Page:Biblical Libraries (Richardson).djvu/145

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SAUL TO THE CAPTIVITY

davar corresponds thus with great exactness of detail to the Greek logos, which might mean a word or as used by Plato (Phaedo p. 288 D) or Isocrates (12:136, 15:12) and often, a book, it may be of 10,000 lines (Birt. Buchrolle 43, 69, 215: ant. Buchwesen 28 sq., 447, 448, 466, 477) or anything between.

Davar and logos alike thus mean a single word, or any word complex, from a single phrase to a whole work. It is any literary unit (cf. Birt) document, work or writing or as Birt puts it "book." It is a book looked on in its aspect as a word-complex as distinguished from the sepher or biblos which refers primarily to its material or writing.

The davar in this sense of a single document includes most commonly (394 times) the oracle or Word of God in the

sense of a particular communication in a definite form of words, but it is used often of speeches, sayings, commands,

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