Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 7/9/06, JAMES CHRISTIAN READ wrote:

> JCR: You appear to have misunderstood me in some way.
> I'm not sure what you think I am saying but all I am
> saying is that it is impossible to use 'Ocean', 'Sea',
> 'Abyss' or 'Deep' as proper nouns in English because
> common English usage never uses them as such. The
> insertion of the word 'the' is therefore a necessary
> evil which makes the translation readable without
> instantly sounding bad. The most that your observation
> could prove is that hebrew had a concept with a proper
> name where English does not. I hope I have explained
> myself properly this time.

What is a "concept with a proper name"?  It seems you
invented this idea to harmonize this with the usage of a
proper name.  While the article is dropped in rare cases,
that doesn't mean it's any more possible to drop it in
English than in Hebrew.  For example, I can say:

Fate smiled brightly upon him.

It is clear from this phrase that the personifaction of Fate
which is clear from the words "smiled brightly" is taken
one step further by the dropping of "the" before Fate.  Fate
is the proper name of the concept of destiny in the above
phrase.  In fact, it is no longer just a "concept" but it is a
personified entity.  Whether you want to view personified
natural entities like that as dieties is your own issue,
although if you choose to draw a line between them, how
would you differentiate between a god and a personified
natural entity?  In any case, I used the word "Ocean" or
"Sea" not as a concept but as a name of a goddess.

And Dave Washburn wrote:
> So anywhere that a noun doesn't have the article, it must be used
> as a proper name?  In that case, maybe we'd better start translating
> 1:1 "When the god Reshit created the heavens and the earth."
> T:HOWM is no more a proper name here than XO$EK is.  English
> structure calls for inclusion of the article.  Hebrew did not.  Let's not
> read more into the difference than is actually there.

That's not what I said.  I said that the appearance of this specific word,
as a proper name, at this place, seems all too coincidental.  Your
claims about the word "reshit" constitute in fact one of the arguments
for reading the verse as "bro)" rather than "bara)".  But more specifically,
the claim was that as a direct object of "(al pney" in prose (compare with
the end of the verse), the absence of the direct article is suspicious.  I am
not saying it had to be this way, and that exceptions can't be tolerated,
but the exceptions to this rule -- direct object of "(al pney" in prose that
refers to a single specific entity -- are very rare.  I think 2 Sam 15:23 is
the first such example I found, from all the "(al pney" phrases till that
point in prose.  It is clear that it is a rare usage, and I pointed out there
are ways to understand it differently (such as that this is "poetic" usage,
hence not prose).  It just stands out significantly as a very peculiar
unexpected usage, in the right place and in right word, to suggest that it
is a reference to a diety.

So I am not reading into it more than there is.  I am allowing the
exceptions and the possible other readings.  But the coincidence is too
great to be simply ignored or disregarded.  This is also what I said to
begin with in the first response to this thread.

Aren't you all happy I didn't elaborate on placing the "Divine Wind" in
capitals? :)

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com