Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Pastor Mark Eddy" <markeddy AT adams.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>


[snip]
> The first lesson I learned is that lexemes have one core meaning (unless
> where there are two lexemes with the same pronunciation that have merged,
> like "to" and "two" in English). I found it easiest to learn to use the
> lexemes correctly if I could learn that core definition to recognize how it
> is used, even if it didn't make sense in English.

Interesting.  Let's look at one of my favorite English examples.

Strike can mean:
-to hit (strike the rock with your staff)
-to miss (in baseball)
-to start something (strike up the band)
-to stop something (go on strike)

to name just a few.  Here we have one lexeme with at least two meanings, plus
two more that are polar opposites of the first two.  What exactly is the
"core definition"?

If you look at these examples as a snapshot of how the word is used today, it 
may appear that there is
little in common. But remember that there is historical development of the 
language behind the current
usage. I have not studied the history of the word "strike" in English, but I 
can see how all these usages
could have grown out of a single "original" meaning: "swing at something in 
order to hit it." When Moses
struck the rock with his staff, he swung the staff in order to hit the rock. 
When the baseball player
takes a swing at the ball, he intends to hit it. He struck at it, even if he 
missed it. In baseball when
his strike actually hit the ball, it is called a "hit." So when he only 
struck at the ball but did not hit
it, his action became known as a strike. Swinging at something (whether you 
hit it or not) is the core
meaning.
How is the band started? When the the conductor swings his baton. Before 
conductors, the ensemble would
begin when the keyboard player struck (hit) the keys with his fingers. Here 
"strike" doesn't mean begin,
but the literal motions needed to start the music have become associated with 
the start of the music.
True, most people who use the phrase today would not be aware of its literal 
meaning, but that does not
refute the idea that there is a core meaning behind the word.

And when workers go "on strike" this does not mean that they "stop" their 
work. They only interrupt it.
The purpose of the "strike" is to do damage to the managers of the company, 
to strike back at them (so as
to hit them in their pocketbook). Again, this idiom grows out the the core 
meaning of "strike": to (try
to) hit something. If they literally struck out at their managers (as 
happened in some of the violent
strikes of a century ago), they would be thrown in prison. So they developed 
less physical ways to strike
back at their employer (sitting down at their machines or simply not showing 
up for work). The term went
along with the change in actions, so if we are to interpret what is meant in 
context, we will need to know
that context and also the time period in which the word is used. But this 
does not negate the fact that
there is a core meaning to the word "strike" in its history.

Of course since English is really the combination of a number of languages 
(the Germanic Anglo-Saxon plus
the romance language old French, plus direct borrowing from Latin and Greek 
introduced by academics), it
is common for English to have many totally different roots pick up identical 
pronunciation (and even
spelling) in English. Each of those othere languages had "core meanings" for 
the words that were brought
into English. This certainly could have happened in the biblical Hebrew. But 
we would need to have
evidence for this in order to assign a number of "core" meanings to the same 
Hebrew spelling.

Another quickie from English:
-my car has BAD tires
-those are some BAD shoes, dude

The former carries negative connotation, the latter positive.

"Connotation" is by definition something added to a word beyond its "core" 
defintion. Even in your example
the second use of "bad" is a deliberate attempt to twist the meaning of the 
word, rather than a totally
different meaning. Everyone knows that "bad" really means something negative. 
But some bad boys put their
spin on that label and became its champions, turning it into a sort of jargon 
for their "in crowd." In the
spoken language I can always tell by the inflection in someone's voice when 
he is using "bad" in its
twisted sense. So, you still have a core meaning for bad (negative) but then 
realize that some people use
it in their jargon to mean the opposite of the core meaning.

IMNSHO, there's no such thing as an actual "core definition."  Words mean what
they mean because a society chooses to use them that way.

But let's take a step back and evaluate the world-view that can make such a 
claim. I know that post-Darwin
social sciences often claim that language is just a man-made phenomenon, and 
that words in post-modernism
mean whatever a person wants words to mean (the rugged individualist version 
of what you claim). But was
language historically a purely human invention or convention, in which a few 
individuals (or a whole
society) chose to use certain sounds to represent certain meanings? As I read 
the Hebrew Bible I see that
God created Adam with a full-blown ability to use language. Human language 
did not evolved out of grunts
supposedly made by supposed sub-human ancestors. In Adam's first day of life 
he was able to give names to
all the animals that he saw. And those names stuck (Gen. 2:19). The names 
that Adam gave he continued to
use, and Eve used them, and their children used them. Until the tower of 
Babel incident in Gen. 11 all
human beings used the same words, the same language (v. 1 & 6). So God came 
down to confuse their
languages, so that they would not understand each other (v. 7 & 9). As a 
result the people scatterd into
different parts of the earth along language lines (which aparently had 
something to do with racial lines
as well).

Each of these lines passed down a complete language system, which was learned 
by succeeding generations.
Each generation seems to have added to, subtracted from, or modified certain 
portions of the language. But
until the 20th century it seems that nobody thought that we could simply 
change the meaning of words and
expect others to go along with us in our new understanding. There has always 
been an attempt to adapt
previously existing terms (even some borrowed from other languages) to 
explain new phenomena or ideas. If
a child does not know what to call something, he will usually wait for 
someone else to call it something,
and he learns to call it the same thing. Or, if he is more creative, he may 
apply a term he already knows
to a new object in his life, based on its resemblance to what he already 
knows. If nobody corrects him, he
will continue to use his choice of terms, and pass it on to his children. But 
I don't know any language
that developed simply because some "society" decided to make one up. 
Societies have always adapted
languages that they received in full-fledged form.

I have known people who originally spoke German, then moved to America and 
learned English. One family
tried to speak only German at home, to keep the mother-tongue alive. But 
after being in America for over
50 years, without hearing anyone else speak German for most of that time, 
English words crept into their
"German." They simply put German word endings on English words, when they 
didn't remember the real German
word. I could understand this hybrid language fairly well, not because they 
agreed with me on what their
words should mean, but because I knew what the English words meant and I knew 
German grammar. I could
almost instantly recognize what they were doing, because I knew the "core 
meaning" of both the vocabulary
and of the syntax. They took pre-existing languages and merged them.

My American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a nice "family 
tree" of the Indo-European
languages, tracing them all back to once original language. There are similar 
charts for the Semitic
languages. Eastern Asian languages form another group. I'm not sure how the 
sub-Saharan African languages
are related, but I have heard from some Bible translators that there are 
definite relations between tribal
languages as well. It has also been demonstraated that many so-called 
"primitive" languages are actually
amazingly complex, and the devolution of language has tended to produce less 
complicated and less precise
forms of language. It would appear that language is a creation of God, that 
He put into mankind certain
ways of looking at the world and thinking about the world that helps us to 
use language to communicate
with each other about our observations and thoughts.

So historically and biblically there are good reasons for us to look for 
"core" meanings to words (and
core grammatical structures). This does not mean that in actually usage words 
will continue to hold on to
their original "core meaning." We need to recognize where meanings branch off 
over time. But if one takes
the Bible seriously (which I do) as an historically accurate document, it 
appears that words did not come
into existence simply because some society chose to use words in a certain 
way. Words were created in
mankind by God, and then over time various societies have altered the 
original meanings of words.

In America,
"breakfast" used to mean "a meal taken at a particular time of day."  Now,
thanks in large measure to Village Inn, it means "a particular group of
foods."  And so it goes.  To me, looking for some "core definition" rather
than just examining usage in a given context, makes the task of grasping
Hebrew (or any other language, for that matter) just that much more
difficult.  YMMV.

Even "breakfast" shows evidence of evolution of meaning from basic core 
meanings of words. Breakfast was
originally the meal that breaks a person's fast during sleep. Certain foods 
have become associated with
the first meal of the day, and so they have come to be called breakfast foods 
(breakfast used as an
adjective). But even when someone orders from the "breakfast" menu at 10:00 
p.m. at night, he is aware
that this is an anachronism. He is ordering foods more commonly associated 
with a different time of day.
He may actually be breaking a his own personal fast by eating such foods at 
that time (maybe he hasn't
eaten all day). In time it is possible that the connection to the core 
meaning of breakfast may be broken,
but that doesn't preclude us from discoverning where the break occurred. In 
biblical interpretation, it
would appear that the closer in time a writing is to the creation of the 
biblical Hebrew language, the
more likely it is to use words in their "core" meaning. The later in history 
that a writing originated,
the more likely it is to use words in a sense that has been modified from its 
"core" meaning. Of course,
disagreements about which biblical writings are "late" and which are "early" 
can lead to different
opinions about what meanings are more "core." But that's another topic 
entirely.

Willing to have my understanding modified (but pretty sure that what I have 
written accords with the
facts),
Mark Eddy