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  • From: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] bara vs' bero in Genesis 1:1
  • Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 14:10:07 -0700



On 9 Jul 2006 at 18:58, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

> 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.

But that's precisely my point. You have not established that it's a proper
name, merely
assumed it. I have yet to see any solid proof that it is, so until that
claim is solid, there is no
coincidence of anything.

Your
> claims about the word "reshit" constitute in fact one of the arguments
> for reading the verse as "bro)" rather than "bara)".

My claim????? I made no claim. Read it again, please. It's called pushing
something to its
logical conclusion.

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.

And I'm saying there's nothing inherently suspicious about it. It looks like
a stylistic device
as much as anything else, and unless one is really digging for "suspicious"
things in order to
make tenuous connections with something like Enuma Elish, it's a bit of a
non-issue.

I am
> not saying it had to be this way, and that exceptions can't be tolerated,
> but the exceptions to this rule --

Oh, now it's elevated to the status of a "rule." We're piling assumption on
assumption.

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.

Gen 16:12 would seem to be a much close one, but I'll let that pass. In any
case, I've seen
nothing to indicate the existence of any such "rule." The vast majority of
examples between
Genesis and 2 Samuel are formulaic, such as (AL P:N"Y HF)FDFMFH, so it's hard
to take
this line of thought seriously.

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.

It could be a poetic usage, but the notion that it refers to a deity of any
kind is so totally
foreign to the text as to be, well, ludicrous. Genesis 1 has one, count 'em,
one, deity, and
that's the whole point of the thing: that one deity is responsible for all
the stuff there is. I
suspect that if you took this idea back to the author of the text, whoever it
may have been,
he would have come back with a resounding, "HUH????" In any case, this "rare
usage"
proves nothing at all about such things, and absence of the definite article
does not make it
a proper name. You're going to have to muster a lot more evidence before
I'll buy that one.


Dave Washburn
Encephaloriasis: That condition generated when the person you are dealing
with is so
incredibly stupid, you can actually feel your own brain cells drying up and
flaking off.




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