Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Bill:

In view of discussions on publishing in peer review journals, 
yesterday Slashdot linked to a story that a majority of 
scientific papers are wrong. Here's the New Scientist review 
of the paper http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7915 
and the paper itself 
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10%2E1371%2Fjournal%2Epmed%2E0020124
 

Further, you take as an example of Genesus 24:63, where 
there is a word that is listed as a happax legomai, where 
its context is not clear as to its meaning, and try to use 
that as an argument against finding word meanins in a 
language by studying how they are used in context. But I 
have already dealt with the question of such words in a 
dead language with no native speakers to question: we have 
no other option than to look at how people translated the 
term in the past and to look at cognate languages, and then 
to admit that the meaning is unclear. It's hubris to claim 
that we can find out exactly what such words mean.

The word in question is %WX. (Is is possible that that is 
the Qal of %YX? Further evidence is that the Pilel form is 
%WXX. At least some of the translations seem to point that 
way.)

A better example would be TW$YH, where I found unclear 
thinking on its meaning. At 
http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html it was given the number  
8454 with the meanings of "from an unused root probably 
meaning to substantiate; support or (by implication) 
ability, i.e. (direct) help, (in purpose) an undertaking, 
(intellectual) understanding:--enterprise, that which 
(thing as it) is, substance, (sound) wisdom, working." In 
other dictionaries I found also "salvation" and "help" as 
possibilities. The word is used all of 12 times in Tanakh. 
In other words, with so many different meanings given, it 
is clear that it cannot have a new definition for almost 
every use, as that would make the term undefined. Finally, 
after studying all its occurances, making notes on 
parallelisms and contexts, looking at the actions involved, 
I came to the conclusion that it means "forethought, this 
is thinking ahead of time concerning concepts and ideas, 
considering options and making contingency plans where 
applicable (arranging of thoughts ?? from the root $WH ??)" 
a meaning that seems to fit all occurances of the noun. 
Notice I still include question marks, to indicate a 
certain amount of doubt. It would have been easier to pin 
down its definition had it been used more often.

Words used only a few times, especially five or fewer 
times, often do not occure in enough contexts where the 
context can tell what it means. So we have to look 
elsewhere. That's only common sense.

Karl W. Randolph

----- Original Message -----
From: "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 \_
> E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz               </   New
> Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax  64-3-364-2332       /)  Zealand
> Unix Systems Administrator                   (/'

-- 
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