Semiotics and the Word of God
Here is a little thought for any of you who like to quote bible verses and sound authoritative by calling it the Word of God. Those of you who hear the Word of God every now and then might be interested too.
Did you ever stop to think that bible verses usually have more than one word? Shouldn’t they be called the “Words of God”? Does the Word of God really refer to the bible, or to something else? I think most people resolve this by just saying that it is mystery-speak, a cue to stop thinking and accept (or reject).
Well, I want to keep thinking.
The Word of God might be something much more interesting than a grammatically incorrect way to say “bible”. Let me try to explain.
If we’re going to understand what the phrase “Word of God” means, we’ll at least need to have an idea about what the word “word” means. If you’ve read a bit about semiotics you probably know where I’m going. If not, think about it hard for a while.
What is a word?
It is a symbol, usually a sound-pattern or a collection of letters that causes someone who hears it to think of some concept. I say “banana” and it causes you to think of a yellow peelable fruit, or the herbaceous plant that produces that fruit. If it didn’t make you think of that, it failed as a word. Well, some of you you may think of a proof of God’s existence and benevolence (video), and I’m pretty sure a lot of my words are failing you.
A word is not just a sound or some letters on paper. It is at least pair of things — the sound and the concept. The word can be misspelled, mispronounced, or misconjugated but it is still the word as long as it evokes the same concept in someone’s mind. You could also say there is another part of a word: the material thing that the word and the concept refer to. You can’t have a concept of nothing now can you? These three things together: symbol, concept, object are sometimes called the “semiotic triangle”. I highly recommend reading Semiotics for Beginners to get an accessible introduction to this surprisingly interesting field.
I have a hunch that many early Christians were deep thinkers and the subtlety of word was not lost on them. And they appear to have been talking about the Word before there was a bible. So maybe the Word of God is some symbol that is supposed to invoke a response in our mind, a response that represents something outside of our minds.
Now think of this other little snippet of mystery-speak: “Jesus is the Word made flesh.” I’m going out on a limb here, but “the Word made flesh” sounds like it is referring to the “symbol” part of our word. What other part of the word could be it’s flesh? The sound pattern is the physical part of the word.
When we “hear the Word”, or observe Jesus, it should cause our minds to involuntarily react by thinking of a concept. What if this concept is The Holy Spirit, God in us, they way we should be? Then this symbol and concept must represent God outside of us.
So there you go, the Trinity as Semiotic Triangle, three in one, indivisible.
Maybe I’m just being cute, but I find this a bit more interesting than thinking that I have to use silly grammar to sound holy. At least it goes to show that a few words can have surprisingly deep meaning, even if it was unintended.
My apologies to those of you who actually know something about Semiotics or Theology, I’m sure I’m guilty of many transgressions.
Wow — that really made me think! CS Lewis has something to say about how our concept of a word can influence our perception (e.g. An abused child may have trouble relating to God the “Father”.) I went to blueletterbible.com and looked up the uses of the phrase “word of God” in the Bible itself. Most of the Old Testament occurrences seem to refer to a specific message from God to a prophet, but in the New Testament from the Gospels to Revelation, it seems to refer to the whole of Scripture (not in every place, but in many throughout).
The original Greek words for “word” were logos and rhema. One of the definitions of rhema is “a series of words joined together into a sentence (a declaration of one’s mind made in words)” which fits the way we use it today. Unfortunately, I don’t know if this is a definition someone wrote based on what they thought the Bible meant or if it was an accepted definition of that Greek word at the time of the writing. I will have to dig more.
I agree with you about words coloring someone’s perception. We Christians (especially here in the South, I think) throw around phrases like “getting saved” and “asking Jesus into your heart” because they have come to have a certain meaning in our minds, and we forget that they don’t have that same meaning to other people. Certainly, people who speak in thee’s and thou’s while praying in public are trying to sound holy, but I can’t discern from the Bible that that is what God expects from us at all. (In fact, to my understanding, “thee” and “thou” had already passed from common usage when the KJV was translated, but the translators thought that those words made the Scripture sound older and therefore more authoritative.)
Alane Tentoni
June 9, 2007 at 5:52 am
Thank you for the thoughtful comment and interesting information. I should clarify that “the Word of God” obviously does mean the bible, even if it’s just because that is what it makes most people think about when they hear the phrase. I just thought it might be interesting to think about another layer of meaning that might explain where the “funny” grammar came from. So when this thought crossed my mind yesterday, I typed it out quickly to try to capture it. The Gospel of John uses “Word” in a particularly mysterious way that always seemed like more than a text to me, especially since the bible didn’t exist when it was written.
re: words coloring someone’s perception, I think semiotics helps you realize that when you are talking to someone, if you really want to communicate you need to use words that will create the desired concepts in the listener’s mind, not in your mind. This can be trickier than many people think. And I didn’t know that about the KJV — interesting!
I’m glad it made you think, that is the best complement I could get.
Rolfe Schmidt
June 9, 2007 at 9:57 am
Updated: I fixed the ‘Semiotics for Beginners’ link. It had been pointing into the middle of the book.
Rolfe Schmidt
June 10, 2007 at 11:28 am
[...] always be a lie. He has developed a model of semiotics and is using it to order the world he sees. I think about semiotics a bit too every now and then, so I wanted to encourage him to keep [...]
Linguistics for Preschoolers « Rolfe Schmidt
July 17, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Rolfe, ‘the word of God’ does not mean ‘the bible.’ The word goes to the larger meaning concealed within the bible, the ‘mystery.’ The word is God and it is a single word, making a complex sound. I have a manuscript on the supject but am currently wrestling with Cain’s question. That question was answered in the bible, but is an answer no one wants to hear. Am I my brother’s keeper?
john nichols
November 23, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Thanks John, I’d be interested to hear more about what you have to say. I agree with you that clearly the Word is God, and this is a very interesting idea to contemplate — God as Word.
When I said “the word of God” means “the Bible”, I should have said it means “the Bible” to many people. So that’s what it means even if that’s not what it was intended to mean. We have to be careful and explicit when we talk, and make sure we know how our terms are understood.
Where can I find your manuscript?
Rolfe Schmidt
November 23, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Rolfe, The content of my manuscript consists of, what is obvious to the reader once read, the pesherim, an exegesis, said to be revealed to an exeget, pesher, or the Teacher of Righteousness who is given the pesherim by divine revelation near the end times. My ‘information revelation’ began with a simple dream but would have been impossible to pursue without the internet. I believe I have in my hands the greatest treasure the universe could ever know, the true tree of life. It is not a ‘tree’ by biological standards, but only resembles a tree. Its ‘branches’ conotate to, or may be interpreted as notes on a scale, the ‘sound’ made by the uni-verse. I am still wrestling with Cain’s question and have not ventured this beyond close freinds and relatives. Not The Teacher, Just John
john nichols
November 24, 2007 at 8:04 am
You could also subject the signifier “God” to semiotics. “God” then becomes an anthropomorphization of falsely transcendental anthropologisms.
Darsh
July 18, 2011 at 3:04 pm