Direct Answer
That principle means readers should seek the meaning Paul’s words had among ordinary people in his own day, not the meaning those words may have had centuries earlier. For 1 Corinthians 11, the focus should be historical common usage rather than root derivation.
Support from Transcript
- The speaker says, “Generally speaking, a word means whatever the general population understands it to mean.” - He explains that “meanings change over a period of time.” - Therefore, “the root word from which a term is derived is generally irrelevant.” - He directly applies this to the passage: “In interpreting 1 Corinthians 11, our quest should be to determine what Paul’s words meant in his day.” - He contrasts that with the wrong approach: “not what they meant when they were first coined centuries earlier.” - He says Paul’s readers were “probably not even aware of the origins of the words he used.”
Discussion Follow-ups
This does not mean historical study is useless, but the transcript warns that etymology should not replace ordinary first-century meaning.