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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] linguistics, was Re: Prov. 30:19

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] linguistics, was Re: Prov. 30:19
  • Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:26:41 -0700

On 11/10/2003 13:19, Karl Randolph wrote:

Dear Peter:

The question is not whether people have changed, but of the nature of
evidence. The latter is the philosophical difference.

I personally believe that the 22 characters in ancient Hebrew represent the
original 22 consonental phonemes. I also believe that ancient Hebrew was very
conservative in not splitting those phonemes into separate phonemes until
relatively late, in contrast to cognate languages. I also believe, based on
internal evidence and literary styles, that when Moses “authored” Genesis, he
basically collected earlier documents, even antediluvian documents, written
with the original 22 character alphabet, to make one book.

And, personally, I believe in one God... If that is the kind of creed or belief you are talking about, I'm not going to shake you with any arguments or evidence. I will just say that your creed seems a rather unusual one.

Yet, I’ll have to acknowledge that my objection to translating (LMH as
“virgin” in Proverbs 30:19 is based on the expectation that people and nature
have not changed from then till now. As a father with three sons, I should
know something about the sex drive. Even about the sex act. As a man whose
wife left him so that he had to bring his sons up as a single father, I am
very conscious of the fact that I am a father. As a person who grew up in
forest and glen, swamp, mountain and desert, seaside yet in foreign countries
such that I had a fluent knowledge of two foreign languages before age 16,
whose family was of a scientific leaning such that his physicist grandfather
was given an academic defermant (he was a college teacher who had to carry
around a Manhattan Project draft card) from the Manhattan Project, I am
equally at home tracking a deer in the forest as with discussing philosophy
in German, whose dyslexia was a blessing in disguise in that it forces me
constantly to e
valuate grammar, logic and meaning, whose interest in history is almost
insatiable, who became a bookworm as ours was the only family in neighborhood
and extended family who did not have a TV until after I was a teenager (even
now I still don’t like watching TV, I usually don’t even listen to radio), in
view of all of the above, I do not fit into a typical postmodernist
Westerner. In fact, I feel very much like a stranger in a strange land. Who
among our mailing list has read Tenakh 20 times in Hebrew? I can’t prove
that I have, for I lost count close to two decades ago, but I now find it
easier to read it with pre-Galut-Babel glyphs and an unpointed text than when
using modern Aramaic square glyphs and all the points. The grammar and
meanings make more sense that way.

Thanks for sharing your interesting background. I sympathise with you feeling like a stranger in a strange land. But in a way you are very postmodernist in believing what you believe without caring whether there is evidence or not. Perhaps I should let you believe it in peace. Well, I would if you didn't argue so fiercely with those who don't share your views.

Getting back onto subject, I have yet to see any convincing data that
indicates that the present is the key to the past. Let me emphasize again,
the philosophical difference is whether or not the present is the key to the
past. I say “No” and I think you say “Yes”.

OK, you are probably right. But I don't see what other key there is to the past, unless that past is a purely speculative reconstruction based on almost no evidence. Maybe that's true of all reconstructions of the past. But if so, don't we have to resign ourselves to "history is bunk"?

Karl W. Randolph.



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






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