Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Karl wrote:-

>Your reaction is like the common, majority belief, medieval claim that
>the world is flat, even though writers since Ptolomy (if not earlier)
>showed evidence that the world is roughly spherical. Truth is not decided
>by popular vote, nor even by scholarly consensus.

Gee, thanks for the compliment - NOT!

While you claim ``Truth is not decided by popular vote, nor even by
scholarly consensus'' in reality, in many cases, we cannot distinquish
been accepted truth and absolute truth except from some priviledged
vantage point in the future. The reason we can see problems with
past beleifs is that we occupy that priviledged position. For our
own time we do not.  Against Occam's razor one must put Einstein's razor
which states ``All things should be made as simple as possible but no
simpler.''

You claim your method is:-

>The basic method is to study each lexeme in its contexts to get an idea
>as to its meaning.

This is circular. You have to already know the potential range of
meanings a word can take before you can determine precisely how
it functions in a particular context. For example take Gen 24:63.
I don't have my Hebrew Bible at work so I can't transliterate the
Hebrew word, but I'm sure list members can find it.

Gen 24:63 Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening;

It is well known the word translated here as meditate has an unknown
meaning. We assume he's going something spiritual, but an assumption
is just something you believe without any evidence. There is a huge
range of things Isaac could have gone out into the field to do.
Every other word in that sentence is known and we can determine its
function very well. There is nothing else ambiguous about this sentence.
But even with the surrounding precision we can't determine the meaning
of the single word for which we don't already have a prior definition.
Context cannot function independantly of the lexicons in determining
meaning.

P.S. Thanks to Harold for your expanded explanation of washing of feet,
     David and Uriah and to Rob Barrett for bringing in Sternberg's
     insights.

Bill Rea, IT Services, University of Canterbury \_
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