Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> >Then, again, there are many Russian - including Old Russian - words and
> >idioms subtly based on Hebrew. Much of Russian prisoners' slang is
> >straightforward Hebrew.
>
> Yes, of course. But I think that in the present context, it is
> important to distinguish these borrowings by the time element. For
example:
>
> can you find anywhere in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky a typical (modern)
> Russian expression such as xoxme (hohma, or khokhma)?

If you open Steinberg's dictionary (the best, in my opinion), he traces many
Russian - old Russian - words to Hebrew.
I don't say that Hebrew necessarily had idioms present in Russian and modern
Hebrew. But literal reading of Ex3:14 is meaningless, and context makes such
idiom, palliative refusal, plausible.
This is what I argued about with Rolf: we should resort to context when, and
only when, we can't make heads or tails of literal translation.

Vadim Cherny