I’ve been reading with great profit James Barr’s The Semantics of Biblical Language. He uncovers so much bad exegesis that it’s safe to say that the landscape of preaching would look very different if his work was read in all seminaries.

He also takes on the contrast between Hebrew and Greek thought, at least the origin of the differences as they are commonly explained.

Or, to put it another way, the fact that Hebrew words are derived from different origins, have a different past history behind them, from the Greek words, demonstrates a different mental approach to reality. That this argument is in general a dubious one is clear when we take seriously the historical nature of etymological study. But in particular it is not the case that the past semantic changes which can be traced for Hebrew words are in any overwhelming number without analogy in the Indo-European or other groups, and a fairly large number of cases can be shown where  Hebrew semantic development has been fairly closely parallel to cases in Greek and Latin or other Indo-European languages. (p. 118)

This is not to say there aren’t differences between Greek and Hebrew cultures and ideas. Afterall, Zeus is not Yahweh, and it’s true that Plato describes the body as prison while the Song of Solomon pictures it as a marital fun-house. But this can’t be determined by circuitous etymologies that the original writers would not and could not have known about.