Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 25/12/2004 23:53, Jim West wrote:

> At 06:44 PM 12/25/2004, you wrote:
>
> > So I conclude that there is a real possibility that Ezekiel was at 
> > this point using RO)$ as the name of an area or an ethnic group, 
> > parallel to Meshech and Tubal, and that the modern name Russia is 
> > derived from this place name Rosh - and even that the modern Russians 
> > are at least in part descended from the people of the Rosh referred 
> > to by Ezekiel.
>
>
> rosh can also mean "spring, fountain". ...


Evidence, please? Don't tell me you are sure of the meaning of Genesis 2:10.

> ...  so if we adopt the logic peter exhibits we must conclude that 
> rosh is the hebrew word for springfield and hence the bible predicts 
> the settlement of a town in missouri.


No, surely the Springfield inhabited by the Simpsons, which is of course 
a factual account of modern life. :-)

Jim, please read what I wrote. You have changed "is a real possibility" 
into "is", and I explicitly avoided any suggestion that the Bible is 
predicting anything.

> of course this is a false etymology.  as is peter's.  similarity of 
> sound does not mean similarity.  in spanish the word embarasado does 
> not mean embarrassed- it means pregnant.  i can be embarrassed- but i 
> am biologically incapable of being pregnant- unless you adopt the 
> fallacy illuminated here- the etymological fallacy.
>
> beware the etymology fallacy.
Amen! Agreed! Preach it, brother!

But what I am suggesting as a possibility is not a case of the 
etymological fallacy. The historical study of toponyms is a quite 
different field from etymology. I did not suggest any meaning for the 
place name Rosh, except that I quoted a speculative Persian definition 
from an encyclopedia. My argument is from the continuity of place names 
and ethnic group names over millennia, something which is demonstrably true.

But all of my suggestions here are explicitly speculative. You wrote "no 
chance". George wrote "0.0 %". I have, for about the tenth time this 
week, called you to account for making dogmatic negative statements 
about something for which there is certainly no proof of the negative, 
although proof of the positive is also inadequate. Even if the 
probability of my speculation being right is only about 1%, which may be 
about right, your zero is still zero percent of my one percent. You were 
acting in an unscholarly way in dogmatically rejecting any possibility 
of a link to Russia, and you seemed to be doing so as a gut reaction. I 
wonder if this was because you knew of the Hal Lindsey link and were not 
prepared to consider the hypothesis because of prejudice against its 
source. This is not the proper scholarly method.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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