Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Peter wrote:

> 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.

If you think that's what I was saying you should look back at the archives
and re-read my posts. Several participants have run down the current
system of peer-reviewed journals, calling them things like ``incestuous''.
Such criticisms are just hot air. The shear volume of research output
requires some mechanism to sift the wheat from the chaff. In Karl's
case he has said that he had a chance to do a Ph.D. but is glad that
he didn't. He doesn't appear to work at any place which supports
research into the Hebrew language. Those are the choices he made,
there are consequences which flow from those choices, one of which is
that he will find it very difficult to get published. The current
system can not be accused of being flawed because of people's personal
choices about how they live their lives. I'm not saying the system
is perfect, it's not, but I haven't heard any workable suggestions for
improvement. It's easy to point the finger and say the system is broken,
very difficult to find a better way.

In reference to Gen 24:63 Peter wrote:-

>
> I don't think this is a good example.

Okay, I'll take your word on that one. What I was looking for is
something like:-

I went to town and while I was there I juluxipofeld then I came
home.

You can't determine from the context the meaning of juluxipofeld.
The remaining parts of the sentence can all be analysed -- which
are verbs, which nouns, subject, object, tenses, dictionary meanings
can be looked up and so on. But all that is no help in determining the
meaning of juluxipofeld. About the best we can do it guess that it is
a verb in the past tense. Don't ask me what it means I don't know
either! :-) What we need is some prior knowledge of the meaning of
juluxipofeld such as a native speaker would have, or a dictionary.
If we had a dictionary with several definitions to choose from
then we could probably work out what it means in that context.

If you know of a better example I'd be interested in looking at it.

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