Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 11/09/2005 22:42, Bill Rea wrote:

> Karl wrote:-
>
>  
>
> > While I'm consistent in claiming that each
> > word within its linguistic semantic domain
> > has one meaning,
> >    
>
> I'm curious how your theory handles situations where
> the writer is deliberately creating double-meanings,
> ambiguities, and puns. We discussed one very recently
> about David and Uriah where a list member quoted Sternberg
> to suggested the writer of the text was intentionally
> creating a story where it is possible to understand it
> with Uriah knowing David had gotten his wife pregnant
> and also with Uriah not knowing of David's wrong doing.
> Here the ambiguity is result of good writing not sloppiness.
>  

Bill, I would dispute your hypothesis that the biblical authors 
deliberately wrote ambiguously, except perhaps in a few rather special 
places. See 
http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2005/09/did-biblical-authors-write-ambiguously.html, 
and its follow-up 
http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2005/09/what-is-ambiguity.html.

I accept that there may be some kind of ambiguity in the Uriah case, but 
not the ambiguity you have in mind but rather the ambiguity of innuendo: 
"Go and 'wash your feet' - wink,wink". Of course we are not told 
explicitly whether Uriah knew what was happening or not, but that is not 
ambiguity at the linguistic level, although perhaps dramatic tension, 
and so has no relevance to word meanings.

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



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.21/96 - Release Date: 10/09/2005