SEMANTICS IN BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION

JAMES L. BOYER Professor of Greek, Grace College In dealing with a subject which includes the word “semantic there is a double reason for beginning with the defining of terms; because itself needs defining, and because semantics has to do with the meaning of words, or definition. word semantic is used in two senses; (1) as a technical term in the science of linguistics, and (2) a more general sense of linguistic and grammatical studies into the meaning of words. latter is the sense to be used in this paper. My topic deals with the components of the sentence, that words and word relationships. Its goal is to discover the meanings of these words as they contribute to the meaning of the whole sentence. For example, in order to properly interpret the meaning of a sentence such as, The is the Body of we must understand the meaning of each of its components. What does the word Church mean? and similarly, body, Christ, the copula is, the genitive relationship of? These are the materials of semantics. problem, in turn, may be considered as comprised of two parts; (1) the meaning of the words in themselves, the lexical study of words, and (2) the meaning of words in their grammatical relationships, the syntactical study of words. Perhaps the first of these might by some be considered the specific field of semantics, but the second seems to be equally involved in the meaning of words.