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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "PLG"

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  • From: "Ishinan" <ishinan AT comcast.net>
  • To: "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "PLG"
  • Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:11:43 -0600

YIGAL: I won't and can't comment on the Indo-European "plough".

ISHINAN: I only brought up the subject in the context of the translation of the Bible and the occurrence of the loan-word "plough" in various Germanic languages.

YIGAL: As far as the Arabic "flg" - as much as we might make of Arabic "cognates", we must remember that Arabic is a different branch of Semitic languages, and that ANY written form of Arabic, certainly Classical Arabic, is many centuries later than Biblical Hebrew. So that even if the Hebrew and Arabic roots do derive from the same Proto-Semitic origin, their meanings don't have to be related. If anything, I would posit that the Arabic meaning of "do make cuts in the earth" is derived from the older "divide".

ISHINAN: Correct me if am wrong, but isn't it standard procedure among Semitic scholars to make use of sister languages, especially Arabic, to explain certain Hebrew terms. A cursory look at any serious Hebrew dictionary will attest to this fact. Besides, I already made allusion in my earlier post that proto Semitic * plg meant divide/split, while of course the sense of ploughing is naturally a derivative. Now if you consider Arabic inappropriate and not pertaining to Hebrew in this instance, then what about Ugaritic?

To my knowledge, many Biblical themes were simply adapted from Ugaritic sources; the story of the flood for example has a near mirror image in Ugaritic literature; therefore in my opinion, the language of the Bible is greatly illuminated by the language of Ugarit.

In this case the Ugaritic 'plg" in KTU 1.82:24 & KTU 1.100:69 means "a long, narrow, shallow trench made in the ground by a plow or simply put a furrow". Now If you go back to the Arabic definition offered in my previous post you will find that it is exactly the same definition of the Arabic "flg": furrow the land or ploughing for sowing.

YIGAL: As a noun, Peleg is mostly connected to streams of water .

ISHINAN: So it is in the Arabic case, see the attachment in my earlier post.

http://labyrinthoflanguage.freewebsitehosting.com/PLG.html

YIGAL: And finally, "in Peleg's days the earth was ploughed"? Why? The first agriculturist was Cain (Gen. 4:2), and nowhere else does the Bible give a postdiluvian etiology for something that was already "invented" before the flood.

ISHINAN: If you don't mind, I will take a leaf of the moderator's instructions (in this case yourself) and will avoid getting into a debate about the Bible historicity to prove my point, however tempting. Instead, I will opt to deal with strictly linguistic matters.

My initial suggestion to Doug was given in good faith, based on my belief of the significance of comparative studies applied to the Semitic languages. I have nothing further to add to my earlier proposal, which I believe has merit.

Thank you for your comments, even though I cannot agree with them.

Respectfully,

Ishinan B. Ishibashi






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