Lots of Love

// March 15th, 2007 // church, theology

In English there are approximately 180 000 words in most full dictionaries while most linguists acknowledge that we may in fact have over 1 million words available to us in modern English

Linguists hate to make these kinds of judgments because languages are so fluid and constantly evolving but from what I can gather most language historians estimate that there were somewhere around 75 to 100 000 words in the greek/latin vocabulary at the time of the writing of the New Testament.

In Biblical Hebrew there are approximately 6000 words. In Hebrew words have immense importance because each syllable has to carry intense meaning. Each Hebrew word has a root that contains only three letters and to this prefixes and suffixes are added to give context and substance

In the Hebrew out of those mere 6000 words there are at least three words that we translate love in English. That’s 1 in 2000.

In Greek out of their 100 000 words, four are translated love in English. That’s one in 25 000.

In English we have lots of variation in sentence structure and intonation to reflect nuance but only one word for love. 1 in 180 000.

Have we lost something of the centrality that relationships were supposed to play in life?

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