Yesterday, in an online discussion, I mentioned my study of the submission passage in Ephesians 5. I told how I had done word study of "submit" and "respect" and how they appeared to actually mean, obey and fear. One person, who had a masters degree in theology and had studied Greek and Hebrew, said that I had committed a fallacy called "root fallacy" by assuming that the Greek words had a strong connection to their roots.
Let's take a look at root fallacies here and here. Basically, the idea of a root fallacy is in the assumption that a person studying scriptures can look up a Greek or Hebrew word in a book like Strong's Concordance and determine the original meaning of a word by learning its roots. This can be problematic because word usage changes over time and there are idioms, nuances, and plays on words that make interpretation more difficult. I can see how that might apply to my conclusions on the words submit and respect. But I am not convinced that it does.
What I found interesting when looking into the phrase "root fallacy" is that it is used, as far as I can tell, almost exclusively within the context of christianity and the study of the bible. It is said to be a kind of etymological fallacy. The etymological fallacy says that the present meaning of a word should rely on its historical meaning. It's a fallacy because present meaning has often changed so much from the historical that there is little correlation. The problem in bible word study is we are not looking for present usage and meaning, we are looking for historical meaning and connotation to begin with. We are not living in those times or speaking those languages any more. So, we must use the tools we have on hand.
The online bible study tool I use the most is Bible Hub. It has multiple bible versions, interlinear texts, concordances, and dictionaries. When I want to find the meaning of a NT word I click on the passage and first view the interlinear text. Then I click on the specific word in the text. Then I will see word roots, definitions, and how often the word is used in the bible, etc. when I click on the interlinear Ephesians 5:33, this is what I get (link). It says "she might respect" under the Greek word phobetai. If I click on the number above the Greek word, I get Strong's concordance reference for the word (link). That page gives me word origins, and definitions. Phobetai has a close word cognate of phobeo which means to fear, withraw from, avoid. The root of phobeo is phobos, which is given three definitions/usages. 1. To flee 2. To fear or be afraid 3. To reverence, venerate, to treat with deference or reverential obedience.
On the side of the page is a list of 95 times the root phobos appears in a NT word. Every single one of those words that I looked up has been translated across versions to mean some form of fear or fright. The word phobetai occurs only once in the entire New Testament. In my NIV it has been translated into the English word respect. What does it look like in other versions? (Link) On the left side of the page we see that some versions translate the word as respect, others translate it as reverence, others as fear. How are we, ordinary people, to know which is the correct approximation to the modern meaning of the historical word?
Let's say that this word uses the third meaning of the root phobos, so it has been translated "respect." Does that first century respect look the same as our 21st century respect? Are there any 21st century Christian women in the western world who venerate their husbands and treat them with deference or reverential obedience? These are words that have been applied to gods and kings, are modern women to apply them to their husbands? Are they truly following the scriptures if they don't? Doesn't reverential obedience come from a position of subjection and possibly fear?
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