Conceal and Carry
I can no longer support "conceal and carry" by committing two different mistakes. First, by"putting the cart in front of the horse" and second, by "measuring level without measuring plumb". Here is what I mean. It is not helpful for us to conceal the meanings of the top three most important words in the Bible and then carry that Bible with its incorrect definitions to others.
Both mistakes conceal the meanings of holy, blessed,Yahweh and to some extent the top 20-25 words in the Bible in terms of importance. So what do I mean?
The Cart Before the Horse
The cart before the horse picture should be pretty clear. There are lots of humorous photos on-line illustrating its absurdity. I tried to find a picture of a trailer in front of a truck to modernize the analogy, but it seems we are all too smart to make that mistake in our day. So why is this allowed in studying the meaning of words and by the people called lexicographers who put together lexicons?
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Here is what I have observed. Scholars when they have read some of the older writings on the meaning of words have not been careful to separate: 1) meanings, 2) implications, and 3) significance. This is a rule in Dr. Robert H. Stein's A Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible. He was one of my best teachers during my college and seminary education. Stein's "meanings" is what people like the translator Eugene Nida mean by "definition". The other two are not definitions. The reason I am concerned about holy and the other two words is because of their significance to the meaning of the whole text of the Bible, but that does not indicate their definitions. Likewise neither does their implications define the word.
For example, we separate people in a hospital because of the danger of the well becoming ill through at least some of the sick. We do not separate people due to an arbitrary rule of separation, but rather we separate the unhealthy from the healthy in some cases to keep the healthy from also becoming unhealthy. The central point and definition that needs to be known is the difference between healthy and unhealthy. The definition of healthy is not separate and yet it seems to me that we have defined holy through the same error. When Rashi (a early Jewish teacher) says that holy means separate, does he mean it implies separate or that it is defined by separate. Second, has he himself switched an implication into the role of definition. You see the horse is the meaning, the implication is the cart, and the farmer or whoever is driving operating this machinery is the one who can explain the significance of what the horse and cart are for.
The Level without the Plumb
When a carpenter measures, they measure both vertically the walls to see if they are straight (plumb) and also the floors to insure they are straight (level). They would never consider it adequate to operate in building a structure without both vertical and horizontal measurements combining for a convergence of perspective. It simply makes no sense, because these meanings have been concealed by not seeing the difference between a horse and its cart.
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What I have discovered is that the meaning of 1)Yahweh, 2) blessed, and 3) holy have been concealed by the mistaken move of substituting the implications of a word for the definition of a word. Holy just happens to be one of the most important (#3).
[A work in process as I have time. Thank you for your patience.]
Jon
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