Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 06/10/2003 17:52, Karl Randolph wrote:

> Dear Peter: 
>
> I plan to have this as my last posting on this subject, because I am repeating what I 
> said before. 
>
> First of all, a sexual reference does not bother me, as there are far more explicit ones 
> in Tanakh, assuming that this is one. 
>
> Secondly, (LMH referring to a young woman refers to one who is unknown, as does 
> its root. This is in contrast to a man knowing his wife and she becomes pregnant. Of 
> the various discussions from many viewpoints I read on Isaiah 7:14, the ones I find 
> most convincing are those that insist that (LMH must mean "virgin". 
>
> ...
>
> Unless you can add to this discussion something new that has not been brought up 
> so far, I will not respond to it. To preserve the gentility of this mailing list, shall we 
> declare this thread closed? No one needs to respond, just not post anymore.         :-) 
>
> Karl W. Randolph. 
>
>  
Karl, I agree that we should close this if there is nothing to add to 
the discussion. I will have to let you persist in failing to see what to 
me is very obvious, the appropriateness of the parallel between the 
young woman and the sky, rock and sea. I accept that the LXX 
translation, which by the way I posted, is a possible one from the 
unpointed text.

But you do make one new point which does need a reply. You wrote that:

> Secondly, (LMH referring to a young woman refers to one who is unknown, as does 
> its root.
This is a serious example of the etymological fallacy. Etymologically it 
may be true that (LMH "young woman" is derived from the same root (LM as 
the verb (LM "conceal", which is presumably the source of your sense 
"unknown" - although comparison with the Arabic shows that it is not 
from the same root as (WLM "eternity". But that does not imply that 
there is any semantic link between the meanings of the noun and the verb 
at any time. (LMH doesn't mean "unknown" any more than English "nice" 
means "unknown" although it also has that etymology. For more details, 
see the books by Barr which I mentioned in the recent discussions of 
Dahood's speculations on the psalms.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/