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b-hebrew - Re: YHVH = haShem

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  • From: Will Wagers <hyle AT airmail.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: YHVH = haShem
  • Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 21:52:04 -0600


Will Wagers wrote:
> >At 09:30 PM 8/24/99 -0400, you wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >Someone earlier mentioned a book that detailed etymological origins of
> > >Biblical Hebrew terms. Could they look this up for us and explain what the
> > >book says about SHEM ? SHEMAYIM? etc. ?
> >
> >Etymological studies are interesting enough- but they really do not help
> >much in understanding either usage or meaning in context.
>
> I disagree. History is the context of all.

This is a nice cliche,

Really? I've never heard it put that way and thought it summed up my
argument nicely without boring everyone to death.

However, in the context of language, words mean what
they mean because a society chooses to use them that way. How
they got where they are is sometimes an interesting study, but it
frequently tells us virtually nothing about what the word meant at
the time in question.

I think saying that "a society chooses" is a misleading, anthropomorphic
description of the process, intimating that society has a mind analogous
to a human mind, that it is free to choose, and that it consciously chooses.

The fact is: *society chooses* to use words in a remarkably consistent
manner, to modify those meanings in logical ways, and to choose most
often to have meanings mean what they have always meant: This is one
thing we can learn from etymology.

In this case, the "society choosing" what the words mean is two
millennia after the fact.

I disagree that the history of a word tells us nothing about the meaning:
In fact without a history, a word is meaningless.

Oddly, I often see people, who disavow that etymology is useful,
nevertheless argue that a word means such-and-such in this context
and so-and-so in that at this-or-that time, i.e. history or etymology.

It serves Christian theology well to be able to divorce the meanings of
Biblical vocabulary from their roots (as has been done with the *unique*
historical event of Jesus, which purportedly resets the clock of history,
making all that comes before irrelevant), so that the context--theologically-determined--governs all.


Will Wagers hyle AT airmail.net "Reality is the best metaphor."




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