From: Bill Ross (wross@farmerstel.com)
Date: Tue Apr 11 2000 - 11:24:39 EDT
<Clayton wrote...>
>For a brief review of the use of KOSMOS in John see Leon Morris, John
NICNT,
1st ed. page 126ff. Morris does a good job of demonstrating the polysemy in
John's use of this term. The 17th chapter of John's gospel is a particularly
good text to observe this polysemy. The word KOSMOS is used in this passage
in an number of senses and with a number of referents. In this text we see
an example of John's habit of weaving a texture with words, shifting and
shading the sense of a word in subtle ways that make exegesis both
challenging and at times exasperating. I suspect (not sure however) that
John 17 contains most if not all of the uses of this word that will be found
in Johannine literature. Someone else will need to prove or disprove this.
<Bill>
I had to look up polysemy:
Main Entry: po*ly*se*mous
Pronunciation: "pa-lE-'sE-m&s, p&-'li-s&-m&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin polysemus, from Greek polysEmos, from poly- + sEma
sign
Date: 1884
: having multiple meanings
- po*ly*se*my /-mE/ noun
Hence, polysemy comes from the same root as "semantic" as in "semantic
range".
I am not absolutely sure exactly what you were trying to say in your post.
Are you saying that the semantic range of KOSMOS is somewhat "plastic" and
can mean many things beyond the semantic range of the word, as defined by
centuries of Greek usage? Are you saying that John assigned new meanings at
whim within a paragraph? Or rather, that Jesus uses words in such a way that
in one breath they remain within the semantic range of the word, then in the
next breath he uses it to signify something new, totally unique to Jesus,
and even contradicting the previous usage such that whereas the previous
usage was "non-elect" now it means "elect"? I hope that is not what you are
saying (though I know many would say this very thing).
By "semantic range" we show the valid usages for exegesis. Straying very far
from that our polysemy quickly becomes the condemnable practice of employing
"plastic words":
2 Peter 2:3 KAI EN PLEONEXIA **PLASTOIS LOGOIS** UMAS EMPOREUSONTAI OIS TO
KRIMA EKPALAI OUK ARGEI KAI H APWLEIA AUTWN OU NUSTAZEI
So the question at hand is, is there anything in John 17 that requires us to
abandon exegesis of words using the semantic range of each in favor of
eisegesis, assigning new meanings to the words? And if we can do it here,
why not everywhere?!
I say we need not go out of the bounds of the normal semantic range of
KOSMOS that anyone in the 1st century would have understood.
I can't spare the time to type in the Lexicion description of the semantic
range of KOSMOS, but suffice it to say that it has never before nor since
included "elect, Christians, believers" etc.
But let me be quick to say that KOSMOS is not a "legal term" and does not
bear the burden of meaning "every person without exception". Just like our
word "world", it is understood as "the general population". Also included in
its semantic range is "the Earth". In several of these verses, either of
these meanings is intelligible unless one's understanding has already been
settled by a forced-fit theology.
So let's see if were are stumped from understanding these verses using these
words from the semantic range of KOSMOS:
John 17:5 (KJV)
"And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which
I had with thee before the EARTH was."
John 17:6 (KJV)
"I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the
GENERAL POPULATION: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have
kept thy word."
John 17:9 (KJV)
"I pray for them: I pray not for the GENERAL POPULATION, but for them which
thou hast given me; for they are thine."
John 17:11 (KJV)
"And now I am no more in the GENERAL POPULATION, but these are in the
GENERAL POPULATION, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own
name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are."
John 17:12 (KJV)
"While I was with them in the GENERAL POPULATION, I kept them in thy name:
those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son
of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled."
John 17:13 (KJV)
"And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the EARTH, that they
might have my joy fulfilled in themselves."
John 17:14 (KJV)
"I have given them thy word; and the GENERAL POPULATION hath hated them,
because they are not of the GENERAL POPULATION, even as I am not of the
GENERAL POPULATION."
John 17:15 (KJV)
"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the GENERAL
POPULATION/EARTH, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."
John 17:16 (KJV)
"They are not of the GENERAL POPULATION/EARTH, even as I am not of the
GENERAL POPULATION/EARTH."
John 17:18 (KJV)
"As thou hast sent me into the GENERAL POPULATION, even so have I also sent
them into the GENERAL POPULATION."
John 17:21 (KJV)
"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that
they also may be one in us: that the GENERAL POPULATION may believe that
thou hast sent me."
John 17:23 (KJV)
"I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that
the GENERAL POPULATION may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them,
as thou hast loved me."
John 17:24 (KJV)
"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I
am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou
lovedst me before the foundation of the EARTH."
John 17:25 (KJV)
"O righteous Father, the GENERAL POPULATION hath not known thee: but I have
known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me."
Also interesting is some people's eisegesis of John's usage in 1 John. John
was writing to answer the Gnsotic heresy, which denies the existence or
relevance of the physical, material world. Yet in explaining KOSMOS in 1
John 2:15-17, preachers tell us that John was referring to a concept of
"world" that is not physical, but more Gnostic! But let's see if we can't
just use plain old meanings and still understand John:
1 John 2:
15 Love not the MATERIAL WORLD, neither the things that are in the MATERIAL
WORLD. If any man love the MATERIAL WORLD, the love of the Father is not in
him.
16 For all that is **in** the MATERIAL WORLD, the lust of the flesh, and
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not out of the Father, but
is of the GENERAL POPULATION.
17 And the MATERIAL WORLD passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that
doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
And of course, even if words were so plastic that, like Humpty Dumpty, we
could assign new meanings at will, my previous post shows that there is no
chance whatsoever that John intended anything other than GENERAL POPULATION
in this verse:
1 John 2:2 (KJV)
"And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world."
I have argued from the English, but I am posting it here because I think it
behooves those who profess to be scholarly and faithfully interpreting the
Koine according to the Grammar not take sweeping liberties as to the
fundamental premise that we understand words by their usage, not by our
theology.
Bill Ross
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