Biblical Hebrew Forum

[kwrandolph AT email.com]

Peter:

This “intended to make sense” is exactly the reason I question the Masoritic 
points at times. While most sentences in Tanakh are simple and make sense, 
the difficult ones often become simple when one removes the points, then look 
for the possibilities. Often the verses preceding and following indicate 
which of the possibilities to choose based on continuation of an idea. Often 
I find that one possibility gives a simple reading and any other possibility 
leaves us with mental gymnastics to try to make every word fit.

I don’t know exactly how this relates to Relevance Theory, other than making 
the text make sense may affect the relevance of individual verses.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>

> 
> The axiom is basically that the text is intended to make sense, to 
> communicate a message, at least to its target audience, in other words 
> that it is not a random collection of words. If we abandon this axiom we 
> may as well abandon any attempt to understand the text, because it is 
> meaningless.
> 
>…
> 
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
-- 
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