Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Paul Zellmer" <zellmer AT digitelone.com>]

Peter Kirk wrote:

> Paul, in principle I agree with you. But one reason why I did start to
> get involved with this question is one in which history and Hebrew
> really do intersect. Some of the theories of Hebrew verb forms which I
> have been looking at depend on there being a real distinction between
> "Late Biblical Hebrew" and the Hebrew of most of the Hebrew Bible.
> Indeed surely there is such a distinction. But this distinction is
> ignored and made a mockery of by those who attempt to prove that the
> Bible is a product of the Hellenistic age, and is rather difficult to
> reconcile with the view that the Pentateuch is from the Persian
> period. That was my motivation for getting involved in the discussion.
>

And, Peter, this is the type of relationship of the two avenues of study
that I would expect to be brought out in this forum.  If the purpose for
the discussions is to guide in understanding why a certain word or
grammatical form is used in a given text, may they continue.  It may be
nice if, every so often, examples of this relationship is brought out in
the discussions, but that is probably asking too much.

From my perspective, we have a body of works that we as a group
basically agree upon, referred to as the Hebrew Bible or Tanach or
whatever.  The list is supposed to be focussed on the study of those
works.  Yet we have spent so much time debating when, if ever, the
events of this work took place.  Good night, we are even talking about
correspondence between Mesopotamia and Egypt, correspondence between
kings not even referred to in the Tanach!

From a totally objective point of view, my translation/reading/work with
the Hebrew would not change one little bit if this work is truth or
fiction.  Genesis 1 still translates the same.  As a foundation for a
belief structure, ah, well, that's a different subject, but that also is
not a subject that is appropriate for this forum.  And the co-chairs
have already ruled that these discussions are appropriate, so I assume
they see no participant as trying to attack the faith structures of
other members.

Thanks for clarifying your purposes,

Paul

----

Paul and Dee Zellmer, Jimmy Guingab, Geoffrey Beltran
Ibanag Translation Project
Cabagan, Isabela, Rep. of Philippines

zellmer AT digitelone.com