We’re consistently told by contemporary commentators and theorists of hermeneutics that etymologies ought not be used in biblical studies. One text says that it is “always dangerous” to interpret etymologically. There are at least two reasons for this: 1) Word meanings change, and so the original or historical meaning of a word may be irrelevant to the text being interpreted; 2) Speakers know only the current meaning, not the history of the word.
Point #1 is exactly right, but is more directly relevant to lexical semantics than to interpretation. Point #2 is highly questionable as regards the biblical writers. To put it simply: Do we have historical grounds for assuming the biblical writers were ignorant of or uninterested in word derivations? The answer: No.
We can defend this No with a few citations from the six or so packed pages that Ernst Robert Curtius devotes to etymology in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages .
We could start with the evident interest in etymology displayed in the account of Jacob’s sons names in Genesis. Or Hannah’s naming of Samuel, with its plays on Saul. Or Hosea’s play on Jacob, or Micah’s play on his own name near the end of his prophecy (7:18: “who is like you, O God?”). This interest in coded names pervades Greek and Roman literature.
“I will tell you everything quite truly,” Odysseus lies when he first sees his father after a twenty-year absence: “I come from Alybas, where I have a fine house. I am son of king Apheidas, who is the son of Polypemon. My own name is Eperitus; heaven drove me off my course as I was leaving Sicania, and I have been carried here against my will. As for my ship it is lying over yonder, off the open country outside the town, and this is the fifth year since Ulysses left my country. Poor fellow, yet the omens were good for him when he left me. The birds all flew on our right hands, and both he and I rejoiced to see them as we parted, for we had every hope that we should have another friendly meeting and exchange presents.”
Curtius points out that each name is a riddle to be decided: The name Eperitus is “Strife,” his supposed homeland Alybas is “Sorrowfield,” and his ancestry is “son of Hardlife son of Vexation.” The most famous Homeric etymology is that of Odysseus’ own nae, provided in the Odyssey Book 9. Curtius points out that several of the characters of the Iliad have “speaking names: Hector is “Shielder,” Thersites “Impudent, Thoas “Stormy,” and Hermonides the carpenter is “Joiner.”
Ancient interpreters of the Homeric stories etymologized names. Aeschylus says that Helen’s name foretells her role in the Trojan War. In Fagles’s translation of the Agamemnon , the Chorus laments that Helen has brought “Hell at the prows, hell at the gates / hell on the men-of-war, / from her lair’s sheer veils she drifted / launched by the giant western wind, / and the long tall waves of men in armour.” The Helen/Hell connection reflects the Greek: Helena/hele na (destroy ships), and Fagles comments: “The Greek exemplifies the ‘etymological figure of speech’ by which to similar words (one of them often a proper name) were taken to be similar in meaning. This belief was sanctioned by the supertition that a proper name could contain an omen of its owner’s destiny . . . . so in other Greek tragedies Ai-as (= Ajax) is compelled by fate to cry out ai! ai! in agony, and Pentheus is reduced to tragic grief ( penthos ).”
Plato questions etymology in the Cratylus , asking whether names are natural or conventional. Socrates spends a good bit of the treatise constructing playful etymologies like the following: “the name of andreia seems to imply a battle;—this battle is in the world of existence, and according to the doctrine of flux is only the counterflux (enantia rhon): if you extract the delta from andreia, the name at once signifies the thing, and you may clearly understand that andreia is not the stream opposed to every stream, but only to that which is contrary to justice, for otherwise courage would not have been praised. The words arren (male) and aner (man) also contain a similar allusion to the same principle of the upward flux (te ano rhon). Gune (woman) I suspect to be the same word as goun (birth): thelu (female) appears to be partly derived from thele (the teat), because the teat is like rain, and makes things flourish (tethelenai).” And he affirms that “knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge,” “names have by nature a truth,” and “the business of a name . . . is to express the nature.”
Of Aristotle, Curtius writes that “Among Aristotle’s twenty-eight topoi of proof the last is the topos apo tou onomatos : when one says of Draco’s laws that they are those not of a man but of a dragon.” Curtius is referring to the end of 2.23 of the Rhetoric, where Aristotle writes: “Another line is to draw meanings from names. Sophocles, for instance, says, ‘O steel in heart as thou art steel in name.’ This line of argument is common in praises of the gods. Thus, too, Conon called Thrasybulus rash in counsel. And Herodicus said of Thrasymachus, ‘You are always bold in battle’; of Polus, ‘you are always a colt’; and of the legislator Draco that his laws were those not of a human being but of a dragon, so savage were they. And, in Euripides, Hecuba says of Aphrodite, ‘Her name and Folly’s (aphrosuns) lightly begin alike,’ and Chaeremon writes, ‘Pentheus — aname foreshadowing grief (penthos) to come.’”
Closer to the time of the New Testament, we find Cicero claiming that etymology of proper names is (Curtius’s summary) “among the ‘attributes’ of the person.” Quintilian acknowledges that names are used at times in arguments, but thinks they have a limited use (5.10.30-31): “They specify also the name among the topics of argument in regard to a person, and the name must certainly be termed an accident of a person, but it is rarely the foundation of any reasoning, unless when it has been given for some cause, as Sapiens, Maqnus, or Plenus, or has suggested some thought to the bearer of it, as Lentulus’s name led him to think of joining the conspiracy of Catiline, because dominion was said to be promised by the Sibylline books and the predictions of the soothsayers ‘to three Cornelii,’ and he believed himself, as he was a Cornelius, to be the third after Sylla and Cinna. As to the conceit of Euripides, where the brother of Polynices reflects on his name, as an argument of his disposition, it is extremely poor. For jesting, however, occasion is frequently furnished by a name, and
Virgil employs etymologies at various points in the Aeneid . Ascanius will eventually be called Iulus, anticipating his great ancestor, but while in Troy he was called Ilus:
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lus he was, while Ilium ruled on high” (Fagles, 1.320). Romans take their name, obviously enough, from Romulus, but Vergil points it out (1.329-332). Curtius says such etymologies in Virgil are “frequent, but always sensible and dignified.
The same could not be said of Ovid, in Curtius’s opinion. He provides no less than five etymologies for the Agonalia ( Fasti , 1): “Some believe that the day is called Agonal because /The sheep do not come to the altar but are driven (agantur). / Others think the ancients called this festival Agnalia, / ‘Of the lambs’, dropping a letter from its usual place. / Or because the victim fears the knife mirrored in the water, / The day might be so called from the creature’s agony? /It may also be that the day has a Greek name /From the games (agones) that were held in former times. /And in ancient speech agonia meant a sheep, /And this last reason in my judgement is the truth.”
Christians continued this etymological analysis. Jerome wrote a treatise on Hebrew names, and Isidore’s Etymologiarum libri “may be called the basic book of the entire Middle Ages. It not only established the canonical stock of knowledge for eight centuries but also molded their thought categories” (Curtius).
We could go on, of course, and on and on. But what we have here is evidence of ancient interest in coded words (especially names) from the Old Testament through the early Christian era. Some were skeptical, and some cautious (Quintilian), but etymologies remained popular among literate people for centuries. Especially when we consider the Old Testament evidence briefly summed up above, is it plausible that the New Testament writers would fail to share some of this interest?