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  • From: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 25:25, Different Lexemes & No Puns?
  • Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 11:46:22 -0700

Karl,

You seem to have an idiosyncratic, or at least non-standard, definition of what a "pun" is. According to my English dictionary nearest to hand, a pun is "a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound alike but have different meanings." An example given is "the pigs were a squeal," which is a pun because in English "a squeal" can refer both to a sound pigs make and to a delightful experience.

Thus when the narrator of Genesis uses אדם )DM in Gen 25, exploiting the different possible senses of the word as the color red, the name for a stew, a nickname for Esau, and the name of the people/nation of Edom, that certainly qualifies as "punning" in the sense defined above (which is not "what I think of," but what my dictionary reports as the commonly accepted usage).

Chris

On Sep 16, 2005, at 9:26 AM, Karl Randolph wrote:

Jack:

Either your definition of a pun is different than mine, or the
examples you give below are not puns.

When I think of puns, I think of examples like when we as
kids played name the state capitals game: after a few months
we all could name the state, then immediately give the capital,
so to keep interest we started referring to "Home of the gods"
(Olympia, Washington), "Famous missionary" (St. Paul,
Minnesota) and among those were puns "Metropolis
underneath automobiles" (Cars On City (Carson City), Nevada)
and "Completely rabbit" (All Bunny (Albany), New York). Merely
calling a person's descendants and/or place after his nickname
does not fit my understanding of "pun", certainly not in English
nor in Biblical Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: tladatsi AT charter.net


Not the same lexeme?

The OT is quite clear that the nation of ?DM is supposed to
be named after Esau s nickname ?DM (Gen 36:1 and 36:8).
For this to be true, the two words would have to be the
exact same lexeme. Esau s nickname was given to him
because he asked his brother for a bowl of ?DM (Gen 25:30).
There seems no way to me for someone to be named after a
bowl of red stew and that name not being the same lexeme as
the red stew. Three of these words are unquestionable the
same lexeme, each being a link in a chain of thing being
named after each other, all of which are red. The only
questionable word is ?DMNY which is universally translated
in ancient times and modern as red, reddish, or ruddy
(e.g., LXX purrakhv, Vulg. rufus). The core concept of
redness and the clear link to a common grammatical root
makes a very strong case for these four words being the
same lexeme. (Some might argue that the name of the nation
Edom really is derived from the color of the countryside.
Most of the Trans-Jordanian country is the color of the
infield of baseball field, the red color of brick. It is an
iron oxide thing. However that is neither here nor there).

Not a pun?

Esau is born ?DMNY and in turn give birth to a nation
called ?DM. Esau asked Jacob / Israel for ?DM and
received it in exchange for his birthright. Thus his
descendants received from him the country called ?DM
(instead of the land of Canaan which Israel received)
because Esau asked for ?DM from Israel Of course, the
older nation of Edom was conquered by the younger nation of
Israel as the older brother Esau / Edom lost his birthright
to the younger brother Jacob / Israel.

Puns with political punch proliferate profusely.

These are not the only puns in Ex. 25, although the only
one which is based on a single lexeme. Esau is also born
S?R, hairy. His descendents lived in the land of S?YR.
These are clearly not the same lexeme but a phonetically
based pun.


Jack Tladatsi


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--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Seaver Fellow in Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
Professional Web Page: http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
Internet Resource Index: http://www.iTanakh.org
Personal Web Page: http://www.heardworld.com





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