Glosses vs. Definitions

Steven Craig Miller scmiller at plantnet.com
Sat Dec 9 08:26:22 EST 2000


To: Clayton Stirling Bartholomew,

<< I am will openly admit, I am somewhat addicted to the gloss. >>

I think there are two basic problems with glosses. First, occasionally 
confusion can result when one accepts a gloss as a definition of a Greek 
word. Second, there is the tendency to assume that the semantic range of a 
Greek word is roughly the same as the semantic range of its most basic 
gloss. Take for example, the Greek term LOGOS which if often glossed as 
"word." For many of us, a "word" is any meaningful sequence of letters 
which, in normal typographical practice, is bounded on either side by a 
space. I seriously doubt anyone in antiquity thought of LOGOS in such a 
manner. Anyway, one will note that BDAG didn't eliminate the gloss, it 
merely attempted to subordinate it to a definition.

-Steven Craig Miller
Alton, Illinois (USA)
scmiller at plantnet.com





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