Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David P Donnelly <davedonnelly1 AT juno.com>]

Gene Gardner posts information from the Catholic Encyclopedia,
which says: 

>>>
Clement of Alexandria ("Strom.", V, 6, in P.G., IX, col. 60), Jaou; 
>>>

I find it interesting that the Catholic Church, 
which teaches that God's name is "Yahweh",
quotes Clement of Alexandria as using the spelling "Jaou" [i.e. Iaou]
(in Stromata Book V. in Migne's P.G. col 60).

Clement of Alexandria is a canonized Roman Catholic saint,
yet they don't quote him as writing "Iaoue" in Stromata Book V. Chapter
6:34.

The Catholic Church appears to base its belief that God's name is
"Yahweh" 
on the Samaritan name "Jabe" alone. 

To be redundant, the Catholic Church ignored the writings of Clement of
Alexandria,
who is a canonized Roman Catholic saint,
when they teach that God's name is "Yahweh".

Dave Donnelly 
>From peterkirk AT qaya.org  Wed Aug 10 06:39:53 2005
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] tenses; frequency
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On 10/08/2005 06:39, Rolf Furuli wrote:

>Dear Peter
>
>A very good example of my claim that when you start with four (presume 
>four), you end up
>with four, is the study of W. Th van Peursen (2004) "The Verbal system of 
>the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira".  On p. 7 he writes:
>
>In the French edition Joüon had already indicated the importance of viewing 
>the Hebrew conjugations together as a system. This means that 'the value of 
>a verbal form is brought out by its contrast with the other forms. In 
>Hebrew, as in any other language, verbal forms limit each other 
>reciprocally'. 
>Once we have acknowledged that the conjugations, like any other element of 
>the language, are interrelated terms of a system, we should not search for 
>the meaning of, for example, the perfect, but ask ourselves what in a given 
>context where we find a perf. the meaning of the impf. or the ptcp. would 
>be. (Italics his.)
>
>
>The words above close the case: There are four conjugations! ...
>

Sorry, but I don't see it. Instead there is a very reasonable assumption 
that different forms are likely to have different meanings. In fact he 
doesn't even say this, because he doesn't rule out that two forms will 
be discovered to be synonymous. He mentions only what we would call 
QATAL, YIQTOL and the participle, and I think we all agree that these 
are semantically distinct. There is no mention here of prefixed vav 
changing the meaning.

>... Particularly was I sceptical to the claim that an element which 
>seemed to be the conjunction WAW could turn the meaning of a verb form to 
>the very opposite, because a parallel to this is lacking in any other 
>language, including the Semitic ones.
>  
>

I understand that you would want to examine such a claim critically; on 
the other hand, in natural sciences very many things which seem much 
odder than this turn out to be true. In fact other Semitic languages do 
in a roundabout way support the idea that WAYYIQTOL is semantically very 
different from YIQTOL, because they indicate that the shortened form of 
YIQTOL, which is the basis of WAYYIQTOL in the great majority of cases 
in which the distinction survives, is an originally distinct verb form 
from the regular long YIQTOL, although the two came to coincide in form 
in most verbs in Hebrew. Thus we would expect WAYYIQTOL (short) to be 
semantically quite different from YIQTOL (long).

>The mentioned scepticism was one reason why I started the work with the 
>dissertation, and the working hypothesis was that the traditional view is 
>wrong. However, to have a working hypothesis does not close the case. To the 
>contrary, a working hypothesis should be modified or even changed on the 
>basis of data. ...
>

The problem here comes when the data is insufficient to decide between 
the working hypothesis and another hypothesis, which for the sake of 
argument can be the four or five verb form system. Am I right in 
understanding that you started with a working hypothesis, analysed a lot 
of data, found nothing to disprove your working hypothesis, and so 
concluded that your working hypothesis is correct? Unfortunately this 
method is logically incorrect. For it is equally possible that I might 
start with a different working hypothesis, analyse the same data, and 
find nothing to contradict my working hypothesis. So we have no way of 
choosing between the two hypotheses, and can conclude only that, unless 
more data or new methods of analysis can be found, it is not possible to 
decide which of these two hypotheses is correct.

Your method sounds rather like the method of induction for which you 
rightly criticised Vadim yesterday. You start with a working hypothesis 
that all swans are white. You then examine a limited corpus of data and 
find nothing to contradict that hypothesis, and then proclaim that it is 
proved, and that my alternative hypothesis that swans may be either 
black or white is disproved. Well, the difference is that you claim to 
have examined all of the verb forms in a corpus. But a corpus is not the 
whole of a language, it is simply a large body of sample data. And in 
fact the more serious problem with using a corpus from a dead language 
is that you have no way to determine which alternative sentences would 
in fact be ungrammatical or have a distinct meaning. That is, you have 
no access to native speaker insight. I would suggest that because of 
this your method is incapable in principle of distinguishing real 
semantic distinctions from pragmatic ones, and so incapable in principle 
of falsifying your working hypothesis.

In other words, my suggestion is that you started with a working 
hypothesis, tested against a body of data which although large is in 
principle incapable of falsifying your hypothesis, failed, of course, to 
falsify your hypothesis, and then claimed that your hypothesis had been 
proved. Do you have an answer to this suggestion?

...

>Any researcher will be influenced by his or her beliefs, philosophy, and 
>biases,  A balanced scholar tries to curtail these as much as possible, but 
>objective research is non-existent. However, to be sceptical to traditional 
>explanations and to use a working hypothesis indicating that they probably 
>are wrong does not close the case in favor of two conjugations. This is so 
>because the existence of just two conjugations are not used as an axiom.
>
>  
>
Fair enough. I accept that your working hypothesis has not been 
disproved either, and so that no one should assume that it is incorrect. 
But I think you might have done better to work from the traditional 
model as a working hypothesis, as then you could have attempted to 
falsify that. I think you would have failed, not because the traditional 
model is correct but because your method is incapable of falsification.

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