Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 12/02/2004 15:36, Karl Randolph wrote:

> ...
>
> Is this the way ancient Hebrews thought? Or are we imposing our modern way of 
> thinking on the ancient Hebrews?
>
>  
We can't know exactly how the ancient Hebrews thought. But we can study 
how various present-day peoples think, including those who have had 
little exposure to western culture, and some whose general worldview is 
probably quite similar to that of the ancient Hebrews. Some people do 
study such things in depth, for example Ron Moe of SIL who is working on 
lexicography of Bantu languages (see some more about this at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/). It is reasonable to 
suppose (at least on the assumption that there has been no fundamental 
and worlwide change in human nature over the last 3000 years or so) that 
how the ancient Hebrews thought, on most semantic issues (leaving aside 
for the moment anything specifically religious), is in general terms 
within the range of ways which different contemporary peoples think.

> ...
>
> With this in mind, what did the ancient Hebrew think of when he thought of, 
> for example, XBL? Did he “see” an object, long and snake-like, or did he 
> perceive a function of binding or grouping together where a “rope” is just an 
> excellent object to fulfill that function? Did the ancient Hebrew see the 
> form or function first?
>  

Good question.

> As I understand Renier de Blois, he defines XBL first by form, namely a rope. 
> He then looks at the varied uses of the lexeme in all its forms, to see if it 
> fits together. It doesn’t all fit together. As a result, he posits four 
> different etymological roots for XBL.
>
> I, on the other hand, view XBL first as a function, namely binding together 
> or grouping together (where there is no object doing the binding). All the 
> uses of XBL that I have analyzed fit that one function. As a result, I see 
> only one etymological root.
>
> My question comes down to: to what extent is it legitimate for us to use our 
> Weltanschauung, our way of thinking, when defining Hebrew lexemes  and when 
> does it become an imposition of our categories, a distortion of the ancient 
> Hebrew understanding?
>
>  
Certainly we should aim not to impose our own categories and ways of 
thinking. And Reinier is trying hard not to do that. He has come to a 
different conclusion from you on this word, but I don't think that is 
because he is imposing his own standards. In this case very likely we 
cannot be sure which is correct because the data has been lost (although 
we might get some guidance from Mishnaic Hebrew etc which sadly none of 
the three of us know).

> ...
>
> To close, here is my methodology (to contrast with Renier de Blois’ listed above)  (Renier, I list it only to bring others up to speed on what we have discussed): 
>
> 1) A lexeme almost always has only one meaning. It may have no equivalent in 
> English (even for words from the same etymological root) or there may exist 
> an almost exact equivalency. The meaning may be very broad and general, or it 
> may be very narrow and specific, or in between.
>
> 2) Where a lexeme has more than one meaning, there is usually a discernible 
> connection, for example, Birne in German means both light bulb and pear, the 
> connection being that the early light bulbs had a pear like shape.
>  

You are in danger here of the etymological fallacy because you are 
losing sight of language change. Suppose that 100 years in the future 
light bulbs are no longer even vaguely pear-shaped, and for some reason 
I cannot fathom the German word Birne is no longer used for the fruit, 
but only for light bulbs. Only specialists would understand the link 
between the word Birne and its original meaning as a fruit.

For a real example of this kind of thing, consider the word "cab" = 
"taxi" (is this only British usage?) This originally was a word for a 
small horse-drawn carriage, short for "cabriolet" I think, then used for 
"hansom cab" = horse-drawn taxi, and then applied to motor taxis. But if 
you ask an average cabbie (cab driver) where the word came from, they 
probably wouldn't have a clue that it was originally a horse-drawn carriage.

Similarly, if we consider how the ancient Hebrews might have thought, we 
can be sure that they didn't have a grasp of the principles of modern 
etymology, and so would not have made certain links which now seem 
obvious to us. And in fact we can tell some of the links which they did 
make from the explanations given for many names in the Hebrew Bible, a 
number of which don't make much sense by the principles of modern 
linguistics, but as folk etymologies they do tell us quite a lot about 
how the Hebrews thought about words.

> 3) Where a lexeme has a narrow and specific meaning, it often is either 
> partially or wholly a subset of another lexeme. Therefore, one way to learn a 
> lexeme is to compare it to its synonyms.
>  

I would agree that comparison with synonyms is useful, especially when 
used in poetic parallelism. But I would be careful about this subset 
principle, which is by no means universal.

> 4) Lexeme meanings are best recognized by the action they refer to, not the 
> form. This is especially true of ancient Hebrew.
>  

I wonder if this is really more true of Hebrew than of other languages. 
I see your 'OP example below, but I suspect that is more a matter of a 
pre-scientific viewpoint which did not classify things according to 
Aristotelean categories, which indeed do tend to be form-based not 
function-based. It might be interesting to compare the common names (not 
the scientific ones) given by English-speaking settlers to new animals 
and plants they discovered in America, Australia etc. How far are these 
based on resemblance in action rather than in form? Maybe the English of 
the ordinary settlers was not so different from that of the Hebrews.

> 5) Lexeme understanding and usage may be influenced by the context, such as 
> literary style, figures of speech, use as euphemism, or where the presence of 
> a specific lexeme may actually make it part of a complex lexeme (two or more 
> words combining to make another meaning, e.g. “strike out” having a different 
> meaning than “strike” alone, but the historical connection is still 
> discernible.)
>  

The latter is a good point, and may also apply to cases of two words 
together, e.g. XESED WE'EMET may mean something more, or more specific, 
than the sum of the meanings of XESED and 'EMET.

> 6) This may be unique to Hebrew, where a noun of an object can be a reference 
> to an action. For example, David and his men were a XWMH a protective barrier 
> for Nabel’s sheep and shepherds, i.e. their actions protected.
>  

Certtainly not unique to Hebrew, although important in Hebrew. In 
English we can't say David and his men were a wall, but we can say that 
they were a barrier, also a physical object. It isn't quite natural in 
that context, but we could say that Nabal was a barrier between David 
and the throne of Judah, because his actions hindered David in getting 
that throne.

> 7) This is, after all, a dictionary from one language to another, therefore, 
> as much as possible, I used as few words as possible, preferably one, to 
> describe a Hebrew lexeme as long as that was accurate. For example, XB), used 
> about 34 times, has almost the exact same meaning as “conceal” in English, 
> though sometimes in Hebrew it is with a niphal where English would have a 
> reflexive or active. (There is a slight but noticeable difference between XB) 
> and XBH, so I list them separately.)
>
> (Though Biblical Hebrew was written over a span of 1000 years, most of it was 
> written during a time when the language was pretty stable. There was some 
> change which is discernible and an example of dialectal variation, but almost 
> none that I could recognize that would change the definitions of lexemes.)
>
> In reference to category 4) above, ancient Hebrew seems to categorize 
> according to action or function, not according to form or appearance. For 
> example, (WP or (WP KNP is usually translated as “bird”, but that is not 
> accurate. It actually refers to flying creatures where the action is the 
> deciding factor, hence a bat or flying insect is (WP while an ostrich or 
> penguin is not. (This is also an example of 1) above—there is no equivalency 
> for this term in English.) Similarly, a XBL rope would be defined by its 
> ability to bind things together, not its shape.
>
> So what do youall think?
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
>  

A few quick responses above.

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