[b-greek] Re: BDAG at Rv 3:14 - Christ was the first creation now probable

From: Wes Williams (WesWilliams@usa.net)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2001 - 14:10:40 EST


Dear Iver,

I appreciate your linguistic approach and your focus on the issue at hand. I
had not planned to respond to your earlier post but you made a comment in a
response to Rolf that requires me to provide clarification.

You wrote:
>>My problem was that the notion of markedness was apparently used to a
priori exclude certain potential senses of a word. I don't think that is an
appropriate use of the markedness concept.<<

What I in fact wrote was:

>>Since "beginning" is the unmarked meaning ["sense" - later clarification]
of ARCH, we should look for signals from the near context that would warrant
us to adopt a different sense than the unmarked one (i.e. "beginning").
Otherwise, an argument that "the context reveals X" is really little more
than the reader's theology that believes whatever X is and then what I call
"word-smithing" begins. In other words, as I am sure you have seen as well,
"word-smithing" is sometimes performed under an appeal to "context" when the
context reveals no such thing clearly. That is why we must be careful with
appeals to "context" and double-check that the semantic signals truly
exist.<<

I will stand by my comment that we take the unmarked [modern English] sense
of ARCH until there is clear contextual evidence for its [modern English]
sense of ruler. You will note from my words that that I never excluded other
senses a priori, as you thought I did. What I *did* state was that there was
no contextual evidence for the [English] sense of "ruler" and thus conclude
that the case for "beginning" much stronger and "ruler" more remote. After
all, it does says ARCH and not ARCWN (as in 1:5).

I do not object to a *possibility* of "ruler" here. But in the absence of
language markers such as EXOUSIA (as in other cases in the NT with ARCH to
supply clear evidence of that), I do object to an understanding that a
priori excludes the temporal connotations from the primary sense of the
unqualified term. This is what you appear to be doing based on your posts,
Iver. "Ruler" would be stronger if John used ARCWN (as he did in 1:5)
instead of an unqualified ARCH.

>>When we think of ARCH we need to think not so much about English
"beginning", but English "first position." The semantic concept of ARCH is
close to Hebrew ROSH (head, first, beginning), and I think much closer than
to Hebrew RESHIT (beginning, first). <<

I would agree that the semantic concept of ARCH overlaps RoSH but would not
go so far to say that it is closer to RoSH than to ReSHiYT. For example, in
LXX Prov 8:22 it says: 'YHVH created [EKTISEN] me ARCHN of his way.' Do we
understand that Wisdom personified was created as the ruler over the ways of
God or the first created "way"? The Hebrew parallelisms in the following
verses clearly point to temporality, as ARCH usually does, such as v.25
'before [PRO] all the hills, he gave birth to me [GENNA ME]'. Or Gen 49:3
"Reuben, you are the ... ARCH of my strength." Ruler or "beginning"? I
submit that it is the "unmarked" [English] sense of "beginning."

Back to my point briefly on "word-smithing" based on a particular
understanding of context. If we come into the text with an a priori
understanding that ARCH lacks temporal connotations because this conflicts
with other texts we have in mind, one alternate solution is to take the
verse for what it says with ARCH in the primary sense (with temporality) and
to re-examine the other texts in this light. This is simply a suggestion but
I think it is a good one since the other texts may be ambiguous and we may
actually gain a different perspective and a more accurate understanding of
the other texts.

I will grant that I should have used "sense" instead of "meaning" in my
original post and I thank you for pointing that out. I was using the
linguistic meta-language to which Rolf referred and incorrectly thought that
you would understand my contextual point although I used a loaded word.

Sincerely,
Wes Williams


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