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Some thoughts about Words

An editor’s work is inevitably wrapped up in words, it is therefore fitting to spend a little time considering the nature and power of words in general, and particularly words from the ancient civilisations of the Near East. Words are the building blocks of literature, but in the ancient world words did not always have the same relationship with their referents that they do in most modern societies. Several submissions to this journal have been focusing on textual material, the results of ancient compositions—texts. To the casual reader it may seem quite natural that words have always related to their referents in the same way they do today, in our language. Such assumptions could easily lead to a complete misunderstanding of what the words were meant to convey. Since words are the medium of literature, a society’s understanding of literature will be closely connected to that society’s understanding of the nature of words. That understanding may be consciously formulated among modern linguists, psychologists, and philosophers. But most of the time words are understood the way they are habitually used in contemporary society. If we are to learn how ancient societies understood words, we must examine the extant literature to see how words are described and defined, how they functioned. In the modern world, we regard words almost exclusively as symbols by which we communicate ideas and feelings with one another. The word stands for or represents the realities about which information is communicated. The word as a word is perceived to be quite distinct from the reality it stands for, its referent. In the ancient Near East—Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Egypt—the word had additional qualities. The word was not simply an expression of thought, but also an active force. It is as if the word passed on the actual reality of the thought being expressed. Words were invested with extraordinary attributes and even power, particularly if uttered by a divinity. But anyone who spoke a word could transmit the reality of the word. That is why, in the story in the Hebrew Bible, the Moabite king Balak asked Balaam to curse the Israelites (Num 22:2 ff.). Ancient Near Eastern literature, including the Hebrew Bible, may seem somewhat remote if we do not realise that the authors and editors considered words, the literary medium, capable of effects well beyond that of mere communication. I have on several occasions told my biblical studies colleagues that as an archaeologist my concerns are really the same as their concerns. After all, we are both seeking a better understanding of the ד ב ר (dabar). And in the very word for ‘word’—dabar—we find a fundamental difference in the comprehension of the reality of the ‘word’ in ancient Near Eastern literature when compared with most modern understandings of ‘word’. In addition to being a symbol the word is also a physical or metaphysical reality, a thing or a case. The word can be more than a mere symbol, it can be the referent itself.