Biblical Hebrew Forum

["David Stabnow" <dstabno AT lifeway.com>]

On 01/29/01 George Athas wrote:

... Often, the explicit
statement is made, of a BETULAH that she "had known no man" (or another
similar
expression). If BETULAH purely alluded to physical virginity (and not
social virginity),
then the statement becomes redundant through tautology. ...

While the gist of your case does not stand or fall on this particular
argument, I wanted to point out a problem. What we ("rational" people)
consider redundancy or tautology is often in the Hebrew style repetition
for the sake of emphasis (or for poetic style). "She was a BETULAH; she had
not known a man" could indeed be a general statement clarified by a more
specific statement, but it alternatively might be an example of what
Longacre calls "Negative Antonym Paraphrase," where something is stated
both positively and negatively. For example, at the end of Genesis 40 the
narrator comments that "the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, and he
forgot him." We would not argue that "not remember" means something
different or less than "forget" and therefore has to be clarified. Nor must
we conclude that BETULAH means something different or less than "not known
a man" and required the clarification.

I explored the place of negative clauses in prose more fully in my
dissertation, if anyone is interested.

Dave Stabnow