Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JoeWallack AT aol.com]

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.
>  


Peter Kirk:   
"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."



JW:
As I indicated, Gesenius' earlier publication asserted that the Hebrew  
definite article did not always indicate the definite in Hebrew! He 
subsequently  
corrected himself to assert that the Hebrew definite article always means the 
 
definite in Hebrew. I agree that something considered grammatically definite 
in  Hebrew could be considered grammatically indefinite in English and 
properly 
 translated with "a".
 
 
 
Joseph







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