Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin W. Woodruff" <cierpke AT prodigy.net>]

Kenneth:
   
  A good reference book that may help you understand the honor/shmae dynamic 
and how it helps with biblical interpretation is:
   
  Desilva, David A. Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New 
Testament Culture. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000. ISBN 
0830815724, 9780830815722
   
   
  Kevin

kenneth greifer <greifer AT hotmail.com> wrote:
  
I have heard people say that you can't understand the Bible unless you 
understand honor and shame during those times. I have read a little about the 
subject, but I don't know how important it really was. Can anyone tell me if 
honor and shame are really that important to understanding the Bible?

Kenneth Greifer
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Prof. Kevin W. Woodruff, M.Div., M.S.I.S.
Library Director/Reference Librarian, Assistant Professor of Bible, Greek, 
Theological Bibliography and Research
Tennessee Temple University/Temple Baptist Seminary, 1815 Union Ave. 
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404, United States of America
423/493-4252 (office) 423/698-9447 (home) 423/493-4497 (FAX)
Cierpke AT prodigy.net  http://pages.prodigy.net/cierpke/woodruff.htm
>From yaakov_s AT rad.com  Wed Aug 20 02:58:51 2008
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From: Yaakov Stein <yaakov_s AT rad.com>
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Subject: [b-hebrew] elephants or ivory ?
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In Kings I 10:22 (and the parallel passage in Chronicles)
we read that every three years Hiram sent Solomon
 ZHB WKSF $NHBYM WQPYM WTCYYM.

The use of the conjunction and the cantillation marks
separate the good sent into two groups,
namely 1) gold and silver, 2) shenhavim and monkeys and tukim.
The former group consists of inanimate objects,
while two of the three in the latter are animals found in Africa
(without going into a discussion of the precise meaning of tuki).

Is it possible that shenhavim here means elephants rather than ivory ?
This would seem to match the sentence structure better.

The present word for elephant PYL does not appear in the tanach.
Elephants do appear in the first book of Macabees
(having been adopted by the Greek army after its conquest of India)
but unfortunately as the original Hebrew has been lost,
we can't see what word was used.
There are those who believe that the fourth animal in Daniel
is an elephant, but once again no specific Hebrew word is used.

Were ivory intended, why is the word in the plural,
rather than the singular as for gold and silver ?
Of course the proper translation could be "elephant tusks",
i.e. that unprocessed tusks were sent for carving in Israel.
But since there were no elephants in Solomon's Israel,
why would there be artisans skilled in ivory carving there ?

Yaakov (J) Stein