What is an "anachronism" in Biblical Hermeneutics?

Question

I have run across several definitions as it relates to "anachronism" in Biblical Hermeneutics and I am confused:

An anachronism in word studies takes place when we read a definition of a word that was given at a later point in history back into a text that was written before the word took on that meaning(Taken from here)

Another definition:

The opposite is to go the other direction in what is often called “the anachronism” that is reading a Greek or Hebrew word in light of a later meaning.(Taken from here)

But in reply to several discussions, an "anachronism" was refered to when the OP sought to use a 'later' reference to discuss the meaning of an earlier passage.

Both definitions, which I cited, refer to the interpretation of a word later than the text quoted from, and then translating that text based on the later interpretation.

The other 'construed' meaning suggests that any further "reference' to understanding a source which comes later than the source itself is "anachronistic".

Which is it: the definition of the word, or the fact that any attempt to interpret an earlier source?

Answer 1

"Anachronism" is not a distinctive technical term in biblical hermeneutics, nor does it have a nuance which would distinguish it from its meaning in English more broadly. The Wikipedia article catches it nicely: "anachronism" is

...a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of person(s), events, objects, or customs from different periods of time. Often the item misplaced in time is an object, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a custom, or anything else associated with a particular period in time so that it is incorrect to place it outside its proper temporal domain.

(Do see the (long) article for elaboration and examples.) I see that it has come up a few times on BH.SE (e.g., Jeremiah's "yule tree, or Jesus' "pants"/trousers, etc.: a search will turn up many more).

One example in an answer of my own nicely illustrates the dangers: if one thinks that the meaning of "rabbi" as used in the rabbinical schools that gave rise to the Mishnah was already operative pre-70 AD/CE, then one will misunderstand the use of the the title in the New Testament gospels. If one did so, then it would be an example of the first kind of anachronism cited in OP's quotes.

So, OP was interested in:

[which it is]: the definition of the word, or the fact that any attempt to interpret an earlier source?

I'm not sure I understand the alternative (and I think the answer is "yes!"), as the second option is a bit opaque to me. However, "anachronism" refers to anything that is chronologically out of place. So there can be anachronisms of many different kinds (see Wikipedia article!).¹

Sometimes, however, "anachronisms" need to be tested. One example that you will find in textbooks on the history of the Bible is Abraham's camels. It has long been claimed that camels were still wild during the period in which Abraham's narratives are set in the book of Genesis. Implication: the biblical narrator is set in a time much later than Abraham's at a time when the camel was domesticated, and Abraham must have been a donkey caravaneer, etc. That link is from an academic treatment published in 2009. However, in 2010/11, Martin Heide published an article which discusses evidence pointing to domestication of the camel as early as the 3rd millennium in the ancient Near East. What had for a long time appeared to be "anachronism" in the Abraham narrative could, then, be regarded as chronologically appropriate.²

Another factor to bear in mind: when an alleged anachronism is identified, it needs both to be established (which later evidence might overturn, as in the case of Abraham's camels), and accounted for. The better discussions of Shakespeare's "striking clock" in Julius Casear will not simply point and laugh, but ask why the Bard wrote it this way.

In the cases of "anachronism" in BH.SE, it has tended to be quite obvious, but it can sometimes be quite subtle. I read somewhere, a long time ago³, that two things were needed in every historian: (1) a critical attitude to sources; and (2) a healthy sense of anachronism. Not bad advice, I think.

_{¹ The vast majority of medieval and early modern biblical "art" is anachronistic, portraying its subjects in dress and setting familiar to and contemporary with the artist, rather than the historical realia of the biblical story itself. (One nice example: Bruegel's Tower of Babel : see detail of lower left corner!)
² Update: See now [2014.02.12] the article in New York Times arguing that the camel is anachronistic for the patriarchal narratives! | [2014.02.18] There is now a reply from Martin Heide responding to the research discussed in the NYT piece. | [2014.02.28] And now a nice assessment/discussion from George Athas. | [2016.05.14] This keeps rumbling. Latest article: "The domestication of the dromedary likely happened in the late second millennium BCE as deduced from..." see full article for details; article title: "Ancient and modern DNA reveal dynamics of domestication and cross-continental dispersal of the dromedary", PNAS 2016, doi:10.1073/pnas.1519508113.
³ Source lost in the mists of time. Sorry. But if the concept was at all interesting, see this PhD thesis on Academia.edu.}

Answer 2

Contextualizing a text is fraught with all kinds of pitfalls. Distancing ourselves (the act of distanciation) from our preconceived ideas of what words mean to us today whenever interpreting a text from ancient history is at times difficult, but it pays rich rewards in the hermeneutical process. Think what happens, however, when we fail to do so.

Think of the preacher, for example, who in reading his text during Sunday sermon says the following:

"Allow me to paraphrase Paul's words in Romans chapter 1: 'For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the dynamite of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek'" (1:16).

The preacher obviously looked up the Greek word for the English word power, dynamus, in his Greek to English index-lexicon and anachronistically substituted Paul's word for power from that root word from which--since its invention millennia later--we get our English word dynamite.

In another sermon, the same preacher did pretty much the same thing with the following verse:

And as Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 9:7,

"For God loves a hilarious giver"!

Now the Greek word for cheerful is hilaros, from which we get our English word hilarious, but the Greek root word translated into a fairly modern word is an anachronism, since hilarious came into being much, much later than Paul's hilaros.

The same could be said for the word suffer, which in the KJV version of Jesus' words,

"Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16).

Today, the word suffer means to experience mental and/or physical anguish and pain. In King James's day, it mean to encourage (positively) or not to hinder (negatively). When I was a kid, I couldn't figure out what Jesus was saying in this important verse (it's in all three synoptics) because the word suffer seemed out of place to me. "Why," I would ask myself, "would Jesus want children to suffer? I thought 'Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight . . .." I was confused anachronistically.

The same anachronistic thinking can happen in reverse in the English language, when for example we interpret the let in Jesus' "Let the little children" according to the meaning of the word to Shakespeare; namely, to hinder. I guess this is what you would call "the anachronism."

Forwards or backwards, an anachronism falls into the category of "fallacious hermeneutics" or "fallacious exegesis," since interpreting a text, especially an old text from a different context, culturally and linguistically requires the question,

"Now what did this word, as Paul used it here, mean to him in the context of A.D. 65?"

As for the "reverse" anachronism I illustrated above in the example of an earlier-English to a later-English example, contributor David, above, is on the right track regarding the domestication of camels in the ANE.

The point is, anachronistically equating Abrahams' wife Sarah's "alighting from her camel" to firing up a Camel cigarette today, is risible, but in less obvious ways we need to be careful not to fall into the nether world of fallacious exegesis when interpreting a scriptural passage.

A couple of my illustrations, by the way, came from D.A. Carson's book Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, ©1984).