Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>]

On 12/22/04 7:08 AM, "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com> wrote:

> Dear Chris,
> 
>> I cannot find any demonstrable instance in the Tanakh of zara( taking a
>> masculine noun or pronoun as its subject and meaning "to impregnate." Can
>> someone point me to attestations that I have overlooked?
> 
> HH: What follows is not the Tanakh, and the
> grammar of the passage is debated (the KJV
> thought that Sarah conceived seed), but the best
> interpretation of Heb 11:11 follows the path of
> the NIV:

Dear Harold, I can't see how Heb 11:11 illuminates the semantic range of ZR(
in the Torah. It may shed some light on 1st-century CE thinking about
insemination, but those concepts don't determine the semantics of ZR( in the
Torah. 

Chris

-- 
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Armstrong Fellow in Religion
Pepperdine University
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info