This paper examines two interconnected aspects of Biblical scholarship. The first section explores the nature of God as presented in the Bible, analyzing five defining attributes — God is one, holy, spirit, light, and love — through their original Hebrew and Greek meanings. The second section distinguishes between diachronic and synchronic approaches to Biblical interpretation. Diachronic analysis traces how language change and evolving cultural contexts shift the meaning of Scripture over time, while synchronic analysis focuses on a single moment in a text's history to reveal its most authentic meaning. Together, these approaches illuminate the richness and complexity of Biblical understanding.
If there is one thing one might assume the Bible would be clear about, it would be the nature of God. However, this is not entirely the case — at least not if one is looking for a homogeneous and simple view. Perhaps it is because the Bible was assembled by different individuals over a very long period of time that there are so many versions of who and what God is. Perhaps it is because the concept and being of God is so complex that it cannot be fully comprehended, which explains the sometimes obscure nature of God as described in Scripture. Sometimes it is both. This does not diminish the divinity or magnificence of God. Rather, it demonstrates that God is revealed to humans in different ways depending on the context of the interaction between the mundane and the divine.
Several definitions of God appear throughout the Bible: God is one; God is holy; God is spirit; God is love; and God is light. It is important — indeed, it is vital — to note that these attributes are in no way contradictory. They can all be true in equal measure or in unequal measure, and it seems much more likely than not that God is indeed all of these things.
The first of these definitions is arguably the most important, since it is emphasized in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and it brings to light the meaning of this affirmation in Hebrew. God is a unified, univocal presence to Jews, who are in many ways more strictly monotheistic than Christians. The fact that this meaning is central to Jewish tradition — which is the rock of Christian belief and practice — is acknowledged through this emphasis.
If we understand God as holy, we should look again to the original meaning of words. Holy in Greek carries the meaning of something that is set apart and sacred. This meaning, combined with the first attribute, gives us a sense of God as unified and, in that unity, set apart from human understanding and nature.
If God is spirit, then God is connected to the Greek word for breath and wind. The wind is like God because both are invisible and therefore mysterious. The wind is something we can feel but not see — something that is at times absent and therefore unpredictable, and yet always returns to our lives.
If God is light, then God is linked to the Greek word phos. This suggests that God is seen as pure. It can be understood as a synonym for holiness — a different way of underscoring that God is separate from humanity because of a holiness that is undivided, pervasive, and enduring. God as light is consonant with ancient definitions of the divine, including pre-monotheistic conceptions in which the sun, the moon, and the stars were seen as emblems and symbols of the cusp between the divine and the human. There is nothing of apostasy in linking the Jewish and Christian God with older understandings of the divine. "God is light" is among the most ancient of references in the Bible to the nature of the Biblical God.
Finally, if God is love, then God is connected to humanity in a condition that links the divine to all of creation. God stands apart from his creations because he is the Creator, and so stands above all humans. But he is also eternally linked to humanity because it is his love that has created everything on earth.
A diachronic approach consists of an examination of a particular thing or phenomenon as it changes over time and across place and history. This occurs when one wants to determine or understand how different variables are manifested in different phases of whatever is being examined.
In contrast to a diachronic approach is a synchronic approach, which constitutes an examination of something at a single point in time. There is no speculation or even consideration of how the phenomenon might have been in the past or how it might be in the future. A synchronic approach is a form of reification — a privileging of one moment in time over all others.
Two examples of diachronic analysis are particularly helpful in furthering one's understanding of the messages of the Bible. The first involves the changing nature of language. The languages in which the Bible has been presented have shifted from Hebrew and Greek to Latin, and then to a wide range of vernacular languages. These linguistic changes have altered the meanings of each passage, as have changes internal to each language itself. Languages are living — and dying — entities, and even when the language of the Bible did not change, the everyday meanings of many words did. Only a diachronic analysis can track all of these changes of meaning sufficiently to understand the Bible at the level of individual words and texts.
Diachronic analysis of the Bible also helps one understand the evolving interpretation of its most important events. An event as central as the death of Jesus might seem a candidate for an enduring, fixed interpretation. But all aspects of the Bible are seen through personal understanding that is influenced by history and culture. This is, again, not a diminishment of the divinity of God or the sacredness of the Bible. It is simply an acknowledgment that humanity, as God's creation, is sufficiently complex to accomplish continual change.
"Freezing a text in time for authentic reading"
Both perspectives have value and depend on the goals of the textual reading, the nature and personality of the person engaged in the research, and the religious perspective of the individual. A Jewish scholar and a Christian scholar may well arrive at different readings, as may a scholar from the 12th century and one from the 21st. Each approach, diachronic or synchronic, offers its own illuminating window into the enduring complexity of Biblical understanding.
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