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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 8:22
  • Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 13:05:05 -0500

Harold:

The moment that you can "stick in an alternative
interpretation", especially when that alternative
interpretation is linguistically allowable, then
you cannot insist that your interpretation is the
only correct one.

How do you define "best interpretation"? What
objective standards do you adduce?

As a lexicographer, how do you decide what a term
means? How do you recognize when a word is being
used in a non-standard way, such as in literary
styles as irony, satire, idiomatic phrase, etc.? Do
you agree that a word can have its own meaning and
its opposite (which would make a term meaningless)
or do you analyze the context to control for
literary style and/or time based change of meaning?

When I wrote my dictionary, I noticed almost no
change in meaning from Moses to the Exile, though
there was an increasing complexity of literary
style for the later pre-Exile writing as Isaiah and
Jeremiah, as compared to earlier writings as Exodus
through Deuteronomy, and middle works as Psalms and
Proverbs. Then the post-Exile writings were
stylistically much simpler with more loan words, as
typical of people for whom Hebrew was their second
language, exemplified by such works as Kings,
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, etc. I looked first for
a unified meaning that fits in all uses. If I found
words that were very different in their meanings, I
looked for possible time-based changes, whether or
not we may be dealing with a loan-word from another
language, I read up to a whole chapter per use
looking for contextual clues of literary styles
that would indicate non-standard use of the terms
and compare them with synonyms (my dictionary lists
over 1600 such) and sometimes antonyms to get the
best handle I could on a term's meaning.

In short, I consider one variant meaning that can't
be explained by literary style, loan word, part of
a complex lexeme (two or more words working
together to make a third meaning) or change over
time sufficient to look for an alternate unified
meaning for a term. Even then I recognize that
sometimes we deal with different terms that just
happen to be spelled the same.

The only evidence that you have presented that MW(D
could possibly include the four seasons have
legitimate alternate interpretations that others
think are stronger than your claims. Your evidence
is too weak to convince. You need to cite a verse
where it can have no other meaning.

Karl W. Randolph.


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Harold Holmyard" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
>
> Karl Randolph wrote:
>
> > In order for you to convince me that MW(D means "season" as in
> > summer, fall, etc., you need to cite a verse where it can have no
> > other meaning. This you have failed to do. All you have presented
> > are idiosyncratic readings of very few verses.
> >
> >
>
> HH: This is an illegitimate criterion because it may be possible to
> stick in an alternative interpretation. The question becomes what the
> best interpretation is. Demanding that there can only be one possible
> interpretation is an invalid approach because in many difficult passages
> there can more than one possible meaning for a word.
>
> Yours,
> Harold Holmyard

--
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