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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE:earlier dictionaries? was [b-hebrew] Offend/dealt corruptly - chet bet lamed (nehemiah 1:7)
  • Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 17:18:31 -0500

Dear Karl,

Your work may have many helpful, innovative qualities, such as comparing synonyms. But your thinking about XBL strikes me as immature so far. I just spent nearly a year doing five hundred OT word studies. I know that these lexicons do not necessarily borrow from one another. There are treasures of independent work and many resources available now. When you go off on your own, ignoring the results of everyone else with XBL, perhaps underestimating homonyms and polysemy, and apparently paying little attention to cognate studies, I have no real grounds for confidence. In _The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew_, for example, XBL with the meaning of "act corruptly" has over a column of references, including post-biblical ones. If you don't somehow include that meaning, you strike me as a person who is not thinking correctly. If DCH were alone, there would be more wiggle room, but DCH has findings that match those of HAL, TDOT, TWOT, NIDOTTE, BDB, and Accordance. Who wants to consult a reference work that gives only part of the story? I would seriously reconsider what you're doing with XBL and other such entries.

Certainly, lexicons are liable to error. Our knowledge grows. We make individual and collective errors and false assumptions. But lexicons are also a storehouse of the collected knowledge of humanity with regard to ancient words. You talk about "earlier lexicographers," but many of the reference tools are recent. With XBL, you are not only ignoring the lexicons but also the translations and commentaries.

I don't know what you do with XBL in the following verses, but NIV may not agree with you:

Is. 13:5 They come from faraway lands, from the ends of the heavens - the LORD and the weapons of his wrath - to destroy the whole country.
Is. 32:7 The scoundrel's methods are wicked, he makes up evil schemes to destroy the poor with lies, even when the plea of the needy is just.
Is. 54:16 "See, it is I who created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges a weapon fit for its work. And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc;
Mic. 2:10 Get up, go away! For this is not your resting place, because it is defiled, it is ruined, beyond all remedy.
Job 17:1 ¶ My spirit is broken, my days are cut short, the grave awaits me.
Job 34:31 "Suppose a man says to God, 'I am guilty but will offend no more.
Song 2:15 Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.
Eccl. 5:6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the [temple] messenger, "My vow was a mistake." Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?
Neh. 1:7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

HH: And XBL seems to mean "destroy" in Aramaic as well:

Dan. 2:44 ¶ "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.
Dan. 4:23 ¶ "You, O king, saw a messenger, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, 'Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump, bound with iron and bronze, in the grass of the field, while its roots remain in the ground. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven; let him live like the wild animals, until seven times pass by for him.'
Dan. 6:22 My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king."
Dan. 6:26 ¶ "I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. "For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end.
Dan. 7:14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
Ezra 6:12 May God, who has caused his Name to dwell there, overthrow any king or people who lifts a hand to change this decree or to destroy this temple in Jerusalem. ¶ I Darius have decreed it. Let it be carried out with diligence.

HH: What do you do with all these verses?

Yours,
Harold Holmyard

Are earlier lexicographers inspired in the theological sense, that they never made any mistakes? Yet, when I look at the dictionary that I wrote, only a tiny minority of the entries have different meanings than given by earlier lexicographers (who sometimes disagreed). The big change I made was to compare lexemes with their synonyms where they could be recognized.

Secondly, I have a different philosophy of lexicography, especially when it applies to Biblical Hebrew: that the lexeme’s meaning, hence its definition, is to be recognized by the action it refers to, only secondarily by the form that it takes. Even so, most of my entries have the same or similar meanings as in earlier lexica.

Thirdly, whereever possible, I look for a unifying meaning that ties all uses of a lexeme together: root and derivitives. That is not always possible. After all, a word may have changed such that it looks as if it came from one root, when it actually came from another. Or a word could originally have been a loan word with a pronunciation that makes it appear that it is related to one root, when it isn’t. To try to find a unified meaning, I go through each occurance of a word in Tanakh asking if, in each context, does it give a semantically recognizeable and consistant meaning where all uses share the same root definition.

Where there are synonyms, I tried to find where they differ in meaning. Not always easy.

One problem is the small corpus we have written in Biblical Hebrew with its large number of hapax legomai words, idioms and phrases.

One of the few words where I differ from earlier dictionaries is in the meaning of XBL, where I see no need for a definition including to offend or deal corruptly. It has many derivitive meanings, but they all go back to a root meaning referring to knotting up or tying up. For example, giving birth comes from the idea of labor pangs, which are the contractions (knotting up) of the muscles. Sailors have a reputation going back to ancient times for their skill with knots. A loan is something that one is tied to, even though this is not a physical knot. And so forth.

I looked at earlier dictionaries, I just don’t agree with them all the time.
From david.kimbrough AT charter.net Tue Jun 22 18:30:23 2004
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I believe you contrasting Hebrew nouns with English nouns.

1) As some else already pointed out, it is probably more correct to say that
Hebrew nouns and verbs (I suppose adjatives as well) are both *derived* from
roots, combinations of three (or occationally two) consenents. By adding
different vowels between the consenents, prefixes, and suffixes, you get
different nouns, verbs, adjetives, etc.

2) Many English nouns are also derived from verbs. The noun driver from the
verb *to drive*.

3) *English* words are also poor in abstractions, at least those that of
Anglo-Saxon origin. Concrete words in English have a strong tendency to be of
Anglo-Saxon origins while abstract words have a strong tendency to be of
forign (French, Latin, or Greek) origin. *King* (an English word) is fairly
concrete. *Royalty* or *Sovereign* (French words) are abstractions. *Money*
(another english word) is concrete while *currency* (an abstraction) is again
French.

Old English and BH are much poorer in abstract words than Modern English,
mainly due to the period in history in which these languages existed required
fewer abstract words.

Any way, that is my take.

*****************************************************

Well in response to what was written below it is one of the most fundemental
realisations that there are basically three classes of nouns: Primitive
(10%), nouns derived from nouns(30%) nouns derived from verbs (70%)?

As for the abstract/concrete mindset -- Why do think that this is outdated?
I am curious.


David Kimbrough
San Gabriel





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