Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 23/11/2005 12:12, Rolf Furuli wrote:

> ...
> You are of course right. Peter´s claim about a different future meaning of 
> (WLM is idiosyncratic and has nothing to do with the science of lexical 
> semantics. ...

This is nonsense.

> ... That a word, even one refering to
> time, should have a different lexical meaning in a future contexts  in
> contrast with past contexts  is something I have never seen that anybody
> has claimed. ...

But it is certainly a commonplace of lexical semantics that words can 
have different meanings in different contexts. Why should this not be 
possible where those contexts are past and future reference? Here we are 
not talking just about different tenses, but about different contextual 
uses of `olam, as me`olam meaning "since X" in the past and le`olam or 
`ad `olam meaning "until Y" in the future. It is immediately clear that 
X and Y cannot refer to the same moment in time, and so the meanings 
must be subtly different.

An alternative explanation is that me`olam, which is used in all or 
almost all of those past examples, has acquired an idiomatic meaning 
different from the sum of its component morphemes, which is quite common 
with these Hebrew adverbs which were originally preposition + noun.

> ... But Peter has developed a personal view of lexical meaning of 
> words
> based on his training as a Bible translator, and he rejects the basic
> psycholinguistic concepts that are fundamental for the study of applied
> linguistics (non-Biblical translation), at least in Oslo.
>  

Do what you like in Oslo, but the lexical and translation principles I 
work with are used worldwide and are by no means only my personal ones.

> Literal translation has been criticised because one English word choosen for
> a Hebrew word can have unwanted connotations. The same can be true with
> idiomatic translations as well, and the English word "eternal" is such an
> example, because the modern concept signaled by this word evidently is
> different from the concept of (WLM.  I bring a quote from one who has
> written a dissertation dealing with the view of time in the ancient world: R 
> Boman (1970) "Hebrew
> Thought Compared with Greek", pp. 151, 152:
>
> "The commonest word for boundless time is ´olam; according to the most
> widespread and likeliest explanation the word is derived from ´alam meaning
> "hide; conceal".  In the term ´olam is contained a designation of time
> extending so far that it is lost to our sight and comprehension in darkness
> and invisibility.  It is characteristic of the nature of this term that it
> can be used of hoary antiquity as well as of the unbounded future, thus,
> ´olam is not an endlessly long time but simply a boundless time... Although 
> in
> the Old Testament ´olam always means time which is boundless in certain
> respect, nothing is said therein of the objective duration of astronomical
> time; it is always the concern of exegesis to ask in each case how far the
> author´s gaze pursued time."
>  

Thank you for this. This confirms more or less what I was saying, that 
the time referred to by `olam is extended beyond our understanding, if 
not necessarily endless. But Boman clearly rejects the idea which people 
like Karl and Solomon have expressed, and which seems to be the sense of 
NWT, that this time is simply of unknown duration i.e. it could be only 
five minutes.

> ...
>
> A claim that (WLM with future reference can *only* refer to unending time in 
> the astronomical sense of the word cannot be proved; ...

No one has made this claim. It is clearly not true of some references 
e.g. those I listed earlier which are merely life-long.

> ... because of problem of 
> induction, even a reading of all old extant Hebrew texts will not give such 
> a proof. And if such a claim is not made, why should the modern word 
> "eternal" be used to render (WLM?
>
>  
Because it is the clear meaning in context of *some*, perhaps even 
*many*, occurrences of `olam in the Hebrew Bible.

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