Dan McClellan twofer
Words mean whatever people use them to mean
The Bible has no inherent meaning
I only discovered Dan McClellan a few weeks ago. His is now one of my favorite channels.
He's articulate. He speaks easily, but his language is too precise not to have been carefully rehearsed.
He makes me think.
Words mean whatever people use them to mean
The Bible has no inherent meaning
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Two topics that I always find interesting....
Well, the dictionaries seek to do is provide uniformity to the community of nations in the use of words and phrases, in my opinion.
The dictionary is indeed an imperfect approximation for the meaning of usages. It would be impossible to keep up with the evolution of language and all contextual usages for every word.
But dictionaries serve a very important purpose. They offer a framework to mitigate semantic chaos. If we extemporaneously applied whatever meaning we wish to the words we use, incoherence would dominate.
Further, if one has an exotic / nuanced meaning for a particular word then it is incumbent upon them to establish their intended meaning of the word so that others can understand them.
Agreed. Any other idea seems insane to me. And, knowing the definitions of words as opposed to just using them based on what experience teaches us to think they mean makes a difference. I find myself checking the definitions of words I use to see if I'm actually using them correctly. Sometimes I'm surprised at what I discover. Quite often I find myself unable to think of the exact word I want so I just think of something close and look at associated synonyms for what I want.
Point being, words have a definition for a reason. As you say, it cuts down on misunderstandings, but also, using the word correctly means less words needed contextually to get an idea across. The more out-of-definition a word is used, the more you have to surround it with context to get the meaning across.
Yes. Like that. You end up needing a lot more context to explain an out-of-definition usage of a word. And there is a place for such things. Poetry comes to mind, but that also has rules governing that art, even if loosely.
As for his argument that the Bible has no meaning, I am not fully on board.
He largely argued that the meaning of words is both time and location (culture) dependent. That the meaning of a word (e.g. agreement) in 2024 USA is not necessarily the same as the meaning when penned in the 17th century.
Okay, I appreciate that. But if one does sound exegesis based on original intent and thus considers the most commonly accepted meaning of words at the time of the writing, then one can better approximate original meaning. The result is imperfect but not meaningless.
Yes there are all sorts of problems associated with getting the proper meaning from the Bible, but I do not agree with his (encompassing) posit that the Bible has no inherent meaning. His argument did not adequately support his posit.
I agree as regards to the Bible. Because even as he sees to say that there is no meaning in the words in the Bible relative to the KJV, in the 'end' he turns to explain the meaning intended in the very same passage (as something meaningful). He even goes so far as to say the translators meant something when the translated the books!
How he managed not to see his blunder, if beyond me.
I need to slow down. . .I be typing too fast! Too busy these days.
I have watched several of his videos now and they're all pretty much like this one. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, he takes kernels of truth but then ends up with something deceiving. For the most part, his arguments, like this one, are fairly fatuous. Incidentally (or not) I used the serpent metaphor because he did a video on that as well.
Yes, the bible does have inherent meaning because it has changed the lives of myriads upon myriads of not only individuals, communities, nations, and tribes across races it has changed cultures through its rhetoric (alone).