Words Matter

Starting in the Renaissance and continuing through the Reformation, language played a key role in the development of literature and philosophy. They realized that their version of Latin isn't the one they thought was pure. As language changed, they realized that words change meaning and usage.

Lorenzo Valla was an important philologist of the time who spent his scholarly years study the language of the people. His most notable work is proving that the forged will of Constantine was in fact a fake. He also did research on how to write about things in classical Latin that didn't exist when the "pure" Latin was being used.

As we can see, language is so important in understanding history. As a former English Language major, I spent time in Great Britain and Ireland studying the varieties of English. I learned that language differs from place to place and from year to year (even month to month). Even if the word is familiar, it might mean something different. Most people know that in England when they say "chips" they are referring to what Americans call "fries;" when they say "trolley" they mean "cart" in our speech.

With all this variation, how can we decide what historical texts mean? In school, it might be easy to assume that the professor will tell us exactly what each text means. However, in our personal study of any historical text (such as the Bible), it is important then to go deeper. While reading history for the surface-level meaning can be difficult by itself, its always worth the effort to go deeper. Recently I've been able to do more of this with the Bible (updates to come), and I've been able to see the difference that reading in the correct context, looking for the original meaning truly makes a great difference in the meaning that I get out of it.