Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Noam: 
 
Ever since I was young I was told that Job was difficult to read, but 
since I started reading it without points, it strangely seems easier. 
In fact, it is easier than some of the other books, with an occasional 
verse that takes some thinking. I find that I can read most of it 
without problems, or even looking up lexemes in a lexicon. 
 
But that is after realizing that poetry is more difficult to read than 
prose, as a matter of rule. 
 
I find that the Hebrew of Job is pretty standard Hebrew for poetry. 
 
Karl W. Randolph. 
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Noam Eitan" <neitian AT nyc.rr.com> 
 
 
----- Original Message -----  
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org> 
> I see a variety of misunderstandings here, of which the most 
significant 
> may be the assumption that the book of Job as we have it has an 
> Israelite source or is even in Hebrew. Its language is certainly very 
> strange by the regular standards of biblical Hebrew, and may well 
have 
> been more strange before being tidied up by later copyists. 
 
This can be generalized to the entire OT - written and edited (by some 
estimates) over more than a millennium, it is hardly written in one 
language 
(Aramaic aside.) I have been able to decipher the few Ugaritic lines 
that I 
was exposed to with a slightly better success rate (less than half) 
than 
much of the poetry part of Job (about a third.) This, in a collection 
of 
writings that contains large sections (admittedly prose) that an 
average 9 
year old Israeli kid can get through and get the plot.  Noam Eitan, 
Brooklyn, NY 
 
-- 
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