In Genesis 12, Abram asks his beautiful wife Sarai to tell the Egyptians that she was Abram’s sister. Sarah did so, and this was beneficial both to her and to Abram, but brought calamity to the Egyptians. Later, in Genesis 20, we learn that Sarai (now called Sarah) was indeed Abram’s (now, Abraham’s) half-sister. Did Sarai lie?
Depending on the details of the story⎯many of which are not provided by the bible⎯, people may legitimately disagree about whether Sarai lied or not. I survey some plausible possibilities. Supposing that two people do in fact disagree about this question, I then address the following problem: Can it be
sorted out in a principled way whether they have a genuine (substantive) disagreement, or whether they only have a merely verbal (terminological) disagreement, due to their using different concepts of lying? I try to show that there is a major puzzle involved in the distinguishing between genuine and merely verbal disagreement.