Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

In recent reading and listening to papers, I’ve noticed that sometimes the word “collocations” is used ambiguously. Authors seem to use the word in three different ways:

1. Words that occur together
2. Words that occur together frequently
3. Words that occur together in some statistically significant manner

Of course, it’s unsurprising to see a word used in different senses. It’s only in this case that I’m not terribly interested in “collocations” in the first sense listed above.

At any rate, here’s how I try to disambiguate in discussions related to Biblical Hebrew. First, I assume that most people talking about collocations in the Hebrew Bible do not mean the third sense in the list above, unless they explicitly state otherwise. It is difficult to run statistical analysis on a closed corpus as small as the Hebrew Bible.

Second, I take an example of a collocation someone is talking about that I think might be rare and see how common it is. If it turns out to be rare, I assume they are using sense one above. If not, I assume they might be using sense two above, until I might come across something else they call a collocation I think might be rare.

Perhaps this isn’t helpful to anyone, but my first experience with the word “collocation” was in research related to vocabulary learning where it is often used in sense three above. So, I sometimes end up confused.

Here is a quote from John Riches in The Bible: A Very Short Introduction, which I think is instructive for those who throw the term Bible around:

So, to put it simply, the term ‘Bible’, as a collection of sacred texts, is first used for the Christian scriptures, in their different versions. Only later is it used of Jewish scriptures in a manner which is designed to distinguish the Hebrew from the Christian scriptures. Thus the Bible, in most recent usage, is ambiguous: it may refer either to the Jewish or the Christian Bibles, in their various forms.

Recently, I posted pointed out what I felt was an instance of fundamentalism on the Desiring God blog. And, after a bit of conversation on FaceBook I think it might be helpful to explain the way that I use the term fundamentalism. For this term, I follow the approach of Harriet A. Harris who has written an excellent book entitled Fundamentalism and Evangelicals.  In her book she states that she uses the term “fundmentalist” in three ways:

I will employ the term ‘fundamentalist’ in three main ways, each of which should be clear from the context. I will use it when referring to the fundamentalist mentality which prevails in contemporary evangelicalism. Secondly, I will retain the label ‘fundamentalist’ for those involved in the controversies with ‘modernism’ in the 1920s. Thirdly, I will call ‘fundamentalist’ particular separatist groups who regard themselves as fundamentalist (and I do not, by virtue of this label, judge that selfproclaimed fundamentalists lack the advantages of a personal, evangelical faith) (Harris 1998, 17).

Do I think the writer at Desiring God blog whose post I critiqued is a fundamentalist?  Not really in the strictest (third) sense above, though I do agree with James Barr that modern evangelicalism has done very little to distinguish itself from fundamentalism (I also recommend Barr’s work entitled Fundamentalism to the reader, though it can be difficult to come by).  In the previous post, I was using the term “fundamentalism” in the first sense above, namely an evangelical reflecting the fundamentalist mentality that still prevails in modern evangelicalism.

PS – I believe the critique of blatant anachronism in the above mentioned post stands without need for clarification.

I will not be blogging anything of my own today considering I am working on my dissertation.  However, I did not want to leave you without any food for thought for today.  HERE is a link to a post by Chris Brady on his reasoning for not using the term “myth” in his series on Genesis 1-2.  I feel like I have been linking to Chris’s posts a lot here lately, but the series on Genesis has just been so good.  And, it has sparked a lot of dialogue with John Hobbins, Daniel McClellan, and now Alan Lenzi among others.  The recent dialogue has really brought out some important issues of how scholars should speak with general audiences.  When speaking or writing for a general audience, should scholars use the word “myth” and try to make sure that people understand that term properly (i.e. it doesn’t necessarily mean that something is false)?  Or, should they jettison the term because of misunderstandings that people have about it?  I have tended to use the term, but to try to make sure that people I am speaking or writing for understand it properly; however, I can understand the opposing view.