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Yee, Tet-Lim N.
2005.
Jews, Gentiles and Ethnic Reconciliation.
Article contents
Two Myths: Corporate Personality and Language/Mentality Determinism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
Certain myths are often perpetuated in a discipline, myths which upon later reflection are seen to be what they in fact are: unhelpful, deceptive or simply wrong. Often these myths are perpetuated in spite of good evidence to the contrary. This tendency is not unique to Biblical studies but is a pattern that is found in a range of disciplines. Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, addresses this tendency in the so-called hard sciences. He does not use the term myth but rather speaks of the presuppositions of normal science, the scientific paradigm which controls the scientific community of a given time. But as is so often the case, growing evidence mounts that the model is unsatisfactory, that it fails in significant ways to explain evidence which is increasingly seen to be important. The evidence mounts, until a paradigm shift occurs, when the significant or major practitioners of a discipline realise that a new model must be invoked to explain the data at hand.
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References
1 Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (1st ed. 1962; Chicago: Univ. Press, 1970).Google Scholar
2 The concept of corporate personality as fundaméntal to a distinctive Hebrew mentality formed an important part of the later Biblical Theology movement, which relied upon supposed distinctives of the Hebrew language as indicative of the uniqueness of its people. See John Rogerson, ‘Part 1: The Old Testament’, in The Study and Use of the Bible, by Rogerson, John, Rowland, Christopher and Lindars, Barnabas, The History of Christian Theology 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 137–138, 145.Google Scholar
3 As seen above, I use myth in its pejorative sense, as a set of beliefs once believed to be true and later proved to be without basis, but maintained for ulterior motives.
4 Robinson, H. Wheeler, The Christian Doctrine of Man, 3d ed. (1st ed. 1911; Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1926), p. 8Google Scholar. See also his ‘The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality’ (1935) and ‘The Group and the Individual in Israel’ (1937) reprinted in Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, Facet Books (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964)Google Scholar, where the introduction by john Reumann begins by saying, ‘Few topics have come to pervade modern biblical studies as has the Hebrew conception of “corporate personality”’ (p. v), although Reumann goes on to identify the concept more with corporate representation. See below.
5 Porter, J. R., ‘The Legal Aspects of the Concept of “Corporate personality” in the Old Testament’, Vetus Testamentum 15 (1965), pp. 379–380.Google Scholar
6 Rogerson, J. W., ‘The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality: A Reexamination’, Journal of Theological Studies NS 21 (1970), pp. 1–16Google Scholar; idem, Anthropology and the Old Testament, The Biblical Seminar (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978; rpt. Sheffield: JSOT, 1984), pp. 46–65.Google Scholar
7 Whiteley, D. E. H., The Theology of St Paul, 2d ed. (1st ed. 1964; Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), pp. 45–46, 292Google Scholar. Russell, D. S. in his The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (London: SCM, 1964) is notorious for invoking corporate personality (see e.g. pp. 132ff. and 350ff.)Google Scholar; cf. also his popular Apocalyptic Ancient and Modern (London: SCM, 1978), e.g. pp. 37–38.Google Scholar
8 See also Bruce, F. F., Romans, Tyndale (1st ed. 1963; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), p. 120Google Scholar, who refers to ‘the Hebrew concept of corporate personality’ and then lists in n. 1: ‘Cf. Robinson, H. W., Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, revised edition (1981)Google Scholar; also Rogerson, J. W., “The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality. A Re-examination”, JTS, new series 21 (1970), pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.’ Bruce has simply added the reference to Rogerson, not taking seriously the damage it does to Robinson's concept.
9 Wedderburn, A.J. M., Baptism and Resurrection, WUNT 44 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1987), esp. pp. 351–356Google Scholar. His ideas are very similar in many respects to those in Moule, C. F. D., The Phenomenon of the New Testament (London: SCM, 1964), pp. 20–42.Google Scholar
10 See e.g. Kümmel, Werner Georg, Introduction to the New Testament, trans. Kee, Howard C. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), pp. 309–311Google Scholar; Stambaugh, John E. and Balch, David L., The New Testament in Its Social Environment, Library of Early Christianity 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), pp. 160–165.Google Scholar
11 See Starr, Chester G., The History of the Ancient World (New York: Oxford UP, 1965), pp. 413ff.Google Scholar; cf. Dover, K.J. et al. , Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford: UP, 1984), pp. 134ff.Google Scholar
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13 Moule, , The Phenomenon of the New Testament, p. 39.Google Scholar
14 Moule, , The Phenomenon of the New Testament, p. 40.Google Scholar
15 E.g. in O'Brien, Peter T., Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary 44 (Waco, Texas: Word, 1982), passimGoogle Scholar. O'Brien is cited because his is a recent commentary in a very popular current commentary series.
16 Wilson, Marvin R., Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), esp. pp. 187–188Google Scholar. The two pieces of ‘evidence’ Wilson cites are the use of collectives in Hebrew, especially adam (man), which may refer to man as an individual or a collective, and prayers using ‘we’. But both find easy parallels in the ‘individualistic’ Western world.
17 Barr, James, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 8–106Google Scholar. For an assessment and appreciation of Barr's work, see Erickson, Richard J., James Barr and the Beginnings of Biblical Semantics, Anthroscience Minigraph Series (Notre Dame: Foundations Press, 1984).Google Scholar
18 Boman, Thorlief, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (London: SCM, 1960), esp. pp. 17–23, 123–92.Google Scholar
19 Barr, , Semantics of Biblical Language, pp. 10–13.Google Scholar
20 This position has been recognised by recent work in Greek linguistics. See esp. McKay, K. L., A Grammar for Students of Classical Greek (Canberra: National Univ., 1974)Google Scholar, and several recent articles in Novum Testamentum defining and expanding what he puts forward in his grammar; and now Porter, Stanley E., Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood, Studies in Biblical Greek 1 (New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989), esp. chapts. 2, 3 and 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Barr, , Semantics of Biblical Language, p. 44.Google Scholar
22 Barr, , Semantics of Biblical Language, pp. 72–85.Google Scholar
23 See Erickson, James Barr, who traces response to Barr's work.
24 I am not concerned here with Barr's comments in the area of the lexicon. For an analysis of response to his proposals see Silva, Moisés, Biblical Words and their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), esp. pp. 18ff.Google Scholar
25 Via, Dan Otto Jr., The Parables: Their Literary and Existential Dimension (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), pp. 48–49.Google Scholar
26 Wilson, , Our Father Abraham, p. 137.Google Scholar
27 See e.g. Mallinson, Graham and Blake, Barry J., Language Typology: Cross-Linguistic Studies in Syntax, North-Holland Linguistic Series (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1981).Google Scholar
28 Wilson, , Our Father Abraham, p. 145Google Scholar. Cf. De Lange, N., Judaism (Oxford: Univ. Press, 1986), esp. p. 4Google Scholar, who claims that ‘the Hebrew language does not really have a word for “religion”,’ and hence has not been able to conceive of such a concept until recently, when it has had to press into service words from other semantic fields.
29 For a recent statement of linguistic opinion in this area see Milroy, James, ‘Linguistic Equality and Speakers’, Sheffield Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 2 (1985), pp. 66–71.Google Scholar
30 Gibson, Arthur, Biblical Semantic Logic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981)Google Scholar; Thiselton, Anthony C., The Two Horizons (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), pp. 133–139Google Scholar; idem, ‘Language and Meaning in Religion’, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, trans. Brown, C. (vol. 3; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), pp. 1126–1127.Google Scholar
31 This summary is heavily dependent upon the excellent treatments by Lyons, John, Language and Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge: UP, 1981), pp. 302–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thiselton, , Two Horizons, pp. 133–139.Google Scholar
32 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, ‘Science and Linguistics’, in Language, Thought and Reality, ed.Carroll, John B. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1956), pp. 212–214.Google Scholar
33 Lyons, , Language, pp. 304–305, citing Sapir.Google Scholar
34 Whorf, , ‘Some Verbal Categories of Hopi’, in Language, pp. 112–124.Google Scholar
35 Nida, Eugene A., ‘The Implications of Contemporary Linguistics for Biblical Scholarship’, Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972) p. 83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36 See e.g. Wendland, Ernst R., The Cultural Factor in Bible Translation, UBS Monograph Series No. 2 (London: United Bible Societies, 1987), esp. chapts. 1 and 2.Google Scholar
38 Lyons, , Language, p. 311.Google Scholar
39 See esp. Wilson, Our Father Abraham. Cf. also Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, ‘Left Brain, Right Brain and Theological Reasoning’, unpublished paper (1987). Lingenfelter draws a contrast between Western and non-Western or Hebraic means of thought, and then contrasts Ephesians and Matthew, in light of left or right brain predominance. He does not account for the fact that Paul was Jewish, nor does he treat their common relation to Greek.
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