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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 3:15 and order of ideas
  • Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:14:42 -0600

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





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