Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Thanks, Peter:


----- Original Message -----
From: 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.

That’s just the problem: did the ancient Hebrews think according to the 
catagories used by present primitive peoples, or did they use different 
thought patterns? Is not one of the reasons that primitive peoples are 
primitive is their thought patterns? Were the ancient Hebrew primitive in the 
same way? I don’t think so.

One problem to making a definitive statement concerning ancient Hebrew 
thought is the destruction of Hebrew records when the temple burned under 
Titus. At least under Nebuchadnezzar, the picture is that the burning of the 
temple was done according to a preplanned action, so it was emptied of its 
treasures before being torched. Not so under Titus. Under Titus, the temple 
burned while the fighting was still raging around it, and most of its 
treasures and written records burned up with it. The main document that we 
have left is Tanakh, and it indicates that ancient Hebrews did not follow the 
thought patterns used by modern “primitive” (and not so primitive) peoples.

Which “primitive” people does not use Aristotelean thought methodology? Just 
because he has different categories does not mean that he used a different 
thought process to arrive at his categories, does it?
> >
> >
> >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.

Are there any examples of a lexeme losing its original meaning and taking on 
another in Biblical Hebrew? I can’t think of any.

That’s why I said “usually”. There are a few lexemes in Biblical Hebrew where 
I question whether or not there is a etymological connection between it and 
another lexeme, but I don’t know. Therefore, a question mark.

Is not our view of language shifts tempered by our modern experience? And 
isn’t the modern experience rather atypical for linguistic experience as a 
whole? Particularly if we deal with English? For example, when I first 
learned German as a kid, it was a language that had changed little for 
centuries. The German people, particularly in the German heartland, had lived 
in relative linguistic and cultural isolation from other languages and 
peoples. As a result, most of the linguistic changes were more dialectal than 
linguistic. I had a chance to read a 700 year old manuscript (on vellum, well 
preserved and pretty) and, once I recognized the dialectal forms, found that 
I could understand most of it. That is not the case with Chaucer, and even 
the King James translation shows more linguistic variation. And now, with 
English being the new lingua franca and electronic communication bringing it 
into homes throughout the world; English lexemes are entering all but the 
most isolated lan
guages (I hear Chinese on the street and on the radio, interlaced with 
English words and phrases, then listen to German and hear the same, as well 
as French) and English is not unaffected by this. Therefore, when I look at 
Tanakh, most of which was written between the Exodus and Galut Babel (a 
period of roughly 800 years) when the people lived largely in linguistic and 
cultural isolation, is it wrong to expect little to no linguistic change 
during that period?
> 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.

Of that I had no idea. However, the full term in American English is 
“taxicab” which can be shortened two ways—“taxi” and “cab”.
> 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.

In this we ought to be careful. The stated reason for a name may not be what 
the name actually means. For example, Samuel comes from the root $YM (sin yod 
mem) while his mother commented that God had heard her prayer. At the time 
the events happened, the shin and sin were the same letter, and the concept 
that God placed him [ $MW and )L ]  because God heard her prayer fits the 
context.
> >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.

Few of the lexemes that I mention are used in parallelisms in Hebrew poetry. 
Most of the synonyms that I compare are from those where I noticed a 
similarity of meaning. There are many times that I spent hours contrasting 
the usages of one synonym with another, often where neither was used in 
poetry.
> >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 is precisely Aristotelean categories that I recognize as being 
pre-scientific.

While my major back in college was languages, I studied an inordinant number 
of science courses: calculus, organic chemistry, genetics among several other 
upper level undergraduate science courses. What I noticed is that the 
scientific method, at least that connected with biology (excepting 
evolution), chemestry and other “hard” sciences, was based on function more 
than form, action than state. For example, while the ancients developed 
algebra and geometre, tools sufficient to measure a static universe, the 
Calculus was developed to encompass action within a mathematical formula. 
It’s not a coincidence that modern science had its birth in northern Europe 
after the Reformation: it was Luther who introduced a thought method that 
looked at an active, not static universe, to be analysed through function, 
not form (making Luther the grandfather of modern science). Supposedly, that 
thought method was based on a rejection of Aristotelean categories and a 
utilization of thought patte
rns drawn from Tanakh.

Similarly, when I analyse a Hebrew lexeme, my first thought is: what action 
is implicit in this lexeme, what is its function? (Yes, in more than one way 
I am a student of the Reformation.)

So which is the correct way to understand Biblical Hebrew? Through 
Aristotelean categories based on form, or Reformation understanding based on 
function?
> >
> >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

Is it possible to write a dictionary without using one’s own categories? If 
not, which are the best to use?

Karl W. Randolph.
--
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