Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 7/9/06, James Christian Read wrote:

> Yitzhak:
> The thing that you seem to be overlooking is that your
> translation adds a "the" that is not present in the Hebrew
> text.  This would be equivalent to you writing in English,
> "The earth was formless and void and darkness was over
> the surface of Deep."  Or "Abyss," or "Ocean."  It is used
> as a proper name.  The use of this specific word, as a
> proper name like this, at this place of the Creation story,
> just appears to be too coincidental.
> END QUOTE
>
> JCR: The reason we have to add the word 'the' in English
> translation is really quite simple. The fact is, we
> don't have a concept of 'Ocean', 'Sea', 'Abyss' or
> 'Deep' which can be used as a proper name as these
> are generic concepts and there can be many of each
> one.

I think I confused you a bit.  Hebrew doesn't have generic
names like that either.  Why do you think Hebrew does?
If it was my paragraph above that led you to think so, that
was not the intent.  It was more to suggest to you how it
works out.  Compare for example the god Uranus, a god
of the sky, which means in Greek, literally, "Heavens."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=uranus

If you're not confused, and this is simply your position,
then could you provide evidence for the existence of such
generic concepts that figure as proper names, but which
cannot be tied to a foreign deity?

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com