When we see a pair of words in the Bible joined by "and", it is very common for some scholars or non-scholars to interpret them as a kind of synonymous parallelism. There needs to be another option as well. Not everything joined by "and" is connected in the same way. To illustrate, in carpentry it is understood that there is a plumb line and a level line. These are not synonymous and yet they still are similar in that they are both measurements performed by a tool called a "level(er)" . What if this perpendicular connection also happens in the world of words and not just in the world of carpentry?
In reading Martin Luther years ago I ran across the idea of a broad definition and a narrow definition for word. This was a bit confusing for me at first, but gradually I was able to grasp what he meant by such a distinction.
It is more like perpendicular parallelism.
[under construction]
Jon
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment