Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Karl,

> Let's go back to your example of bear: in 
> Norwegian å bære means to carry. As far as I 
> know, it has only that meaning (Rolf can correct 
> me on this). Just because the English has two 
> roots corresponding to the same lexeme is 
> immaterial to Norwegian, especially since a 
> bjørn corresponds to the second English root. 
> Norwegians studying English can speculate if the 
> English word bear originally had one root that 
> later became almost unrecognizable as it split 
> apart in meaning, or if two roots merged into 
> the same pronunciation and spelling, as history 
> shows was the case.
>
> As for the Hebrew use of XBL 
> חבל within Tanakh, I see only 
> one root expressed. In Aramaic the same spelling 
> but a different root. In Arabic, two roots, one 
> corresponding to Hebrew, the other Aramaic. In 
> Mishnaic and later Hebrew (from discussions on 
> this list) apparently use the Aramaic term as a 
> loan word, in the same way as Esther 2:1 uses 
> GZR with the Aramaic meaning instead of the 
> Hebrew meaning.
>
> Were both roots in proto-Semitic? If not, which 
> was the original root? The earliest writings we 
> have show Aramaic with one root, Hebrew with 
> another, and later Arabic had both.

HH: The problem with all this is that most 
scholars disagree with you about XBL in Hebrew. 
It seems almost unanimous. And the way you handle 
verses with XBL at issue seems forced and 
unconvincing to me.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard