Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

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.

HH: Well, were there some tremendous medical and scientific 
discoveries between the time of Leviticus and the authorship of 
Hebrews that would have changed the way human beings then thought 
about conception? We're dealing with a basic law of life, about which 
the ancients knew basic facts. Why give some unrealistic and obscure 
meaning to the Hiphil of ZR( in Lev 12:2 when there is a natural, 
true-to-life meaning readily available from life itself?

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard