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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Ambiguities, doubling meanings and puns

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ambiguities, doubling meanings and puns
  • Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 00:35:42 +0100

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/



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