LALIAN vs LOGON
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Aug 26 07:01:20 EDT 2002
At 8:46 PM -0400 8/25/02, Jonathan B. Ferguson wrote:
>Hello,
> I have Spiros Zodhiates's _The Complete WordStudy New Testament_. A
>few months ago I read this statment regarding LALIAN and LOGON: "A
>problematic passage is John 8:43 in which we have both LALIA and LOGOS
>spoken by our Lord. The context referred to was when Jesus was debating
>with the Pharisees. They were listening to what He had to say, but they
>were not capable of understanding because they did not want to understand.
> The Lord said to them, 'Why do ye not undersatnd my speech (LALIAN)?' In
>other words, 'What I am saying to you is as if it had no meaning
>whatsoever.' And why did it have no meaning? The reason is explained in
>the balance of the paragraph, 'Even because ye cannot hear my word
>(LOGON),' or better still, 'Because you cannot understand and obey (AKOUW
>[191]) my LOGON (speech with its intended meaning).' Hence, those who
>will not give room in their heartrs to His truth wil not undersatnd His
>speech or utterance, the outward form of His language which His Word
>(logos) assumes." (Zodhiates, _The Complete WordStudy New Testament_, 918)
> I like what he says. However, when I looked at the _Friberg Greek
>Lexicon_, it said regarding LALIA "in the NT always in a good sense." So,
>I was wondering if anyone could help me to see if what Zodhiates was
>correct, or if perhaps he made an error by reading too much into John
>8:43. Thanks :)
In this instance at least (I have read both critical and approving comments
on Zodhiates' work in this forum hitherto but have never consulted it
myself), I think Zodhiates is essentially right. If you'll consult the
dictionaries/lexica (LSJ, BDAG, L&N rather than the secondary vocabulary
aids), you'll find a pretty consistent accounting of these words: LALIA in
older Greek tended to mean "idle chatter, prattle, loose talk, common
gossip" and the verb LALEW likewise was more generally used of
chatter/prattle. In the NT LALEW has become a more standard equivalent of
LEGW and LALIA doesn't have the pejorative sense of glib or careless talk;
rather in the NT there are fundamentally two senses: (1) talk = what is
expressed orally, and (2) manner of talking, speech pattern, dialect. In
the words LALIAN and LOGON in John 8:43 I think the distinction is
fundamentally between what is actually spoken (LALIAN) and what is meant
(LOGON).
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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