from his time till that of Jesus Christ, purposely to become the mother of the latter.” Hermeneutically, this is the least problematic reading, although it conflicts with the principle that names of people from wildly different time periods do not co-refer (unless it is explicitly stated that the person had lived to be 1,000 years old).
The fact that different authors can write a single large and complex work is further evidence for a uniform or natural method of interpretation. The author of Psalm 106 who says that Phinehas “stayed the plague,” is almost certainly different from the author of Numbers 25:7, who says that Phinehas, “son of Eleazar,” kills an Israelite man and the Midianite woman who he brought into the camp “before the eyes of Moses.” But the author of the Psalm is presumably aware that there is a Phinehas “the son of Eli” mentioned in 1 Samuel 1:3, and so adds a description and a background to distinguish them, so that the meaning is not “Phinehas, son of Eli,” but rather, “Phinehas, plague stopper.” Likewise, the author of Deuteronomy24 would be aware that it is the fifth book in the series, and that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers precede it. Even if the books were authored separately, the editor would have been aware of this. Thus, Joshua begins “After the death of Moses,” Judges begins “after the death of Joshua,” and so on. The author of that sentence is glancing over his shoulder back to the text that ends Deuteronomy 34, assuming the reader will have it available also. Each successive chapter or book could thus have different authors without impacting the unity of the narrative, so long as they wrote as if they were the same author.25 There is no reason why multiple authors cannot achieve the same effect as a single author, so long as each author understands the text or texts that will be available to the final audience. They (or the editors) have complete control over which characters are introduced, and over the order in which this happens. It does not matter whether they are different, so long as each author is aware of the background information available to the audience, and the multiple authors act as though they were a single author. Think of the different people who write the different episodes of a television soap series. Nothing in the story-relative account requires that the same proper name always signifies co-reference, any more than use of the same pronoun signifies this. The “standard” use of a proper name in the same text is one which conforms to unstated but commonly understood rules for resolving ambiguity.
In some exceptional cases, the ambiguity is resolved on the assumption that co-reference would lead to internal contradictions. For example, Acts 1, where the name “Judas” occurs twice.
Acts 1:13 Coming in, they went up into the upper room where they dwelt, Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the brother of James.
[..]
Acts 1:16 Brethren, he [Peter] said, there is a prophecy in scripture that must needs be fulfilled; that which the Holy Spirit made, by the lips of David, about Judas, who shewed the way to the men that arrested Jesus.
This appears to break the rule that successive tokens of the same proper name always co-refer. Clearly in this case they do not. But this is signaled in two ways. First, by a sort of description. One person called “Judas” is described as the brother of James, the other as the betrayer of Christ, just as one person called “Mary” is qualified as Magdalene, another person so-called as the mother of James and Joseph (see earlier). Second, it is signalled from the context that the first person called “Judas” is still alive, being present at the meeting of the brethren, whereas the second is now dead, as Peter explains in verse 18.
Descriptions
The rule for descriptions seems to be that terms involving the same definite description always co-refer, and that an indefinite description can refers forward to some definite description, but (as will be discussed in the next chapter) never backward. Ezekiel 10:7 says that one of the cherubim took a burning coal “and put it into the hands of the man in linen.” Who is the man in linen? Refer back to 9:2:
I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side.
The indefinite description “a man clothed in linen” in 9:2 refers forward to 10:7, so to speak, although it cannot refer further back. There might have been another man in linen mentioned prior to 9:2, but it would not be signified that he was the same (or different) from the one in 9:2. By contrast, it is part of the meaning of the text that the man in 9:2 and the man in 10:7 are the same person.
The definite article plus a description generally requires prior mention of an individual fitting that description.26 There should be no definite article in the first verse of the Odyssey.27 Note that no individual in reality need satisfy the description in order for the definite description to identify its verbal antecedent (“a demon”). It is enough that some individual is said to satisfy the description.
Although proper demonstratives28 cannot occur in a historical narrative, they can occur in a relative context, for example, in direct speech, such as Matthew 12:49: “Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers.’” The rule is that when the person making the speech says “I,” the pronoun co-refers with “he,” when he says “you,” the pronoun co-refers with “he,” referring to the person who is being addressed. I shall discuss such cases in the chapter in demonstratives.
Objectivity
That there is a natural interpretation of the reference of any part of a text, and that it is difficult to define alternative ways of interpreting that part in a way that would work systematically across the whole text, suggests that co-reference is a real and objective property of a text, rather than a product of unmediated authorial intention, for the author’s intention is necessarily unknown unless the author is able to express it unambiguously in writing, and such expression is only possible if there is some method or rule of interpretation understood by both author and reader. We must distinguish what an author or editor wants the text to signify, from what the text itself signifies. The text may have some private significance to the author that it has to no one else, but semantic reference is not private in this sense. Perhaps Mark wrote, “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man” intending that “he” should refer to Herod, rather than John. But this intention is irrelevant, given that, as expressed, it refers to John. Finis sermonis est intellectum constituere 29: the purpose of language is to establish understanding, which is only possible when there is a systemic method of doing so. If it were possible to divine the correct meaning from the author’s intention alone, spoken and written language would not be necessary at all.30
Thus, co-reference is a real property of the text. By “real” I mean objective, observable or determinable by others. The letter “A” is objective in that anyone who understands the roman alphabet can recognize a token of the type “A,” which is the whole purpose of having an alphabet. There are even mechanical systems for recognizing text, which would not work unless being a token of the letter “A” were not some mental or psychical feature, but rather an objective property that many different people, and some machines, could recognize. It is true that some tokens of the letter are harder to recognize, and that machines have more difficulty with handwritten tokens than printed ones, but that is a matter of economics. We have a system for producing well-written tokens of the letter “A” that allows us to produce tokens that everybody, including machines, can recognize, but it may take time to write neatly. Or we can save time and scribble. Similarly, we can make a precise reference to a character by using a proper name rather than a pronoun, by analogy with writing the letter “A” neatly, or we can use a pronoun, by analogy with scribbling. Passages such as the one about Zipporah, where pronoun resolution is impossible, are actually rare.
Meaning and Understanding
It follows
