Discussion Board 4 & 5
K-Love
Word_Study_Noun_Instructions1.docxOTCL 505
Word Study: Noun Instructions
Complete a Word Study of a noun using Dr. Roden’s Word Study Process in Chapter 5 of your Elementary Biblical Hebrew textbook. You must use either Blue Letter Bible, Bible Gateway (both free online resources), or an electronic Bible program (such as Logos) to find the Hebrew information you will need. You must choose a noun from the passages listed below based upon step one of the Word Study Process discussed in Chapter 5. Once you have chosen your noun for study, complete a Word Study of at least 600 words. Complete the study using the steps in Chapter 5 as headings for your paper and type each heading in bold letters. Then, write your findings under each heading. You must incorporate at least 4 academic sources. You may use commentaries, articles, dictionaries, lexicons etc. Sources must be cited in current Turabian format with a bibliography page included at the end.
1. Ruth 4:1–6
2. 1 Samuel 31:1–6
3. Ezra 3:1–6
4. Psalm 19:14
5. Psalm 78:1–4
6. Ecclesiastes 3:1–8
7. Daniel 9:24–27
8. Joel 1:4
9. Joel 3:14
10. Zephaniah 1:14–16
11. Hosea 8:11–14
12. Proverbs 11:1
13. Proverbs 23:29–30
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This week we will begin our first word study. Word studies are not a "magic bullet" that will automatically lead to truth. They are very important, however, for understanding the Bible, especially the Old Testament. There are so many helps in English that it is difficult to list them all. One very convenient resources is the Blue Letter Bible. Note that there is a special presentation on how to use this with your word study. I also provide an example below.
For the word study assignment, see the "Word Studies" instructions in the syllabus and the Grading Rubric. This is the first of 2 word studies, and according to the syllabus it has a minimum word count of 600 words. Also, the paper requires at least 4 academic sources with footnotes in Turabian Humanities format, and it should end with a Turabian bibliography.
Noun Word Study
This week is the first word study, focusing on a noun. Please be sure to read the instructions for this assignment, under Course Content, before beginning work on the assignment. The instructions provide the list of passages from which to choose.
Your assignment will follow the 5 steps listed on pp. 64-65 of the textbook. Step 1 is to select the most important words in the passage. The textbook provides guidance for what words are significant in a passage, although you probably have a pretty good sense of important words from your own experience with the Bible. The assignment is asking you to choose one noun from among these words as the focus for your word study. You will then continue through steps 2 through 5, detailing all your results in your paper. Below I provide some hints for this paper. This assignment can seem a little daunting at first, but once you become familiar with navigating the website you will be able to find the information you need.
For the main body of your paper, you want to first-level headings for each of the 5 steps. For example, the first heading can be: Most Important Words and Focus Word. The second heading can be: Underlying Hebrew Word, and so on.
Thus, you will have 5 sections in the main body of your paper. In addition, as for any standard Turabian paper, you need an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction should briefly describe the assignment and include a thesis statement. An example thesis statement (which you may use) is: "This paper presents a word study of a Hebrew noun, focusing on its usage, the English words that are derived from the Hebrew word, and the main ways the word is used in the Hebrew Bible."
Hints for the Paper
Section 1 . For this section, look through some of passages listed in the assignment instructions, and find a passage that interests you. Use the guidance from the textbook (on p. 64) for choosing important words. The select a noun. If you are not sure whether you have a noun or not, you can determine this when you look up details on the Strong's number.
Section 2 . You need to determine the Hebrew word underlying the English word. One way to do this is to find the Strong's number for the Hebrew word. The Strong's number will begin with an "H." You can find this using this website:
blueletterbible.org
On the main webpage, under "Search the Bible," select either the King James Version (KJV) or the New American Standard (NASB) among the options available. These are the 2 versions that provide tools that you need for this assignment. Under Search the Bible, search for the passage by typing in the first verse of the verse range for your passage. This will bring up all the verses, beginning with the verse you entered and continuing to the end of the chapter. Once the passage appears, to the right of each verse displayed, you will see a "Tools" icon. Click on that for a particular verse, and a page will appear that provides the Strong's number for each word in the verse (except for common words like "the" or "not") and also gives the Hebrew word (in Hebrew characters and in English characters), and its translation. If you click on the Strong's number, you will also get the information needed to do steps 3 and 4.
As an example, I have chosen Isaiah 28:1 in the NASB. When I type in "Isa 28:1," I get a screen with all the verses in the rest of the chapter displayed, beginning with my verse. A portion of the page that appears looks like this:
The word "proud" appears in verse 1. It is part of the phrase "proud crown," and so in this English phrase it is an adjective and not a noun. But Hebrew has fewer adjectives than English, so I am going to check it anyway (and as I will find out, it is a noun). If I click on the Tools icon to the left of the verse, a new screen appears. The English text (NASB) of Isaiah 28:1 appears first, then just below that the blue "Interlinear" tab on the left should already be selected. You will see the label "Masoretic Text" with the Hebrew text for Isaiah 28:1 displayed. Below that, words or phrases from the verse are listed. I can see the phrase "to the proud" appear as the second row. The Strong's number H1348 is listed to the right. A part of this page is shown in the following image. I have indicated the row by a red arrow, and circled the Strong's number in red.
Next , I click on the Strong's number, which is H1348. This brings up the lexicon page for this word. Steps 3, 4, and 5 can be accomplished by studying data from this lexicon page. For word H1348, the top of the lexicon page that appears is shown in the next image. Note that near the top, the section labeled "Part of Speech" says "feminine noun." Thus, I know that my word is a noun.
Special note: If the part of speech is not a noun, then you want to go back to the previous screen (hit the "Back" button) and click on the Strong's numbers for other words of interest until you find a noun.
Section 3 . For this step, you need to determine where the word is used in the Bible. On the screen for your Strong's word, scroll down until you find the heading, "Concordance Results Using NASB" (or KJV if that is the version you chose). What you will see listed are all the places the word appears in the Hebrew Bible, with the verses printed out. The Strong's number will appear next to the English word in the verse that corresponds to your word. Now follow the instructions for step 3 in the textbook based on the information you find. For my word, the first 6 verses listed look like the following. I can see that the first places where the word appears are in the Psalms, and then in Isaiah. I need to continue scrolling through this list to find where else the word is used.
Section 4 . This step asks you to list all the English words that are translated from your one Hebrew word. On the same web page you used for step 3, scroll back up to "Strong's Definitions." This will give you all the ways the Hebrew word is translated in the King James Version (remember, Strong's Concordance was created for the KJV). For example, the Hebrew word גֵּאוּת (ge'ut) from Isaiah 28:1 is translated into English in the following ways in the KJV: pride (2x), majesty (2x), proudly (1x), raging (1x), lifting up (1x), excellent things (1x). I derived this information directly from this section of the lexicon web page.
Section 5 . In this section, you will discuss how the word is translated in its various contexts. Here you want to go through the section of the lexicon web page you used for section 3 (Concordance Results Using NASB or KJV) and look at the verses listed there. Determine the ways the word is used based on the various contexts in which it is found. If your word appears in a large number of verses, you will not be able to account for every occurrence. What you want to do is look for the kinds of contexts where the various translations of the word are used. Thus, for my word "proud" from Isaiah 28:1, I can determine where the word is translated in the NASB as "proud," where it is translated "swelling," where it is translated "majesty," and so on. Then I can discuss the kinds of contexts where those translations appear. For example, in Psalm 17:10 and Isaiah 28:1, the context is the wicked, and my target word refers to how they are proud. But in Isaiah 12:5, the context is the deeds of the LORD, and the target word refers to his deeds as "excellent." I can continue on and discuss other translations of the target word and the kinds of contexts in which they occur.
These steps may seem like a lot, but once you become familiar with the website, you will be able to walk through the assignment.
