Biblical Hebrew Forum

[c stirling bartholomew <cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net>]

on 4/11/01 9:53 AM, Will Pratt wrote:

> 
> 2226
> hr,h; [this in Hebrew characters in original]  adj.f.
> 
> Strong’s
> 2030
> 
> Louw-Nida
> Domain                                      Definition
> 
> 23.46–23.60
> 
> pregnant, with child, i.e., pertaining to the female of a species
> procreating (Ge 16:11; 38:24, 25; Ex 21:22; 1Sa 4:19; 2Sa 11:5; 2Ki 8:12;
> 15:16; Isa 7:14; Jer 20:17; 31:8; Am 1:13+), note: for another parsing, Hos
> 14:1[EB 13:16] see 2230; also Jdg 13:5; Isa 26:17 some parse as qal ptc. f.
> of 2225
> 
> [from Swanson, James, A Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic
> Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament), (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems,
> Inc.) 1997.]
> 
> In the program, clicking on the Louw-Nida domain number takes you to the
> Louw-Nida entry on the Greek equivalent term(s).  Clicking on the Strong's
> number takes you to the equivalent Strong's entry.  By itself, I'm not sure
> it's worth it.  As part of the Original Languages package of Logos, it's
> quite useful.
> 

A question for the Semitic Philologists,

Does the procedure described above cause anyone else to raise their eyebrows
just a little? 

There are some hidden assumptions here which should be dragged out into the
light of day and subjected to scrutiny. The first hidden assumption is that
the semantic taxonomy in Louw & Nida is a context free language independent
semantic network which can be used with both Classical Hebrew and NT Greek.
I find this assumption a little hard to accept. I have read the book*
describing the theory behind Louw & Nida several times but I don't remember
what they had to say on this subject. It may be true that  Louw & Nida
attempted to construct a more or less language universal semantic taxonomy
but the SCOPE of the taxonomy was only required to cover the vocabulary of
NT Greek. That being the case the SCOPE of the taxonomy would not match the
requirements for a Classical Hebrew lexicon.

I also think there are more serious problems with the approach describe
above than just matching of the SCOPE. It seems that the STRUCTURE of the
semantic network would need to be language specific. This will raise the
issue of linguistic universals from all the anthropologist/linguist types
and I am not going to get into an argument about that. Not now anyway.

Just wanted to see if anyone else has some little nagging doubts about:

> [from Swanson, James, A Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic
> Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament), (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems,
> Inc.) 1997.]

Clay Bartholomew

--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062

* J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Lexical Semantics of New Testament Greek,
Scholars Press, 1992.