Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 31/08/2005 21:57, Bill Rea wrote:

> ...
>
> 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. ...

In many cases, I agree, but not in all cases. An obvious example is when 
a researcher makes a new discovery of some "truth"  which disagrees with 
the common consensus. To start with, the researcher knows that their new 
"truth" is true, but it is not the majority opinion. And this continues 
to be true for whatever time it takes for that new "truth" to be 
published and widely accepted.

For most scientific discoveries nowadays that time is now rather short, 
simply because for financial reasons most of them are made by teams 
within the recognised academic community - except I suppose for 
discoveries which are not published e.g. for security reasons. (The 
majority believed that British WWII pilots were effective because they 
ate carrots to improve their night vision - because the real reason, 
radar, was kept secret.)

But in subjects like language and history it is still possible for real 
discoveries to be made by lone researchers who can find it very 
difficult to publish their findings in respected journals - especially 
if the findings conflict with academic orthodoxy. And, although many 
such discoveries are spurious, some of them are genuine, and known to be 
genuine by the researcher and anyone they can personally persuade, but 
are still rejected or ignored by the academic community, at least for a 
long time.

I don't say this to support Karl's particular theories about XSD etc. 
But in principle he and others like him can make real discoveries. So we 
shouldn't answer him along the lines of "you can't possibly be right 
because lone researchers are never right and the academic establishment 
is never wrong". Instead we need to answer him with good arguments from 
the Hebrew - and if we can't find them, accept the possibility that he 
might be right.

> ...
>
> 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. ...
>  

I don't think this is a good example. The rendering "meditate" is based 
on a very plausible argument that LF&W.XA or LASUAH here is an 
infinitive construct form of the well known verb &YX "meditate". The vav 
where a yod might be expected may be a variant form, because these 
"hollow" verbs tend to vary between vav and yod "fillings", or it may be 
textual corruption. LXX ADOLESCHSAI may support this interpretation.

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



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