"If," according to philosopher Gordon Clark, "all knowledge is always a combination of form and content, (and if) we cannot know the form without the content," then form and content, according to Pike,  must be "packaged right."  From personal experience, packaging form and meaning-content right is especially important for all Bible translators committed to doing an accurate translation of the Word of God.  

 

Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, understood the problem. Understanding the problem, Paul's admonishment to young Timothy (II Tim 1:13) was: "Let the use of sound, healthy, pure, and uncorrupted words which you have heard from me be your model." 

 

Paul's ministry focused on using "sound," "healthy," "pure," and "uncorrupted" words, that is, words whose meanings were fixed, constant, and unchanging.  Paul was aware that any divergence whatsoever from their inherent Divine meanings which were fixed and constant  was, according to Lenski,  the first "stepping stone from truth into falsehood." 

 

The moment a society replaces the inherent meaning of a "healthy word"  Divine with a meaning derived from SOCIAL EXISTENCE and belongs to the people, it has stepped "from truth to falsehood."

 

Discovering Corrupted Unsound Words

When assigned to the Mikasuki (Miccosukee) translation project, I discovered the  Mikasuki, had corrupted the meaning of husband, 'nakne.'   This they did when they made their husbands the subject of the impersonal existential verb -e££on, 'it-exists,' plus the obligatory dative em- 'for-me.' 

 

Thus em-e££om nakne,  when back-translated into English  meant a 'for-me (the wife) there exists a husband-thing who has a specific function.'  I was shocked.  They had detached the Divine meaning from the form and replaced it with  meaning derived from SOCIAL EXISTENCE 

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By making their husbands the subject of the impersonal existential verb -e££om, the Mikasuiki were guilty of attaching to the form -e££om, 'it-exists,' a personal subject. It is a classic example of a society "suppressing the truth"  (Rom.1:18).  Their packaging of form and meaning-content was morally wrong because it reduced every Mikasuki husband to a commodity, a husband-thing whose function was to satisfy the needs of his wife’s “family.”  

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Previously, I had discovered the Chácobo had corrupted the word husband by creating a new status position they called "raisi" which meant:  Someone who, in exchange for conjugal rights to someone's daughter, becomes a "husband" by assuming the task of providing his potential wife's parents with food and assistance around the household.  Becoming a  "Chácobo husband," meant submitting to the authority of one's in-laws. 

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Because the Chácobo and Mikasuki had failed to package form and meaning-content  "right," their  cultures had not only corrupted the meaning of husband when they replaced a Divine meaning with a meaning which "belonged to the people," they had also maimed all males who accepted the culture's definition of "husband." 

Now as a Bible translator-linguist, it became obvious that my task was to keep form and meaning-content "packaged right." I considered it essential not  only for evangelism and positive church planting, but for "receiving verbal revelation, of approaching God in prayer, and of conversing with other men about spiritual realities.”  

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The Stuff of History: Packaging Form and Meaning-Content Right 

History is all about corrupting sound words. It is about disconnecting from universal shared forms their inherent Divine meanings, replacing them with meanings derived from SOCIAL EXISTENCE and which belong to the people. This replacement of DIVINE MEANINGS with meanings derived from SOCIAL EXISTENCE is responsible for the cultural diversity we experience in the world today.

 

Anthropologist Ward Goodenough noted that a serious study of meaning was "taboo," stating: "Considerations of meaning are not only irrelevant but, for scientific rigor, taboo."   But why is it "taboo" to do a rigorous examination of meaning?   

 

In my opinion, it is because it entails entering the realm of spiritual warfare against two antagonists, the theist who insists ESSENCE PRECEDES EXISTENCE and the materialist who insists EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE and insists there exist no meanings which can be constant and fixed.   

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Those who deny the existence of Divine meaning-content  "written on the heart" which can be triggered and brought to consciousness are generally committed postmodern materialists  for whom  a she can be a he, a wife a male; a cousin a brother; village classmates, siblings; and a husband, a person-thing. Because we cannot know the form without the meaning-content, for the materialist, the needed meaning-content has to  imported from the outside, from SOCIAL EXISTENCE in the world.

 

To be a social scientist in the postmodern age demands that one hold to the party line that EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE and that there are no constants when it comes to meaning. To do otherwise, one would be guilty of allowing God to get his foot in the door. The effects of failing to packaging form and meaning-content  "right" is cultural diversity,  the multiplication of disorder,  and confusion as to what ought to be. 

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Convictions

1. Meaning is a spiritual phenomenon and therefore avoided by materialists who are convinced meaning cannot not be studied "scientifically." 

2. Packaging form and meaning-content "right" implies the existence of a Universal Lexicon. It implies that man was endowed with meaningful innate ideas and a priori concepts having inherent meanings which gave every person the ability to think in terms of people, things, events, and species and genus. 

3. Without words conveying shared inherent meanings, cross-cultural communication and Bible translation would not be impossible. 

4. Verbal revelation demands that form and meaning-content be packaged right.

5. The task of every linguist-translator and missiologist should be that of making sure inherent meaning-content and form  are "tied up tight and packaged right.”  Unless package right, there can be no "sound words."