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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: h'lhym
  • Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2002 11:30:57 +0200


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.

.





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