Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Vadim,

> With this attitude, how can you disagree with Rolf?

HH: It's not an attitude. It's an awareness of the subtlety of 
meanings that words carry and a need to reflect these accurately in 
translation.

>  He is saying essentially
the same thing: that there are waw's, which do not reverse the tense.

HH: I'm talking about MiN. He's talking about waw and the imperfect. 
Let's not confuse things. It's not the same issue. Rolf's issue has 
to do with the development of the verb historically and whether what 
we see in the text actually reflects two different verbal 
developments which now exhibit the same form. It is a detailed matter 
involving the use of verbs in Ugaritic and elsewhere, it is found in 
the grammars under treatment of the imperfect verb, and it is not 
closely related to what I am talking about.

HH: What I'm talking about is that prepositions developed numerous 
functions in the Hebrew language. Even if all those functions could 
be attributed to a single lexeme in Hebrew, when a transfer of the 
functions is made into English, a single lexeme does not suffice to 
express them all accurately. You are not a native English speaker, 
but I assume the same would be the case with the Slavic languages.

> At least, you may agree that my translation is statistically more probable
> than yours, since it relies on the much more common meaning. And I would
> agree that your translation better conforms to the Christian doctrine.

HH: It has little or nothing to do with the Christian doctrine. 
Translation of Hebrew prepositions does not proceed on the basis of 
favoring a particular rendering. It proceeds by finding the word that 
best expresses the idea conveyed by the Hebrew word. So if the word 
that does that best is "by," then that is fine. As I have said 
before, the lexicon shows many places where immediate or efficient 
cause is the idea of MiN.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard