Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 22/03/2007 22:16, JoeWallack AT aol.com wrote:
> ... Specifically here Gesenius changed his opinion in general 
> regarding the meaning of the Hebrew definite article as well as its
> application to 7:14 (that the definite article is indeed intended) in a
> subsequent publication.
>  
>   
Your quotation comes from, or is unchanged in, the 1910 second English 
edition of Gesenius as revised by Kautzsch and translated by Cowley 
(GKC). Gesenius himself passed away in 1842. So he can hardly have 
changed his opinion subsequent to 1910. If GKC does not agree with what 
Gesenius himself wrote on this issue, that must be because Kautzsch or 
Cowley had a different opinion from Gesenius, perhaps informed by nearly 
70 years advance in scholarship. Of course with the benefit of another 
nearly 100 years of scholarship we may want to make further revisions. 
But we shouldn't attribute our new opinions to Gesenius.

Meanwhile it is certainly true that the definite article is used in 
subtly different ways in different languages. Listen carefully to a 
mother tongue speaker of German, French or Spanish who doesn't speak 
English very well, and you will spot a number of unexpected uses of the 
definite article. The differences between Hebrew and English usages are 
doubtless even greater. So your argument against GKC's explanation "That 
the Hebrew word for the definite article would sometimes have a meaning 
of the indefinite article is a contradiction" cannot stand. In fact 
there is a particular context in which Hebrew uses the (usually 
definite) article and English uses the indefinite article, and there is 
no contradiction.

But I would not want to defend the GKC interpretation of Isaiah 7:14.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/