Moisés Silva - Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics

REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

ZONDERVAN

Biblical Words and Their Meaning: AN INTRODUCTION TO LEXICAL SEMNATICS

Copyright 1983, 1994 by Moiss Silva

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

EPub Edition MARCH 2010 ISBN: 978-0-310-87151-4

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan Publishing House

Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Silva, Moiss

Biblical words and their meaning : an introduction to lexical semantics / by Moiss Silva.Rev. and expanded ed. p. cm.

Includes bibliographies references and index.

ISBN 0-310-47981-9 (pbk.)

1. BibleLanguage, style. 2. BibleHermeneutics. 3. Language and languagesreligious aspects. I. Title.

BS537.S54 1994

220.66-dc20

94-22633

CIP

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The appendix, Distinguishing the Meaning of Greek Verbs in the Semantic Domain for Worship, is a revision of an article published under the same title in Filologia Neotestamentaria 4 (1991). Copyright 1990 by Karen H. Jobes. Used by permission.

94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02

TO PAT

Encouraged by the favorable reception that this book has enjoyed, the publishers and I have agreed that a new edition would be welcomed by biblical students.

Alterations in the body of the work are limited to minor corrections, since further research into lexical semantics has not led me to make significant changes in the interpretation or presentation of the data. Moreover, substantive criticisms have been few, such as the concern that my treatment of Septuagintal issues is somewhat superficial (see N. Fernndez Marcos in Revista espaola de lingstca 13 [1983]: 415-17) and that my use of both John Lyons and Eugene A. Nidas systems of classification could lead to confusion (see Richard J. Erickson in TSF Bulletin 7, no. 3 [Jan.-Feb. 1984]: 26).

Accordingly, it has seemed wise to preserve the original pagination for the convenience of readers who are familiar with the first edition. Instead of rewriting the text, then, I have sought to update the book through additional material. The new chapter, Recent Developments in Semantics, also makes it possible to formulate some further thoughts on the relevance of collocation to semantics and on the relationship between the word and its context.

One concern expressed by several reviewers was the lack of a substantive example of lexical study. I am therefore very appreciative to Karen H. Jobes for allowing me to include in the present edition an article that seeks to apply the lexical principles discussed here. That article was originally a paper written by her for one of my graduate courses and was subsequently published in Filologa neotestamentaria. Students have commented on the value of the article in illustrating the study of lexical fields, and so it seemed appropriate to make it readily available to readers of this book.

New readers should perhaps be advised that they need not go through all the chapters in sequence. The introduction and chapter 1 are foundational, but chapters 2 and 3 (especially the latter, which is fairly technical) may be skipped on a first reading. Chapter 4 also is foundational, but chapter 5 may be skimmed before proceeding to the last chapter, which is the most important.

This new edition goes out with the hope that it will aid studentsand those ministered to by themin the unique task of understanding the Scriptures.