Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Martin,

I see the problems of generalizations, and I understand your doubts. 
However, conclusions drawn on the basis of statistics, are they not 
generalizations as well?

The referent of the word )E:LOHIM is in most cases to the true God, 
and no article is needed. This suggests that the use of the article 
before the word hardly can be anaforic, as is possible with other 
nouns.

The translator therefore has two options, either to ignore the 
article and render the word with and without the article similarly, 
or to mark a difference in the translation by using "true" or a 
similar word of emphasis, if such can be found.

There is of course no way of knowing whether the article in the 
mentioned cases really marks a difference - informants are lacking.



Regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli

University of Oslo


> On 19/7/02 2:46 pm, Rolf Furuli at furuli AT online.no wrote:
>
> >  On this background I would take your h'lhym in the sense "The 
> > God", who has a
> >  completely different position compared with other "gods". So I 
> > would translate
> >  is as "The true God". The word 'lhym without article refers in 
> > most instances
> >  to "The true God" as well (keep in mind the difference between "meaning" and
> >  "reference"), but when the article is used, it is stressed that he is "The
> >  true God".
>
> This seems to me to be unlikely--I doubt such a broad generalisation can be
> made for the entire Hebrew Bible. For example, it suggests that Psalms
> rarely seeks to stress "the true God" but Qohelet frequently wishes to do so
> (based on the statistics Ian provided). This certainly seems
> counter-intuitive to me!
>
>
> Martin Shields,
> University of Sydney.
>
> .