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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Re: BH - one language? (was:Job & Sumer)

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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Re: BH - one language? (was:Job & Sumer)
  • Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 18:07:39 -0500

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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  • Re: [b-hebrew] Re: BH - one language? (was:Job & Sumer), Karl Randolph, 06/12/2004

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