Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>]

At 06:37 AM 12/6/99 +0100, Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>At 21.35 05/12/99 -0500, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
>>At 08:08 AM 12/5/99 +0100, Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>>>Languages form a multiple taxonomy -- one excludes the other -- so the
>>>writer says that Adar is of the Syrian tongue -- which indicates not
>>>Hebrew.
>>
>>Sorry, but this isn't how languages work.  For example, "casa" is
>>"home" in both Spanish and Italian.  
>
>Sorry, the text is saying something different. The Italian says casa is
>Italian; the Spaniard says it is Spanish. The example doesn't seem relevant
>to me.

Your point might have some traction if 2 Macc. was written in Hebrew.
Unfortunately (for you), it is written in Greek, so your analogy does
not hold up.

>>It is a fallacy to assume that
>>just because a word is Aramaic, then the word is not Hebrew.  Besides,
>>you still haven't established that the author/editor of 2 Macc. know
>>what he was talking about.
>
>Our problem here is that the writer chose to call it "Syrian", marking it
>out of the norm.

The "marking it out of the norm" is merely your inference, which you
still have yet to substantiate.  You might be able do this if you had
evidence that the author/epitomist spoke Hebrew as a mother tongue.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35