Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

Yitzhak Sapir wrote: 
.  "Biblical maximalists generally refers to scholars 

 who hold to the accuracy of the Bible in terms of

  events during the United Monarchy, if such a  period

 indeed existed.  Dever is considered a  maximalist."   

    The first broad statement above is wrong; check your 

sources again as to the current meaning of 'maximalists'.

  As for your statment ..."United Monarchy, 

if such a period indeed existed": top archaeologists 

like Amihai Mazar, Amnon Ben-Tur  and  many others reject

 this point of view. Do you know more archaeology than they?

     The question is to what extent does the biblical narrative

 about David and Solomon, conquests, empire etc, reflect

 reality. Anyway, I don't intend to debate these matters

 here. 

   Further, Dever does not consider himself a maximalist. Why don't

you check this with him?

 "But thanks for giving a good live  example of how discussions

 that somehow  touch on issues of biblical historicity inevitably

  end up having to defend the positions on biblical  historicity

 that scholarship has adopted for some  time now."

    The above convoluted sentence,alas, lost its meaning. 

Discussions normally do not defend or attack. People do.

   Again, you say "scholarship has adopted.." --  this is too broad

 a statement; many excellent scholars whom one does not encounter

 on 'discussion lists' will not agree, and indeed publications

which do not support this position are numerous.      

   Those interested in problems of historicity may 

wish to look up  K. A. Kitchen "on the reliability of the 

Old Testament". It is an indispensable reference work on 

the subject and contains a vast amount of source material. Some

 people are simply unaware of the amount of work

 he spent over decades on Semitics and biblical issues

 in addition to his Egyptological monumental achievements.

   Uri Hurwitz                            Great Neck, NY

   

 
---------------------------------
It's here! Your new message!
Get new email alerts with the free Yahoo! Toolbar.
>From kwrandolph AT gmail.com  Sat Mar 24 20:15:10 2007
Return-Path: <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
X-Original-To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Delivered-To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: from an-out-0708.google.com (an-out-0708.google.com 
[209.85.132.246])
        by lists.ibiblio.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E59C44C010
        for <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:15:09 -0400 
(EDT)
Received: by an-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id c31so1714002ana
        for <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:15:09 -0700 
(PDT)
Received: by 10.100.44.13 with SMTP id r13mr3848119anr.1174781709509;
        Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:15:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.100.168.2 with HTTP; Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:15:09 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <acd782170703241715h16efc5b5lce55c499c676564e AT mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:15:09 -0700
From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
In-Reply-To: <46059725.2030906 AT hotmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
References: <mailman.10.1174752003.8396.b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
        <46059725.2030906 AT hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hithpael functions (was Question for Rolf on the JW
        outlook on the Hebrew)
X-BeenThere: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9
Precedence: list
List-Id: Biblical Hebrew Forum <b-hebrew.lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
        <mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew>
List-Post: <mailto:b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
        <mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:15:10 -0000

Dear David:

Right now I'm in a situation where I not only don't have a book
budget, but I need to shed myself of a lot of books I already have,
along with other materials.

As for Genesis 42:1, I got to thinking after I submitted my last
missive. I had taken the traditional interpretation of "looking at
each other" without critical thought. But upon later thought, I
realized that Jacob was referring to looking at oneself, not at each
other. In colloquial English, what he said was "What are you doing,
staring at your navels! There's food in Egypt, so get off your butts
and get some food."

Think about it. They were sheep herders. But the grass was all gone,
and with no grass, most of their livestock was gone too. They had to
let the slaves go, and with nothing to do, they simply sat around
"staring at their navels". Now they were facing starvation. And when
asked where the next meal was to come from, all they could do is hang
their heads and stare at the ground, or if seated, look at their hands
and feet. Jacob had his priorities right, at least do something.

Thus, in this case, the hitpael is reflexive. And that was the only
example that you sent that I previously admitted may not be purely
reflexive.

No, I disagree, the French se is not equivalent to the hitpael. Not
when one is careful with word definitions, grammatical usage and
allowing for the ancients to use idiomatic uses, just as we do today.
Abraham's "I made me walk..." clearly refers to more than just the
physical action of walking, when the context is taken into account,
and this is not the only example of this use of this verb. There are
other examples where the hitpael of "to walk" does not mean to go to
and fro, or to wander about, even in the physical, not idiomatic
sense, rather to make one's way, to make oneself go. Further, insight
does not have the capacity of volition or independent action, yet it
is the subject of the verb acting in Isaiah 29:14. A similar example
in English is "A stitch in time saves nine" which it most certainly
cannot. Of the examples you sent, those were the only two that have an
idiomatic use.

Thanks for the little article. I have not read it all, but the author,
even as far as I have read, I find I disagree with him. It doesn't
help that his second example is marred by combining two different
words that have become homonyms in English (also in German, but not in
Norwegian), trying to say that they are examples of multiple uses of
the same word. But the biggest point of departure is that he defines
according to semantic domains, and I by action. Sound familiar?

Karl W. Randolph.

On 3/24/07, David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Karl,
>
> I think you need to develop a book-buying budget like me. You don't own
> W-O? Sometimes I drive three hours (six hours return) to get references
> I need.
>
> In regards to the below, you have work yourself around to get back to
> 'reflexive'. It is exceedingly difficult to do this for every example
> that could be cited. I just gave one example for each function, and you
> have to appeal to idiomatic usage again and again. Reciprocal is similar
> to reflexive and the way you describe the example, it is reciprocal;
> hence the label - mutual action is reciprocal action. Some languages
> actually have different pronouns for 'reflexive' and 'reciprocal'
> whereas Hebrew groups them with the Hithpael. Similarly for
> anticausative. The hithpael of halak means "walk about, walk to and fro"
> - look of other examples (you can't appeal to idiomatic usage every
> time). The hithpael has meaning more widely than simply 'reflexive'. You
> might like to read this essay (see esp. pp.223-226):
>
> http://email.eva.mpg.de/~haspelmt/2003sem.pdf
>
> Like I've said, the Hithpael is the same as French "se" and has some
> similar functions as Russian "-sja".
>
> Regarding those Hebrew examples I listed, I am wondering how they would
> be construed without any context apart from discussion about the known
> "him".
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
>