Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Shoshanna Walker <rosewalk AT concentric.net>]

No offense to anyone, but this is a typical example of running around 
in circles and not understanding anything, because of not going to 
the source, ie;Torah and Oral Torah, for knowledge.

shoshanna





Dave,

I wish you would stop your consistently rude attitude when
it comes to dealing with things that you don't have a logical
approach for.

> > >> Even Genesis seems dimly aware of Dan's position. See
> > >> Gen 49:16, which says, "Dan shall judge his people as if
> > >> one of the tribes of Israel." -- k'xd $b+y y$r'l --, ie
> > >> Dan was not a tribe of Israel, but shall perform like
> > >> one
> > >
> > >How on earth do you justify translating K(XD "as *if* one"?  That's
> > >not what it says, and every English translation I have found reads
> > >"as one of the tribes," which means something very different.
> >
> > Sorry, Dave, but what on earth do you mean by "as one of the
> > tribes"?
>
> "As a member of the president's cabinet, he enjoys special
> privileges..."

This English analogy simply fails. It is using a meaning of
"as" which k- doesn't have. And the LXX uses wsei which also
excludes your Englishism.

> There's nothing mysterious about "as one of the tribes"
> at all, it's perfectly good English and perfectly good Hebrew.

You're certainly right.

> But the
> context of the thread makes it clear why you want to play word
> games with it, so I didn't expect you to respond any differently.

This is just plain silly, Dave.

> > The text doesn't say that Dan *is* a tribe of Israel,
> > but is *like* a tribe of Israel. k- normally supplies a simile
> > to show that something [A] is like something else [B], ie A is
> > not B, suggesting Dan was not a tribe of Israel.
>
> "Normally"?  Don't make me laugh.  K- has a wide range of
> meanings and no one of them is more "normal" than the other.

If we look at BDB's range of meaning for k-, they
list three basic categories, of which the second
involves repetition of the k- and the third involves
the k- preceding an infinitve, so we can happily
rule them out and look only at the first category.

1.a. deals with number estimation (so is scratched).

1.b. deals with likenesses...

1.c. basically "according to" (so is scratched).

1.d. "kaph veritatis", translation into something else

Where is your "as president" style meaning which you
have apparently imported from English? A few clear
examples from biblical literature might help.

Now back to your attitude problem:

> It's
> clear you've finally learned to read some Hebrew in the last couple
> of years, but bear in mind that a little knowledge is a dangerous
> thing.

Perhaps better knowledge means that one can talk
more convincing blather. Try sticking to the
philology.

> The meaning that best fits this verse can be paraphrased
> something like "Dan will judge his people from within inasmuch as
> he is one of them."

If for example you could find something to justify
your astandard method of translation of the text,
ie changing it to suit your presuppositions, then
you would have to explain why k- in this particular
case means something other than the statistically
"normal" sense of its usage. A reading of a word
which is not its standard usage needs linguistic
indications and I see none here.

> The verse is an obvious play on the name Dan

Yup.

> who, being (as) one of the tribes of Israel, will emerge as a judge
> over the nation as a whole.

The text doesn't justify this. You bend over backwards
to supply a contorted meaning which doesn't come from
the text to deal with what I consider the simplest
reading, ie that k- is used as a comparison.

> There's not even a hint anywhere in the
> context that he wasn't really a tribe.

The text is plain: Dan will judge his people like a tribe
of Israel. Hints are not needed: it's on the text surface.
What you need is something that points elsewhere.

("Dan will judge his people", ie judge the people of Dan,
as a natural reading of the text should indicate.)

> Furthermore, if you maintain that this meaning of K- is so "normal"
> you need to explain why every English version on the market
> disagrees with you.

They don't disagree. They translate k- as "as".
You simply take a collocation of the English word
and attempt to apply it to Hebrew.

> If you can't follow the meaning of the English
> phrase, that's not the fault of the text.

More silliness, Dave. I wish you would stop with
the attitude problem.

If anyone has problems with the notion that Dan was not
originally a tribe of Israel, they might like to explain

1) why Dan's original homeland is placed firmly in
   sea people territory, including Ekron and Timna
   (Jos 19:40ff) between the Philistines and the
   Tjekker;

2) why a group that had never had any connection with
   the sea according to the biblical tradition, could
   suddenly be already dwelling in ships in Jdg 5:17;

3) why Dan is considered "like" a tribe of Israel;

4) as the Denyen were one of the sea peoples who ended
   up on the Levantine coast post 1170 BCE, why the
   name Dan is linguistically extremely similar to
   dnnym as the Denyen are called elsewhere (see the
   etymology supplied by Gen 30:6 with dnny)

5) why 2 Sam 24:6 mentions the unexplainable dnh y`n,
   usually transliterated as Dan-jaan, which is
   linguistically similar to Denyen;

6) why Dan was apportioned Philistine heartland (Jos
   19:40ff) but ends up somewhere totally different,
   while considering that the sea peoples took
   possession of the whole coast (explaining why Dan
   could have a tradition locating it in Philistine
   lands but ending up north); and

7) why Dan, according to Jdg 18:1, had no lands among
   the tribes of Israel allotted to them, at such a
   late date.

We could also look at the favourite son of the tribe
of Dan, Samson, with his sun-god name and his
Philistine wives. There is a wealth of evidence for
the lateness of Dan's inclusion among the tribes of
Israel.

If the twelve tribes are so sacrosanct to people, they
might also like to explain why the Bani-Yamini were a
problem for the people of Mari, why Amenemope seems to
connect Asher and Zebulun with the sea peoples along
with Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod, why Simeon doesn't even
rate a mention in Moses' farewell speech which talks of
only eleven tribes, etc.


Ian


> I won't pursue this any further, so go ahead and have the last word
> and I'll leave it to the rest of the group to decide which translation is
> more likely.





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