Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hey all, 

On Apr 25, 2005, at 8:09 PM, Steve Miller wrote: 

>The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, by Abegg, Flint & Ulrich says on page 519 
>regarding Ps 22:16: 'Among the scrolls the reading in question is found
>only 
>in the Psalms scroll found at Nahal Hever (abbreviated 5/6HevPs), which 
>reads "They have pierced my hands and my feet"!' 
>
>
Again, just to be precise: 5/6HevPs does not, and cannot, read "they have
pierced my hands and my feet," because it is not written in English.
According to the photograph, it reads כארו = K)RW. But to make the next jump
to saying that it reads "they pierced" obscures a several-step process that
requires at least the following steps, if not more: 

(1) establishing that this word כארו is in fact an instance of a verb
spelled כרה/KRH and not some other word; 
  
(2) explaining the intrusive 'aleph--which is probably a simple explanation,
but it is a departure from the normal spelling of כרה/KRH, which is a
necessary step to accomplishing #1; 

(3) given the success of ##1-2, that this כרה/KRH is an instance of KRH I
"to dig" rather than another verb spelled identically; 

(4) given the success of ##1-3, justifying the translation of KRH I as "to
pierce," which in my mind is very difficult to do. 

I do apologize if this post is overly pedantic. However, since the issue in
interpreting Psalm 22:16 is not just figuring out whether we have here a
preposition + noun or a verb, but also determining, if it is a verb, what
verb it is and what semantic range that verb occupies, to say that a Hebrew
manuscript "reads X," where X is a string of English words, short-circuits
the interpretive process. 

Chris H. 
-- 
R. Christopher Heard 
Assistant Professor of Religion 
Pepperdine University 
Malibu, California 90263-4352 
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard 
http://www.iTanakh.org 
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info