[Cassidy]

Dr. Nigel Tomes> "By conventional standards Witness Lee was an ‘amateur’162 in biblical languages—OT Hebrew and NT Greek. He had only a rudimentary, self-taught knowledge of New Testament Greek. He knew no Hebrew. He relied on outdated word studies, lexicons and dictionaries (e.g. Alford, Darby, Vincent, Vine & Kittel). These traits plus a dismissive attitude towards scholarship & boundless self-confidence made W. Lee liable to etymological errors and exegetical fallacies. Meanwhile he was blissfully ignorant of the revolution in biblical linguistics which began with Prof. James Barr’s Semantics of Biblical Language (1961) and was continued by other notable scholars. This revolution exposed the numerous errors and fallacies inherent in the earlier word studies on which W. Lee relied."


Dr. Tomes' paper on Etymology is a complicated yet at times a humorous attempt to discredit the voluminous works of Witness Lee that continue to provide inspiration to many dear followers of Christ. To address the fallacies of his paper point by point would not only be over taxing to both writer and reader but repetitive beyond what is necessary to reveal the fallacies of Dr. Tomes critique. The few observations that follow are mine and solely mine.

1) First, Tomes starts by casting Witness Lee as a comparatively (to Tomes' standards) unlearned Bible teacher who only "had only a rudimentary, self-taught knowledge of NT Greek" and knew "no Hebrew". Witness Lee never represented himself as such either and therefore relied on recognized Greek scholars as a basis for his studies and subsequent teachings.

2) Secondly, Dr. Tomes argues that the Bible scholars Witness Lee relied on were outdated in their understanding (and therefore so was Witness Lee's understanding).

3) Thirdly to support these notions he engages in the fallacy of "Proof by Assertion" by quoting snippets from a line up of of modern Greek scholars that arose in the middle of the last century. He characterizes those scholars as revolutionary in dismissing the approach of word studies used by other Greek scholars he attempts to discredit.

4) Fourth, Tomes objects to what he calls the dismissive attitude of Witness Lee towards contemporary christian scholarship, and therefore not to be outdone he doubles down by dismissing Witness Lee's teachings, the studying of the Bible through word studies, discrediting historical respected scholars in the field of Greek study, and discrediting word studies by using some modern examples that ultimately fail to prove his point.

5) Finally, as if the absence of a point is a victory unto itself, he appears self-satisfied with his presentation and sums up Witness Lee as an "amateur". Dr. Tomes is apparently, according to this paper, completely oblivious to the whole point of the Scriptures.


Personal Observations:

To the first point, Dr. Tomes would do well to familiarize himself with God's ordination in the New Testament. "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." The Priests were the learned ones and the ones who knew the Scriptures and, according to them, God's minsters were the "unlearned and ignorant". Tomes' argument fails to recognize that being with Jesus is the most important criteria for speaking for God. I appreciate those who know Greek and Hebrew but do not buy Tomes' elitist argument on this point.

To the second and third line of argument I disagree again. Dr. Tomes articulates the mistaken concept that word studies are not valuable and not useful to the Lord. In favor of more recent scholars he dismisses credible ones such as Vincent, Vine, Alford, Kittel, Darby. He wholeheartedly embraces modern scholars such as Barr who are not only antagonistic toward fundamentalism and conservative evangelism but attack their belief of inerrancy of the Bible. Perhaps God has revealed something more to these modern scholars (the errancy of the Bible?) but that does not validate a total disregard for the value and benefit of biblical word studies.

On the fourth point Tomes introduces some humorous modern terms to invalidate all word studies yet he fails to make a compelling point and overindulges in creating straw men to strengthen his argument. For instance, he argues that a word study on "hotdog" would not yield the true meaning, Nay, nay, not so. There was a belief that dog meat was in sausages and they were served so hot that they burned fingers and gloves were handed out to eat them . Another fallacy argument Tomes makes is of "Pineapples"... he argues that "it is not an apple produced by a pine-tree!" but a simple word study would have revealed that the pineapple was so called because it resembled the shape of a pinecone. Again for "grapefruit" he says a word study would be misleading because "it not related to the grape (genus: vitis)" apparently not recognizing that grapefruit grow in clusters like grapes and so named. Using Tomes' own examples show that word studies would be useful to understanding their meaning. For other examples such a automobiles, telecommunications, healthcare, coca-cola, a word study would reveal their literal meaning. Dr. Tomes argument that word studies are outdated is just his preference, perhaps so, because he is trying to find points of attack on Witness Lee's use of them. If that is the case, then his analysis is something worse than just misguided scholarship.

On the last point Tomes appears to have framed his argument on his preference for modern scholars who know Greek better than the ones that have gone before. This is similar to the line of argument that evolutionists take in the name of modern science.. that is, evolution is newer and enlightened by science so it must be better than the outdated creation view. In any case, a scholar's level of understanding Greek, Hebrew, or Chaldean are not the point of Scripture. The point of Scripture is "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,". To that end I would much rather read expositions of the Scriptures about God, the Person and Work of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church, Redemption, Salvation, Sanctification, Consecration, Transformation, Glorification, from the likes of ignorant amateur ministers like Witness Lee and Watchman Nee than the teachings from brilliant polemic professionals and their superior intellect of modern biblical study methods.... but that is just my personal preference.