Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,


Nobody has so far analysed my example. could you please do that.


Regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli

University of Oslo





> Moon, may I answer you here as one also trained originally in science
> and who then worked as an engineer. In most branches of science, if a
> hypothesis has a 96% or 97% fit with the observed facts (as here), the
> general truth of that hypothesis is considered rather strongly
> indicated. Of course one then needs to look at the remaining results.
> They may be spurious or corrupted (cf. here the text may be corrupt);
> but one would need to look into whether that is reasonable. Or one might
> find that this small residue of results can be accounted for by making
> adjustments to the hypothesis. Sometimes it might be necessary to leave
> the hypothesis as incomplete and uncertain because a residue of results
> has not been accounted for. But I am sure no scientist would reject a
> hypothesis completely because of a 3-4% discrepancy.
>
> Peter Kirk
>
> >  -----Original Message-----
> >  From: Moon-Ryul Jung [mailto:moon AT sogang.ac.kr]
> >  Sent: 14 April 2002 16:24
> >  To: Biblical Hebrew
> >  Subject: RE: Hebrew Syntax.
> >
> >  Rolf,
> >  As a topic related to this exercise, G. Hatav believes that
> >  yiqtol and weqatal are "modals". Your example is a counterexample
> >  to her thesis. In her book, she also noted some non-modal uses of
> >  yiqtol and said it is difficult to explain them (She thinks some are
> >  corrupted because some other versions do not use yiqtol in those
> >  examples.) The non-modal use of yiqtol is  3% [more than 30] of the
> 1121
> >  yiqtol's in her corpus, which is Genesis through Kings. The non-modal
> use
> >  of weqatal is 4% of the 573 weqatal's.
> >
> >  I have no idea how to deal with this kind or this amount of
> >  counterexample. Hatav seems to think it does not invalidate her
> >  thesis. As a scientist/engineer in training, I wonder how such
> >  counterexamples do not invalidate her thesis. If there is no way
> >  to explain away these counterexamples, how is it that they do not
> >  invalidate the thesis? Is there some agreement going on here among
> >  the players in the field?
> >
> >  Moon
> >  Moon R. Jung
>  > Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Moon
>  > Moon R. Jung
>  > Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea
>  >
>  >
>  >