meaning of separate. There are a host of other meanings, but we will not cover those. So all of these meanings seem to at least have plausibility, but that muddies the water of clarity.
Let’s try to reach clarity. There are tools to produce clarity. One technique relates to the awareness that one thing is always clearer than many things to an audience. It is not a good idea to introduce to an audience more than one central idea at a time. One meaning is clear. Without options, it is said, “The choices are clear.” Multiple meanings are confusing. With many options, it is said, “The choices are not clear.” It could be even overwhelming. That is why some avoid holy as a word. They choose something simpler like love that we know is an action. So let’s narrow the options.
A central idea is usually obvious from what gets repeated over and over or from what comes first. In this case, the relationship of time, is a central theme. Genesis begins with “in the beginning.” You could say it this way, “God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning.” As I have said before, the part normally comes before the whole, and also that a shift is made for emphasis on the whole. That is what we have in this case. “In the beginning” is the whole that forms the context. God created the heavens and earth is the major part in this beginning. God is greater in terms of reality than time, yet time and relationships can momentarily be in focus, because the purpose is not a systematic treatment of a subject, but a focus on the story and relationships.
Because relationships and time are central, I believe that the constituents of time are the primary referents that must be noticed in reference to the day, rather than the events. If I was reading from Exodus, then the events would be the focus, but it is not so, if I am reading in Genesis. “In the beginning” is relationally important. So is, “So the evening and the morning were the nth day,” which is repeated many times. And so finally is, “the seventh day.” An attribute, by its nature, tries to sum up the quality or character of a person or thing. I think what easily sums up the seventh day is bring together the whole of the constituent parts of “evening and morning.” They are even related together by the word “and.”
A further extension of quantity related to clarity is that it is helpful to avoid change and keep continuity, because one theme enhances clarity and many themes diminishes it. Let me illustrate, using as an everyday example. On the day of my birthday each year, I am seen as continuing to be the same person and yet at the same time I am identified as having changed, because I am now a year older. Quantitatively, I am no more or less than I have been, and yet at the same time in terms of years I have quantitatively changed. To distinguish the seventh day from the other six together, in any unique way, requires a shift in focus from the quantity of the day and from days themselves. By staying with things related to a relational focus, rather than shifting to events like work and rest, the author keeps things clear. If there is a shift suddenly to a focus on events, then this change can introduce an element of confusion, resulting in a lack of clarity. The exception to this would be to explicitly point out or signal this change and I do not see this in the text.
I also consider it a major change to think that to sum up the seventh day is to say that it is separate from the other six days. Attributes like love sum up other things. That is why love is greater than either faith or hope is, because it sums up actions together, including both of them besides others. Being true also sums up things, including things like humility. Truth is not a kind of humility, but humility is a kind of truth. Holy is generally recognized as an attribute, and I am not sure what there is about this day to sum up the seventh day as separate from the other six except by appealing to action as primary. There is no way to make it truly separate except to appeal, not to the continuing referent of the seventh day, as a theme, but instead to a changed referent of rest, as a new theme. To me, this introduces confusion. Why not stick with the theme of time, as in the seventh day and see it as summed up by holy? It could then mean making whole the relational parts of evening and morning. To express it relationally or possessively, we would call it the evening and the morning of the seventh day. This is what it would mean for the day to be whole relationally and in reference to time rather than in reference to events.
So reading Beekman and Callow over and over has paid off in realizing that there are multiple ways of expressing wholes and parts. Through reading their book just one more time, I have been able to better understand holy in the context of the story of this world’s beginnings in the book of Genesis. I see Genesis as treating days relationally, like it treats genealogy relationally. It does not treat primarily events and agency. That shift is what has caused confusion. Maybe it is because sometimes we try to think systematically, outside of the times it applies. We think that if someone like God or something like an event is greater, then it must always be the theme in a context, and this misleads us. But if for a moment, we can consider time as a focus, I think we can see that God wanted to make the day relationally whole, so that the event of rest did not happen on just part of the day, but the whole of the day. He wanted to make sure we kept tied together the relationship of “evening and morning” in “the seventh day.” May God bless you and make you whole relationally.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
I have confidence we can solve problems that have not been solved in recent history. I get a lot of this confidence from John Beekman and John Callow, both of whom I have never met. Yet I have read their books over and over, and they have had an immense impact on my confidence. Dr. William Smalley first introduced me to their book, Translating the Word of God, back in the early ‘80s. At the same time, I was taught to observe things over and over in order to gain new insights. I learned this principle from Tom Steller and he learned it from Dr. Daniel Fuller’s hermeneutics syllabus. Without this lesson, I doubt that Beekman and Callow’s books would mean as much to me. Through reading their book yet another time, I discovered some brilliant insights on the subject of parts and wholes that have inspired me in the quest to better understand holy in the context of the story of this world’s beginnings, found in the book of Genesis.
In Beekman and Callow’s book they mention that there is more than one way of speaking of parts and wholes. I am going to rely on their scholarly insight. This means I am not going to elaborate on what they wrote, but I am going to expand their treatment beyond their initial insights. I’ll leave reading their insights up to you, since it is easily found in their book under the subject of genitives.
What I got from their insights, in outline form, is that you can speak of parts and wholes under the following subcategories, which I have expanded from other parts of their insights. The categories are:
Attributes
Quantities
Possessives
Agencies
Constituents
Let me define each one a little bit, as to how I am using them, before developing how these apply to Genesis 1:1-2:3. I will handle them in the order they are introduced in the Genesis 2:1-3, rather than in the idealized systematic outline form above, for ease in our treatment of the text. For example, the attribute of holy comes up last.
Attributes are things that sum up the whole of something. My favorite example is the traditional theological phrase, “the sum of all His attributes.” Each attribute is a summary or whole like the examples of righteousness and justice that apply to a whole set of things within their domain.
Quantities are where we quantify parts and wholes numerically in some way. My favorite example has to do with eating pumpkin pie. We may say he ate some of the pie, or he ate the entire pie, or he ate a portion of the pie, or that he ate a quarter of the pie. In each case it is measurable numerically, even if some measures are more imprecise.
Possessives are concerned with a connection between a person or something and another person or another thing. There is a relationship. We might say that is Joe’s sword. We might also say it is Sally’s TV. We might say in theology that love is one of God’s attributes and does not belong to someone else. It belongs to Him and so is a part of Him relationally. The focus is on God relationally.
Agencies are concerned with actions. Actions can be partly done, incomplete, or they can be wholly done, complete. My favorite example comes from the work place. Very often a boss will ask us, if we have done what he asked. What he usually is asking is whether we completed the action he requested. This is very important in discussing work and rest.
Constituents are something that is a part of a whole. My favorite example comes from the animal kingdom. A tail is part of a cat. In the physical world in general, a leg is part of a chair. They are physically seen as connected as parts of wholes. This is where children begin to learn the concepts of parts and whole at a very young age.
The place to begin is to begin where children first begin, when their teachers are their parents, with the constituents. This is very important because we use language to speak about things and to communicate that meaning to someone else. In the Genesis story, one of the major mistakes is to lose sight of what constituents or things are in focus as a reference point. We sometimes read back into a story what the referents or things we think are in focus, when they are not the focus in a story. This is because our brains are wired to seek out what is relevant in a story and we sometimes carry too much of what is explicit in our minds into what is explicit in the story.
The example of this in Genesis is that sometimes the two actions of create and of rest take priority in our minds over these days “in the beginning.” The reason for God making holy “the seventh day” is that “in it” He did the action of rest. It is not because “He rested,” but because “in it He rested.” The thing that is in focus as being blessed is the seventh day, not the action of rest. The way we know this, is that parts and wholes traditionally fall in the order of the part being first and the whole following. We, for example, will say, “This is the tail of the dog.” We know that the dog is the whole and the tail is the part. Sometimes the whole is shifted to the front, but this is still easily identified. We might say, “The dog’s tail.” In Genesis, this shift in order is similar to what we have with dog and tail.
We have that “in [the seventh day] He rested.” We can state it another way to identify the parts and the whole. We could say, “He rested in the seventh day.” God could have done the part of work or the part of finished or the part of rested, but he only part he did on the seventh day is rested. The seventh day is the whole in this context, as it naturally follows rested, when you reverse them based on the word “in” which indicates the part-whole relationship. The only shift in meaning, in reversing the order, is that the emphasis or focus is not as strong on “in it.” By moving that to the front the writer and the translator is trying to demonstrate focus.
It is also critical and in focus that the rest occurred “in [the seventh day]” from a similar angle. The relationship of time is the major referent. Genesis, as an entire book, is focused on relationships of genealogy and on relationships in time, not on actions, yet they are still part of the story.
Another time example is that often the mention of the seventh day adds the implicit information of a week to the story. The problem is that this is not the focus of the story. The focus is not that seven days make up the parts of a week. It is that the “evening and the morning” make up the parts of each “day.” There is no denying that these seven days make up the unit of a week, but there is no reason to see the focus on the quantifying of a week, when the week is not explicit in the context. The constituents that are explicit are more likely to be the ones in focus, and that would be “evening and morning” as constituents or parts of a day, rather than week and seven days as quantities or parts of a week. Another thing here is that the primary unit of time in focus is not the week, but “in the beginning” and “the seventh day” is specific, because it is related not so much to a week, but to the beginning as a quantity.
The reason this matters is that there is a danger in shifting the meaning of the story, when the focus is shifted. The danger in making the week a focus is that then the idea of separation is given inexplicit support, because the one quantity or part of the week, the seventh day, is seen as separate from other parts or quantities of the week, the six days. It is dangerous to change the focus of the section, even if the week will later be a relevant subject in Scripture. As Dr. Fuller would say, let each passage stand on its own before making any connections with something outside of it. Keep your focus on “evening and morning” being the constituents or parts of each “day,” rather than on “the seventh day” being a quantity or part of a week, when it receives no explicit mention in the context.
Next, let’s deal with quantities. Here we will handle the topic of seven days. Quantitatively, there are seven days mentioned in this section of Genesis. Each day is numbered off up to “the seventh day.” Numerically one day out of seven represents one seventh of the entire seven days in the beginning, but again without mention of the week. It is pretty clear that we can talk about these days quantitatively, like we can talk about a quarter representing one quarter of a dollar. There is also mention of “all the host of them” and to “all His work” which indicate a quantity of all versus some. Finally, we also have the action of “blessed,” which is a great word in any culture, whether it be a hunting and gathering culture or a wholistic culture. For a farmer in the agricultural age, it indicated being fruitful versus fruitless, an amount on a tree; multiply versus fail to multiply, important to a seed counter and fill versus don’t fill, important to the size of a field. These quantities are all significant. The quantity or part of ”seventh” is very important in understanding which part or quantity of the seven days God rested in.
It makes sense to deal with agency next since “blessed” is one of the actions. The completion of blessed involves not just being fruitful, but also multiplying and not just those together, but also filling versus incomplete filling. Yet even before this action in the seventh day, God “finished,” then He “ended” and then he “rested.” He did this because His action of “work” was “done.” He had “created” and He had “made.” His action was completed, as shown by all the past action references to the work of created and made. Then with all this complete, he also “rested.” He then completed the action of rested “in the seventh day.” That is when He completed His action of “rested,” somewhat like His action of “finished.” The whole of completed action was very important in the context. So the whole of completed action versus the part of incomplete action is very important when it comes to God’s rest. It shows again the significance of parts and wholes, only this time in terms of action rather than on another level of our outline earlier.
We must deal with possessives, because it is significant that the work that is done is “His work,” not the work of another. Three times in Genesis 2:1-3, it is repeated that it is “His work.” I like to turn possessives into this form, “work of Him,” or explicitly “work of God.” Work is related to God as a part or extension of who He is. Yet it is far from all the parts of who God is relationally. So God is related to work of creation as its sole or whole author.
Finally, it is important to deal with attributes, because we are told that God “made holy” [my translation] the seventh day. We also see that God created things and attributed to them that they were “good” in Genesis 1. Both of these are obvious attributes, because they are qualities that sum up the character of someone or something. That could be why “good” falls in the position of summing things up at the end of some of the days.
What is it that God attributed to “the seventh day” when He “made it holy?” Did He give the day the character of being separate from the other six days, because of rest versus work? Or did He give the day the character of being whole, for resting both evening and morning, as opposed to resting for part of the day, either evening or morning alone? Or did He do both? How can we make it clear?
I think the key to clarity, goes back to our topic of quantities earlier. I always say things are clear or simple when there is only one thing and they are unclear or complex when there is many. So here we have to figure out what is the one thing that is in focus or if there might be two things in focus which means holy is a complex word. If there were not plausible reasons for each position on it’s meaning, then it would all be simple. But unfortunately translators in the English-speaking world have not made it that simple. So let’s simplify things.
Let’s begin with a very short digression. Let’s start with a simple history for the meaning of holy in translation. For many years going back to at least the 1500s, it meant both whole and separate. Whole was primary and separate was secondary. Following this time period, beginning in the late 1800s, it meant separate. Then as a part of this same tradition of meaning in the early to mid 1900s, whole was added to separate as a modifier, so that the idea was that of wholly separate or wholly other. Separate was now primary and whole was secondary. Then, in the tail end of the mid 1900s, whole as it’s meaning became primary, sometimes without a recognition of the meaning of separate. There are a host of other meanings, but we will not cover those. So all of these meanings seem to at least have plausibility, but that muddies the water of clarity.
Let’s try to reach clarity. There are tools to produce clarity. One technique relates to the awareness that one thing is always clearer than many things to an audience. It is not a good idea to introduce to an audience more than one central idea at a time. One meaning is clear. Without options, it is said, “The choices are clear.” Multiple meanings are confusing. With many options, it is said, “The choices are not clear.” It could be even overwhelming. That is why some avoid holy as a word. They choose something simpler like love that we know is an action. So let’s narrow the options.
A central idea is usually obvious from what gets repeated over and over or from what comes first. In this case, the relationship of time, is a central theme. Genesis begins with “in the beginning.” You could say it this way, “God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning.” As I have said before, the part normally comes before the whole, and also that a shift is made for emphasis on the whole. That is what we have in this case. “In the beginning” is the whole that forms the context. God created the heavens and earth is the major part in this beginning. God is greater in terms of reality than time, yet time and relationships can momentarily be in focus, because the purpose is not a systematic treatment of a subject, but a focus on the story and relationships.
Because relationships and time are central, I believe that the constituents of time are the primary referents that must be noticed in reference to the day, rather than the events. If I was reading from Exodus, then the events would be the focus, but it is not so, if I am reading in Genesis. “In the beginning” is relationally important. So is, “So the evening and the morning were the nth day,” which is repeated many times. And so finally is, “the seventh day.” An attribute, by its nature, tries to sum up the quality or character of a person or thing. I think what easily sums up the seventh day is bring together the whole of the constituent parts of “evening and morning.” They are even related together by the word “and.”
A further extension of quantity related to clarity is that it is helpful to avoid change and keep continuity, because one theme enhances clarity and many themes diminishes it. Let me illustrate, using as an everyday example. On the day of my birthday each year, I am seen as continuing to be the same person and yet at the same time I am identified as having changed, because I am now a year older. Quantitatively, I am no more or less than I have been, and yet at the same time in terms of years I have quantitatively changed. To distinguish the seventh day from the other six together, in any unique way, requires a shift in focus from the quantity of the day and from days themselves. By staying with things related to a relational focus, rather than shifting to events like work and rest, the author keeps things clear. If there is a shift suddenly to a focus on events, then this change can introduce an element of confusion, resulting in a lack of clarity. The exception to this would be to explicitly point out or signal this change and I do not see this in the text.
I also consider it a major change to think that to sum up the seventh day is to say that it is separate from the other six days. Attributes like love sum up other things. That is why love is greater than either faith or hope is, because it sums up actions together, including both of them besides others. Being true also sums up things, including things like humility. Truth is not a kind of humility, but humility is a kind of truth. Holy is generally recognized as an attribute, and I am not sure what there is about this day to sum up the seventh day as separate from the other six except by appealing to action as primary. There is no way to make it truly separate except to appeal, not to the continuing referent of the seventh day, as a theme, but instead to a changed referent of rest, as a new theme. To me, this introduces confusion. Why not stick with the theme of time, as in the seventh day and see it as summed up by holy? It could then mean making whole the relational parts of evening and morning. To express it relationally or possessively, we would call it the evening and the morning of the seventh day. This is what it would mean for the day to be whole relationally and in reference to time rather than in reference to events.
So reading Beekman and Callow over and over has paid off in realizing that there are multiple ways of expressing wholes and parts. Through reading their book just one more time, I have been able to better understand holy in the context of the story of this world’s beginnings in the book of Genesis. I see Genesis as treating days relationally, like it treats genealogy relationally. It does not treat primarily events and agency. That shift is what has caused confusion. Maybe it is because sometimes we try to think systematically, outside of the times it applies. We think that if someone like God or something like an event is greater, then it must always be the theme in a context, and this misleads us. But if for a moment, we can consider time as a focus, I think we can see that God wanted to make the day relationally whole, so that the event of rest did not happen on just part of the day, but the whole of the day. He wanted to make sure we kept tied together the relationship of “evening and morning” in “the seventh day.” May God bless you and make you whole relationally.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
Monday, June 30, 2008
Holy Means Whole: According to a Meaningful Translation June 30, 2008
I recently heard a person, whom I consider a friend, slam the New King James Version (NKJV), while I was in attendance. They also praised the New International Version (NIV). They apparently were unaware how much I, and the general public, like the NKJV translation. Not too terribly long ago, I know that the New International Version and the New King James Version were about equal in popularity. So how are we going to settle this disagreement among friends? More importantly, how are we going to settle the disagreement among friends about the meaning of holy?
I think these two issues are closely related, so I am going to treat them together. I think the principles of a meaningful Bible translation in general apply to the principles of a meaningful translation in particular for a single word like holy. So let's try this idea out.
I have to confess that I got distracted not long ago, and was drawn to a quote in an article about art, that came from Jonathan Edwards. He was quoted as seeing beauty in “the clarity of things.” Edwards seems to have thought, in the larger context of his comments, that things themselves bring clarity in God’s and our communication with one another. This idea got me thinking about the whole question of meaningful communication. So please allow me to quickly digress into my upbringing and learning about communication before applying it to both the translation of the Bible and the translation of holy.
I was brought up in the classical understanding of language under Dr. John Piper and Tom Stellar, before Dr. Piper left Bethel College and became Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This understanding of language was mainly taught in my Greek classes and in my classes focused on a book of the Bible. In addition to this understanding of language was a deeply felt inductive approach to the study of the Biblical text that really got students like myself excited. It was that deep feeling of excitement and humility before the text that was the primary benefit of sitting under Dr. Piper and Tom Stellar. They were both students of Dr. Dan Fuller, who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary, who fanned this flame of excitement about the Biblical text even hotter. I later sat under him directly and benefited immensely.
What did not make my flame even hotter was the classical understanding of language. Certain parts of it are nearly incomprehensible and unbeneficial. Unless you are a scholar, you will reach a ceiling in your understanding that you cannot get past. What got me past this ceiling was sitting under the teaching of Dr. William Smalley, Lois (Malcolm) Smith and Dr. Don Larsen at Bethel College. Dr. Smalley was my primary influence. Dr. Smalley’s two primary sources for his understanding of language were Kenneth Pike and Michael Halliday. Through Dr. Smalley, I was introduced to the writings of both Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Later, Dr. Dan Shaw, at Fuller Theological Seminary, gave me the practical know how to use the tools of both organizations much more effectively. This entire approach effectively enlarged my basic understanding of the universals of language. The failure of the classical school was in its basic universals of language that created a ceiling that I originally could not get past. I am referring here to the dreaded eight parts of speech.
For many years, I also was stuck at a ceiling in understanding as to what makes a healthy or sound translation of the Bible. Part of the problem was the argument over form and meaning. On the one hand, there was a more literal (form) approach, as reflected in John Piper’s preference for the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and New American Standard (NASB). On the other hand, there was a more dynamic (meaning) approach, as reflected in Dr. William Smalley’s preference for the Phillips translation and the Today’s English Version (TEV), sometimes referred to as the Good News Bible. Dr. Smalley was sometimes critical of the TEV, but he still preferred it to the NASB. I am convinced now that the argument over form and meaning is a little bit misguided, because of a recent breakthrough in my understanding.
Let’s go back now to the article in which Edwards was quoted. He saw three things in communication that stand in connection with each other. This view is not entirely unique. The three things are: things, words and ideas. What is unique is that he regarded things as superior in clarity to the other two. What led to my breakthrough, is that I decided to continue Edwards’ three things, I also decided to change his assumption that things are greater in clarity and instead I made clarity a separate part of communication alongside Edwards’ other three. So this is how I first came up with: clarity, ideas, words and things.
I then decided to bring in the aid of John Beekman and John Callow, who I first learned about through Dr. Smalley. I also decided to bring in the aid of Katharine Barnwell, who I learned about through Dr. Dan Shaw. From them, I had previously summarized the principles of what makes a good, or said better yet, a healthy or sound translation. For them, it came down to a preference for meaning over form, because a translation must be meaningful, and it came down to the qualities of: accuracy, clarity and naturalness. I decided to continue and bolster their preference for meaning over form and I decided to change the need for only 3 qualities and instead add the quality of fidelity, as something separate from accuracy. So this is how I came up with the quality of a meaningful translation overall. This is the only reason it should be preferred over form. It is the whole point in translation or communication. In reverse, translation cannot be meaningful without form. As I perceive it, form is essentially an expression of the quality of naturalness. Form then is a major part of the whole. So the qualities for being meaningful expand to be: clarity, fidelity, naturalness and accuracy.
There are some clear parallels, but what really clinched the deal was the reading of Dr. Smalley’s material that organizes language around: continuity and change, bond and barrier, rule and freedom, and sense and nonsense. I decided to bolster his view by adding his own views on reference and non-reference, based on the need for accuracy and I decided to also bolster his view of sense and nonsense by making it equivalent to the need for a translation to be meaningful. So I came up with sense and nonsense being the whole of translation’s purpose. Then I came up with the parts being: continuity and change, bond and barrier, rule and freedom and reference and non-reference.
So, in the end, I was left with these parallels:
Communication
clarity ideas words things
(Jonathan Edwards)
Meaningful
clarity fidelity naturalness accuracy
(John Beekman, John Callow, Katharine Barnwell)
Sense & Nonsense
Continuity & Change Bond & Barrier Rule & Freedom Reference & Non-Reference
(William Smalley)
Each of these parallels helps clarify the meaning of the others and helps to make each of them more meaningful. You could say it this way, combing the first two sets of understanding, we need meaningful communication, clear clarity, trustworthy ideas, natural words (or forms) and accurate things. What underlies these is that to have meaningful communication, it must have sense; to have clear clarity, it must have continuity; to have trustworthy ideas, it must have bonds; to have natural words, it must have rules; and to have accurate things, it must have reference. Obviously, when I listen to a House Wren sing, some of these elements are missing, so to that extent their communication is nonsense to me, while it make total sense to another House Wren.
So a meaningful translation must be clear, it must be trustworthy, it must be natural, and it must be accurate. The problem in the past has been that when people argued meaning against form, they were unaware that they were arguing for the whole against one of its essential parts. A part is less than a whole, yet it is not optional or unessential. If people understood form as a discussion of what is natural and what are the rules, then I think the discussions would have been more productive. There is a lot of evidence for this in one of Kenneth Pike’s books. What has happened in discussions is that form did not have a chance against meaning, yet it was by nature and everyday example an unfair battle of the whole versus just one part. Also many times translations then tended to downplay form against meaning, as though it was optional rather than essential. This, of course, caused many people to practically feel uneasy. And sometimes this uneasiness happened for good reason. So part of the problem was that people did not see that they were preserving form in naturalness and in words. Rather even worse, they were often fearful of losing accuracy, because they joined accuracy to form rather than referent. This led to even greater fears and stronger disagreements. So the other part of the problem is that rather than coming down the escalator of fear and anger, people instead went up the escalator of fear and anger.
We’ve had similar problems with the meaning of holy. If you look at the word holy, you must ask yourself if it is meaningful language. I would argue that in many ways it is no longer meaningful by itself or in context. It seems to always require substituting another word to explain it. That is not to say it was not very meaningful at one time. We need to be very meaningful, when we talk about the most important character trait that God and we are supposed to possess. The word holy is very important, so it needs to be very meaningful.
Let’s examine it in regard to making it a word that is meaningful, because it is: clear, trustworthy, natural and accurate. I will deal with each of these separately, because each part is essential to making holy meaningful again.
First, let’s look at how clear it is. Something is clear when it has a history of continuity rather than change or when we are talking about one thing versus many things. When you look at me you see both continuity and change. I have been who I am since I was born, so people see continuity, even while they see a change in my age every year. They see me as one person with many years. One person is clear every time I meet a sibling, even if how many years may be unclear. Holy through time has been one, even with its predecessors that were spelled slightly differently, but its definition has changed over time. If you asked the earliest English translators, they would have said it had a primary sense of wholeness and a secondary sense of separation in the context of the church and translations of the Bible. In the English language itself, it likely had only a sense of wholeness, as many etymology people argue. So its translation usage was likely the first change to this word’s meaning, because the idea of separation was added. The second change came at the end of the 1800s, when scholarship said you must cut the loaf of bread in half and choose between wholeness and separation. Scholars largely choose to keep the definition of separation and drop the meaning of wholeness. Then still later it modified this position by bringing back wholeness to describe the degree of separation. Still more recently, wholeness alone has been promoted as it’s meaning. These changes have made holy less than clear to people because there hasn’t been just one definition for holy, but at least four. So this has clearly muddied the waters.
Second, let’s look at how trustworthy it is. For many years it bonded together the definitions of whole and separate. Now that bond has pretty much been broken and there is a barrier between the two meanings, because of scholarship beginning in the late 1800s. There is also a new bond between the two, but it is not the same as the first, since now wholeness is just descriptive of separation. My understanding is that before our times, the context determined pretty much whether wholeness or separation was emphasized in a particular biblical text. Sometimes a commentator like John Albert Bengel would sing the praises of God’s beauty, because holiness summarized the sum of all God’s attributes. Another time it was seen as thundering the message of God’s separation from sin. It bonded these two ideas together that otherwise have a barrier between them in our language. Wholeness and separation have no common bond in our language. You can also add to this that when a translator goes from the original foreign language to the latest native language, there is supposed to be a bond between the ideas in the original and the ideas in the translation. The translator is trying to find the links between the two languages and avoid the breakdowns between them. This is why I continue to look at the original language for holy and I look for possible links with either wholeness or separation. So I see a fair amount in the breakdown of bonds within our own language, when it comes to the idea of holy, even if I cannot go into depth on the translation process here. So there remains the inherent problem of bonding together two ideas like whole and separate which have a barrier between them in our language and possibly also in the original languages.
Third, let’s look at how natural it is. Holy was once a very natural word in our language, as it enjoyed ties to halig, hale, hal and healthy. Of these, only healthy is still commonly around along with holy. It is a little less natural now, because holy no longer has natural ties to healthy, but rather we are taught it is connected with separation and sanctification, which is not natural in English. I think this is one of the reasons that pastors are constantly telling people, depending on which meaning they see, to substitute either wholeness or separation. I think it would be a very practical rule to remove much of the unnaturalness of holy, sanctification, and saints and either go with words related to wholeness or go with words related to separation. For historical reasons, this list of words could be tied to these natural words and forms, but they should not be front and center in a natural translation for today. You must remember God spoke to Abraham in Abraham’s language of Hebrew, then He spoke to His Jews in Babylon in their natural language of Aramaic, and then He spoke to His Jews under Roman domination in their natural language of Greek, even while He spoke periodically in Hebrew too. It is what comes natural to us that is the rule, and to use language foreign to people, even if it is English, is not the rule of Scripture itself.
Fourth, let’s look at how accurate it is. Holy is very accurate, when I understand its historical English reference to be wholeness. In English, its central focus referred physically to a thing that is whole. For example, a healthy body was a whole body. But let’s talk about the thing of separation. Separation is the idea of physically cutting something. For example, you can take a knife and slice a belt in two. That is physically what is meant by separation. These are the two things that one or the other substitution for the word holy is referring to in English.
In the Bible, what is assumed sometimes, is that in the creation story, you are to cut in two the doing of work and the doing of rest. They are both actions, but they are different kinds of action, separate from each other. My problem is that work and rest are not what are blessed and sanctified (a Latin term brought over into English for holy) as the things referred to in the context, but the day is what is referenced and it is what is blessed and sanctified. We must be accurate. It says, “He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” He rested “in it,” yet the rest is not what He chose to bless or sanctify. Nor is it accurate to say that He blessed and sanctified it “because … He rested.” No, he blessed and sanctified it “because in it He rested.”
Also in the Bible, is the fact that there is also not a reference to a day being separate from the other days, because referring to a day as “the seventh day” does not separate it so much from the other six, as it refers to the fact that it is “the seventh” day “in the beginning” of days, pointing out that it is quantitatively one part of the first seven days. There is nothing in the context to point out a focus on separation, but rather a focus on a part of a whole, when it comes to the days mentioned. It has to be that the word holy itself would have to refer to separation without any added support from the context. It is important to note that you cannot refer to it simply as a day of rest where the focus is on rest. It is more accurate to refer to it as rest in the seventh day or the rest of the seventh day. In each of these the focus is on the whole of the seventh day, rather than on the part of day referring to the whole of rest that occurred on that day. The other days likewise were not just days of work, but were rather seen as the work of the first day, etc., since time was so much in focus. Remember God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. The part that He did was that he created the heavens and the earth. The whole of when He did this particular work was “in the beginning.” So the right focus in reference must be maintained.
Yet another thing related to reference is that the seventh day, like the other six, would have had an “evening and morning” that made up that day also. So it is very likely that these would be the parts of a day that would make up a whole day in the case of the seventh day. So parts and wholes are clearly in the context for the word holy to refer to as a possibility.
So a meaningful bible translation and a meaningful translation of holy share the same qualities, when it comes to making sense. I think that due to these qualities of: clarity, trustworthy, natural and accurate, I would go with whole over holy at this time in history. I would have gone with holy against words like sanctification at an earlier time in history. I would also choose to go with whole over separate at this time in history, because of the concern of accuracy in understanding that the thing that is referenced in the section is that God “rested in [the seventh day],” rather than saying that it was a day of rest, where the focus is on rest. Accuracy in reference is critical, but more important is this, that without accuracy, our words are not meaningful. We need to communicate meaningfully. May God bless your whole day.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
I recently heard a person, whom I consider a friend, slam the New King James Version (NKJV), while I was in attendance. They also praised the New International Version (NIV). They apparently were unaware how much I, and the general public, like the NKJV translation. Not too terribly long ago, I know that the New International Version and the New King James Version were about equal in popularity. So how are we going to settle this disagreement among friends? More importantly, how are we going to settle the disagreement among friends about the meaning of holy?
I think these two issues are closely related, so I am going to treat them together. I think the principles of a meaningful Bible translation in general apply to the principles of a meaningful translation in particular for a single word like holy. So let's try this idea out.
I have to confess that I got distracted not long ago, and was drawn to a quote in an article about art, that came from Jonathan Edwards. He was quoted as seeing beauty in “the clarity of things.” Edwards seems to have thought, in the larger context of his comments, that things themselves bring clarity in God’s and our communication with one another. This idea got me thinking about the whole question of meaningful communication. So please allow me to quickly digress into my upbringing and learning about communication before applying it to both the translation of the Bible and the translation of holy.
I was brought up in the classical understanding of language under Dr. John Piper and Tom Stellar, before Dr. Piper left Bethel College and became Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This understanding of language was mainly taught in my Greek classes and in my classes focused on a book of the Bible. In addition to this understanding of language was a deeply felt inductive approach to the study of the Biblical text that really got students like myself excited. It was that deep feeling of excitement and humility before the text that was the primary benefit of sitting under Dr. Piper and Tom Stellar. They were both students of Dr. Dan Fuller, who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary, who fanned this flame of excitement about the Biblical text even hotter. I later sat under him directly and benefited immensely.
What did not make my flame even hotter was the classical understanding of language. Certain parts of it are nearly incomprehensible and unbeneficial. Unless you are a scholar, you will reach a ceiling in your understanding that you cannot get past. What got me past this ceiling was sitting under the teaching of Dr. William Smalley, Lois (Malcolm) Smith and Dr. Don Larsen at Bethel College. Dr. Smalley was my primary influence. Dr. Smalley’s two primary sources for his understanding of language were Kenneth Pike and Michael Halliday. Through Dr. Smalley, I was introduced to the writings of both Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Later, Dr. Dan Shaw, at Fuller Theological Seminary, gave me the practical know how to use the tools of both organizations much more effectively. This entire approach effectively enlarged my basic understanding of the universals of language. The failure of the classical school was in its basic universals of language that created a ceiling that I originally could not get past. I am referring here to the dreaded eight parts of speech.
For many years, I also was stuck at a ceiling in understanding as to what makes a healthy or sound translation of the Bible. Part of the problem was the argument over form and meaning. On the one hand, there was a more literal (form) approach, as reflected in John Piper’s preference for the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and New American Standard (NASB). On the other hand, there was a more dynamic (meaning) approach, as reflected in Dr. William Smalley’s preference for the Phillips translation and the Today’s English Version (TEV), sometimes referred to as the Good News Bible. Dr. Smalley was sometimes critical of the TEV, but he still preferred it to the NASB. I am convinced now that the argument over form and meaning is a little bit misguided, because of a recent breakthrough in my understanding.
Let’s go back now to the article in which Edwards was quoted. He saw three things in communication that stand in connection with each other. This view is not entirely unique. The three things are: things, words and ideas. What is unique is that he regarded things as superior in clarity to the other two. What led to my breakthrough, is that I decided to continue Edwards’ three things, I also decided to change his assumption that things are greater in clarity and instead I made clarity a separate part of communication alongside Edwards’ other three. So this is how I first came up with: clarity, ideas, words and things.
I then decided to bring in the aid of John Beekman and John Callow, who I first learned about through Dr. Smalley. I also decided to bring in the aid of Katharine Barnwell, who I learned about through Dr. Dan Shaw. From them, I had previously summarized the principles of what makes a good, or said better yet, a healthy or sound translation. For them, it came down to a preference for meaning over form, because a translation must be meaningful, and it came down to the qualities of: accuracy, clarity and naturalness. I decided to continue and bolster their preference for meaning over form and I decided to change the need for only 3 qualities and instead add the quality of fidelity, as something separate from accuracy. So this is how I came up with the quality of a meaningful translation overall. This is the only reason it should be preferred over form. It is the whole point in translation or communication. In reverse, translation cannot be meaningful without form. As I perceive it, form is essentially an expression of the quality of naturalness. Form then is a major part of the whole. So the qualities for being meaningful expand to be: clarity, fidelity, naturalness and accuracy.
There are some clear parallels, but what really clinched the deal was the reading of Dr. Smalley’s material that organizes language around: continuity and change, bond and barrier, rule and freedom, and sense and nonsense. I decided to bolster his view by adding his own views on reference and non-reference, based on the need for accuracy and I decided to also bolster his view of sense and nonsense by making it equivalent to the need for a translation to be meaningful. So I came up with sense and nonsense being the whole of translation’s purpose. Then I came up with the parts being: continuity and change, bond and barrier, rule and freedom and reference and non-reference.
So, in the end, I was left with these parallels:
Communication
clarity ideas words things
(Jonathan Edwards)
Meaningful
clarity fidelity naturalness accuracy
(John Beekman, John Callow, Katharine Barnwell)
Sense & Nonsense
Continuity & Change Bond & Barrier Rule & Freedom Reference & Non-Reference
(William Smalley)
Each of these parallels helps clarify the meaning of the others and helps to make each of them more meaningful. You could say it this way, combing the first two sets of understanding, we need meaningful communication, clear clarity, trustworthy ideas, natural words (or forms) and accurate things. What underlies these is that to have meaningful communication, it must have sense; to have clear clarity, it must have continuity; to have trustworthy ideas, it must have bonds; to have natural words, it must have rules; and to have accurate things, it must have reference. Obviously, when I listen to a House Wren sing, some of these elements are missing, so to that extent their communication is nonsense to me, while it make total sense to another House Wren.
So a meaningful translation must be clear, it must be trustworthy, it must be natural, and it must be accurate. The problem in the past has been that when people argued meaning against form, they were unaware that they were arguing for the whole against one of its essential parts. A part is less than a whole, yet it is not optional or unessential. If people understood form as a discussion of what is natural and what are the rules, then I think the discussions would have been more productive. There is a lot of evidence for this in one of Kenneth Pike’s books. What has happened in discussions is that form did not have a chance against meaning, yet it was by nature and everyday example an unfair battle of the whole versus just one part. Also many times translations then tended to downplay form against meaning, as though it was optional rather than essential. This, of course, caused many people to practically feel uneasy. And sometimes this uneasiness happened for good reason. So part of the problem was that people did not see that they were preserving form in naturalness and in words. Rather even worse, they were often fearful of losing accuracy, because they joined accuracy to form rather than referent. This led to even greater fears and stronger disagreements. So the other part of the problem is that rather than coming down the escalator of fear and anger, people instead went up the escalator of fear and anger.
We’ve had similar problems with the meaning of holy. If you look at the word holy, you must ask yourself if it is meaningful language. I would argue that in many ways it is no longer meaningful by itself or in context. It seems to always require substituting another word to explain it. That is not to say it was not very meaningful at one time. We need to be very meaningful, when we talk about the most important character trait that God and we are supposed to possess. The word holy is very important, so it needs to be very meaningful.
Let’s examine it in regard to making it a word that is meaningful, because it is: clear, trustworthy, natural and accurate. I will deal with each of these separately, because each part is essential to making holy meaningful again.
First, let’s look at how clear it is. Something is clear when it has a history of continuity rather than change or when we are talking about one thing versus many things. When you look at me you see both continuity and change. I have been who I am since I was born, so people see continuity, even while they see a change in my age every year. They see me as one person with many years. One person is clear every time I meet a sibling, even if how many years may be unclear. Holy through time has been one, even with its predecessors that were spelled slightly differently, but its definition has changed over time. If you asked the earliest English translators, they would have said it had a primary sense of wholeness and a secondary sense of separation in the context of the church and translations of the Bible. In the English language itself, it likely had only a sense of wholeness, as many etymology people argue. So its translation usage was likely the first change to this word’s meaning, because the idea of separation was added. The second change came at the end of the 1800s, when scholarship said you must cut the loaf of bread in half and choose between wholeness and separation. Scholars largely choose to keep the definition of separation and drop the meaning of wholeness. Then still later it modified this position by bringing back wholeness to describe the degree of separation. Still more recently, wholeness alone has been promoted as it’s meaning. These changes have made holy less than clear to people because there hasn’t been just one definition for holy, but at least four. So this has clearly muddied the waters.
Second, let’s look at how trustworthy it is. For many years it bonded together the definitions of whole and separate. Now that bond has pretty much been broken and there is a barrier between the two meanings, because of scholarship beginning in the late 1800s. There is also a new bond between the two, but it is not the same as the first, since now wholeness is just descriptive of separation. My understanding is that before our times, the context determined pretty much whether wholeness or separation was emphasized in a particular biblical text. Sometimes a commentator like John Albert Bengel would sing the praises of God’s beauty, because holiness summarized the sum of all God’s attributes. Another time it was seen as thundering the message of God’s separation from sin. It bonded these two ideas together that otherwise have a barrier between them in our language. Wholeness and separation have no common bond in our language. You can also add to this that when a translator goes from the original foreign language to the latest native language, there is supposed to be a bond between the ideas in the original and the ideas in the translation. The translator is trying to find the links between the two languages and avoid the breakdowns between them. This is why I continue to look at the original language for holy and I look for possible links with either wholeness or separation. So I see a fair amount in the breakdown of bonds within our own language, when it comes to the idea of holy, even if I cannot go into depth on the translation process here. So there remains the inherent problem of bonding together two ideas like whole and separate which have a barrier between them in our language and possibly also in the original languages.
Third, let’s look at how natural it is. Holy was once a very natural word in our language, as it enjoyed ties to halig, hale, hal and healthy. Of these, only healthy is still commonly around along with holy. It is a little less natural now, because holy no longer has natural ties to healthy, but rather we are taught it is connected with separation and sanctification, which is not natural in English. I think this is one of the reasons that pastors are constantly telling people, depending on which meaning they see, to substitute either wholeness or separation. I think it would be a very practical rule to remove much of the unnaturalness of holy, sanctification, and saints and either go with words related to wholeness or go with words related to separation. For historical reasons, this list of words could be tied to these natural words and forms, but they should not be front and center in a natural translation for today. You must remember God spoke to Abraham in Abraham’s language of Hebrew, then He spoke to His Jews in Babylon in their natural language of Aramaic, and then He spoke to His Jews under Roman domination in their natural language of Greek, even while He spoke periodically in Hebrew too. It is what comes natural to us that is the rule, and to use language foreign to people, even if it is English, is not the rule of Scripture itself.
Fourth, let’s look at how accurate it is. Holy is very accurate, when I understand its historical English reference to be wholeness. In English, its central focus referred physically to a thing that is whole. For example, a healthy body was a whole body. But let’s talk about the thing of separation. Separation is the idea of physically cutting something. For example, you can take a knife and slice a belt in two. That is physically what is meant by separation. These are the two things that one or the other substitution for the word holy is referring to in English.
In the Bible, what is assumed sometimes, is that in the creation story, you are to cut in two the doing of work and the doing of rest. They are both actions, but they are different kinds of action, separate from each other. My problem is that work and rest are not what are blessed and sanctified (a Latin term brought over into English for holy) as the things referred to in the context, but the day is what is referenced and it is what is blessed and sanctified. We must be accurate. It says, “He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” He rested “in it,” yet the rest is not what He chose to bless or sanctify. Nor is it accurate to say that He blessed and sanctified it “because … He rested.” No, he blessed and sanctified it “because in it He rested.”
Also in the Bible, is the fact that there is also not a reference to a day being separate from the other days, because referring to a day as “the seventh day” does not separate it so much from the other six, as it refers to the fact that it is “the seventh” day “in the beginning” of days, pointing out that it is quantitatively one part of the first seven days. There is nothing in the context to point out a focus on separation, but rather a focus on a part of a whole, when it comes to the days mentioned. It has to be that the word holy itself would have to refer to separation without any added support from the context. It is important to note that you cannot refer to it simply as a day of rest where the focus is on rest. It is more accurate to refer to it as rest in the seventh day or the rest of the seventh day. In each of these the focus is on the whole of the seventh day, rather than on the part of day referring to the whole of rest that occurred on that day. The other days likewise were not just days of work, but were rather seen as the work of the first day, etc., since time was so much in focus. Remember God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. The part that He did was that he created the heavens and the earth. The whole of when He did this particular work was “in the beginning.” So the right focus in reference must be maintained.
Yet another thing related to reference is that the seventh day, like the other six, would have had an “evening and morning” that made up that day also. So it is very likely that these would be the parts of a day that would make up a whole day in the case of the seventh day. So parts and wholes are clearly in the context for the word holy to refer to as a possibility.
So a meaningful bible translation and a meaningful translation of holy share the same qualities, when it comes to making sense. I think that due to these qualities of: clarity, trustworthy, natural and accurate, I would go with whole over holy at this time in history. I would have gone with holy against words like sanctification at an earlier time in history. I would also choose to go with whole over separate at this time in history, because of the concern of accuracy in understanding that the thing that is referenced in the section is that God “rested in [the seventh day],” rather than saying that it was a day of rest, where the focus is on rest. Accuracy in reference is critical, but more important is this, that without accuracy, our words are not meaningful. We need to communicate meaningfully. May God bless your whole day.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
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