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  • From: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] names and puns
  • Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:46:06 -0600

On 13 Oct 2008 at 10:53, Gabe Eisenstein wrote:

> Dear Dave,
>
> Sorry to attribute to you a global denial of punning names in Genesis.
> Guess what set me off was this:
>
> "Gen 48:22 isn't a pun on anything. It's a perfectly legitimate and
> common Hebrew word, and once again, it says Jacob took by force the
> piece of land he's describing, whereas the texts talking about Shechem
> say he bought land."
>
> Puns connect different words, each of which is "perfectly legitimate" on
> its own. In this case the author was almost certainly aware of the
> linguistic similarity between the common word "shoulder" or "slope" and
> the name of the city (which I assume itself derived from the "shoulder"
> meaning), given the association between the "house of Joseph" and the
> early seat of Israelite authority.

I just love expressions like "almost certainly" in contexts like this, were
no actual evidence is
adduced. It sounds more like projection to me. The similarity between words
seems to be
coincidental, if we take the full context into consideration. It takes more
than just verbal
similarity to make paronomasia, it takes a deliberate act. Given the fact
that we have a
different explanation here for how Jacob came by the land, such a deliberate
act by the
author appears unlikely. Now, if he had said "the $KM that our family bought
from so-and-
so," we would have a pun that makes sense in the context. But that's not
what we have.

> If you are saying that the text has some different location in mind,
> which Jacob took by force, I find that very implausible. It seems much
> more likely that there are simply different traditions about Shechem.

So let me get this straight: you're saying that, on the basis of nothing more
than verbal
similarity between a "shoulder" of land ("mountain-ridge" as Holladay
glosses) and the
name "Shechem," we're supposed to posit that some different tradition, in
which Jacob took
the town by force with his "sword and bow," somehow got stuck into just this
one statement
and then promptly vanished again, never to be seen in any ANE literature
again. And you
find this more plausible than the idea that Jacob is talking about an unnamed
piece of land
that he actually did take by force, which the text plainly says is the case.
Does that about
sum it up?

Dave Washburn
"I'll hold the nail. And when I nod my head, you hit it with the hammer."




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