Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Rea" <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>

> 
> Karl wrote:-
> 
> > What I present now is a maturing of ideas I got, at least
> > in embroyonic form, while yet a teenager. At 19, Hebrew was
> > the fifth foreign language I studied and by that time I had
> > developed certain ideas as to how to learn foreign languages.
> > After learning basic grammar, start filling it in with
> > vocabulary.
> 
> Perhaps you ought to sit back and ask yourself why people find
> your ideas so unconvincing. I don't know your current age but
> if you've been advancing this idea of one lexeme having one
> meaning for most of your adult life, you have failed to convince
> most people, including me. I suggest the reason is that the
> evidence does not back your assertions. Often what you have
> advanced over the past several years appears to me to be very
> contorted logic to press words into your idea that they have
> only a single meaning. Occam's razor suggests words, or lexemes
> if you prefer, commonly have multiple meanings.
> 
Occam’s razor says that the simplest answer is usually the correct one, not 
that 
lexemes have multiple meanings. As it is, the simplest answer is that each 
word, 
or lexeme, has one meaning, hence Occam’s razor would favor my working 
hypothesis.

I have not advanced the theory before this recent discussion, merely used the 
results 
in previous discussions. It is interesting that when I reported the results 
in previous 
discussions, it was rare for anyone to question how I came to the results 
that I had. 
The questions were fewer than the fingers on one hand.

I think you are confusing use of a term within a language, verses how that 
same term 
may be translated into another language. Part of recognizing the definition 
of a word 
is to know in which contexts it is to be used. So a word can have one meaning 
that is 
consistant within a language, but because some of the contexts use a 
different term in 
a different language, a translator would use more than one term to translate 
the lexeme 
in the original language. Use of different terms in translation does not 
negate that each 
lexeme (with a few exceptions) has one meaning within its language.

> Quite recently you rejected RGLM as being a euphemism for
> genitals. Have a look at 2 Sam 11:8 in context. Sure you
> can say that this just means David wants Uriah to literally
> wash his feet. But it makes a lot more sense if means to have
> sex as in -- Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house,
> and [wink, wink, nudge, nudge] wash your feet."
> 
Again, one of my favorite commands, "Look at the context." Uriah had just 
spent 
time out in the field, just traveled from the encampment to Jerusalem, and 
was 
therefore dirty, sweaty, even stinky. By far the dirtiest part of him was his 
feet, 
shod only in sandals, exposed to the dust of the camp and road. So what David 
commanded was for Uriah to go home and wash up, to feel presentable. The 
modern equivalent would be "go home and take a shower". What David wanted 
was that Uriah would not stop at a shower, rather take advantage of some of 
the 
other comforts of his house, however, under the cercumstances, he couldn't 
_say_ 
that as that would raise suspicians in an area where David did not want 
suspicians 
to be raised. So he merely said that Uriah go home and wash up. The mistake 
that 
is being done here is to claim that the words expressed the hidden desires of 
David's heart whereas I understand that David purposely stopped short of 
expressing what he wanted Uriah to do so as to avoid raising suspician.

> Bill Rea, IT Services, University of Canterbury \_
> E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz               </   New
> Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax  64-3-364-2332       /)  Zealand
> Unix Systems Administrator                   (/'

Karl W. Randolph.

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