Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

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.