Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:
If the vocabulary is restricted, it is surely only because the subject 
matter is restricted. For eaxmple, there is no recorded word for "cat", 
but that is not because this word was somehow excluded from a restricted 
subset of Hebrew which biblical authors were permitted to use, it was 
simply because none of the biblical authors happened to need to refer to 
cats. If they had needed to refer to them, or to any other features of 
daily life which don't happen to be recorded in the Bible, they would 
surely have used the appropriate commonly used words."...

 Yes, and we have extra-biblical, arachaeological evidence of words that were 
in use and never appeared in BH texts.

  What comes to mind is the the term NS(.)P for a unit of weight. This is 
very familiar from the Arabic where it simply means "half", but in the 
excavated notated example  it is a larger fraction of the Shekel.

Uri



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----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>
> My favorite example: there is no word in the Bible for "tickle"!
>
> Ken Penner
> McMaster/Hebrew
>

More significantly, there's no biblical word for "bronze", which was the
most commonly used metal at the time. "Nexo$et" litterally means "copper".
Bronze is a copper alloy - but they aparently did not have a separate word
for it.

There are also lots of prominant places, in or near Israel, that were
settled during the Iron Age and are not mentioned in the Bible. For example,
the very important coastal city of Akko (Acre). And Rehob, south of
Beth-shean, which recent excavations have shown to be a major Israelite
urban centre (although two OTHER places of the same name are menioned in
passing). We don't know the ancient name for Tell Beit Mirsim in southern
Judah of the Yarmuk river in Transjordan. There are also important events
that we know know of that are not mentioned in the Bible, such as the battle
of Karkar in 853, in which King Ahab was a major player.

All this just reinforces our understanding, that the Bible is NOT a work of
history or geography. The Bible was written for a purpose and with a message
in mind, and whatever was not needed, is not mentioned.

Yigal