One of the most basic principles of semiotics is that “the word is not the thing”, that is, that the verbal signifier is not the thing signified (see e.g.
I wonder how this fits with an ancient Hebrew understanding of signification where the word “dabar” means word or thing.
Dr Leithart has some thoughts on his blog entitled Hebrew Hermeneutics (Thurs 29th March) drawing on Rhonda Wauhkonen discussion of Nicholas of Lyra's "Hebraic" semiotics in a 1992 article on Chaucer contrasting Augustine's signum / res distinction. (Unfortunately I can’t get the continue reading or recent entries links to work).
According to
I wonder how historical developments in the understanding of signification might map onto understandings of what’s going on in the Lord’s Supper? Is transubstantiation maybe something to do with some larger cultural difficulty with distinguishing the signifier and the thing signified, with Zwingli over-reacting by separating signifier and signified? Or something like that?
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Hmm. I'm not entirely persuaded by this argument. Just because the Israelites used the same word to apply to two different concepts doesn't mean that they couldn't distinguish the concepts. I know that the table from which I eat my dinner is a different thing from the table I put my data into, yet I happily use the same word for both.
It would seem to me that 'word' and 'thing' are so clearly related concepts that it would be natural for the term for one of these to also (perhaps metaphorically, originally) come to be used for the other.
However, I do think the relation between sign and thing signified seems much stronger in the bible than some moderns would like to make it. I just don't think that dabar can bear all the weight it's been given.
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