Etymology

Peter Cotterell and Max Turner summarize James Barr’s case against etymology, dismissing TF Torrance’s claims about the links between ekklesia and kaleo , qahal and qol : “Even if qahal derives from qol , ‘voice’, (which is no more than merely possible ) it remains highly questionable whether anyone would have been aware of this etymological connection at the time of the writing of the Old Testament, and even less probable that it would be assumed that the voices which called the gathering together was the Divine Elective Voice.”

Is that true? Etymologies have fascinated the users of words since Jacob’s wives named his sons, and they continued to fascinate into the Christian era (Isidore), through the modern period (Coleridge), through to contemporary philosophy (Heidegger, George Steiner).

There are two points here: First, that etymologizing was a common procedure of interpretation in the ancient world; second, that it requires a lot of credulity to think that all these etymologizers either believed that word meanings didn’t change (which Heidegger certainly didn’t believe), or that words don’t change meanings in different contexts. Surely they knew these things, and yet they etymologized. Perhaps we oughtn’t dismiss them quite so quickly.