[b-hebrew] Ambiguities, doubling meanings and puns

Karl Randolph kwrandolph at email.com
Mon Sep 12 13:42:00 EDT 2005


Bill:

In answering your question, I feel almost as 
if I were responding to a straw man. You 
seem to want to understand it in a way that 
I have specifically written as a fallacious 
understanding.

First, I thank Harold Holmyard and Peter 
Kirk for their answers.

Secondly, the example below is not at all 
ambiguous, when taken in its linguistic and 
cultural milieu. Apparently, if what I read 
is correct, this is a reference to what we 
today call "surrogate motherhood" for women 
who were barren. Further, the Hebrew verb 
BNH was used in contexts where we would use 
different terms, but its broad use does not 
negate that it has one basic meaning, which 
no English word equals (a simple gloss in a 
dictionary does not do the meaning justice).

To drag this message out would be to repeat 
myself, which would be a drag on Peter and 
others, and a drag for me to write.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk at qaya.org>
> 
> On 12/09/2005 00:58, Bill Rea wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Peter Kirk wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> Bill, I would dispute your hypothesis that the biblical authors
> >> deliberately wrote ambiguously, except perhaps in a few rather special
> >> places.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > If you don't like ambiguity, then let's confine ourselves to
> > double meaning like the type in Gen 16:2. How does Karl's theory
> > handle these?
> >
> >
> 
> Well, if the point in Genesis 16:2 etc is that there is an ambiguity
> between two different lexical items, Karl will have no problem there,
> although it is of course a problem for translation. But I don't quite
> see the issue with this verse. Are you suggesting a second sense of the
> verb BNH related to BEN "son"?
> 
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter at qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/

-- 
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