Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 7:50 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>
> Karl:  You wrote, concerning my interpretation of Genesis 19: 23:  "'Early
> in
> the morning'" is again a relative term.  More exact timing can be deduced
> from when the angels rousted Lot (at the first glimmerings of dawn) and
> when Lot
> entered Zoar (at sunrise).  So if Abraham got up at sunrise, which is still
> getting up early, by the time he got to the place where he stood before the
> Lord
> the smoke was already coming up."
>
> Most translations of Genesis 19: 23 do not agree with your assertion that "
> Lot entered Zoar…at sunrise".  Rather, most translations render this verse
> as
> if the sun had already risen, and it was fully light outside, rather than
> it
> being at sunrise when Lot entered Zoar.  Could you please explain why your
> view
> of when Lot entered Zoar conflicts with the view of most translators?
>
> I'll say the same thing to you as I said to Harold Holmyard, I don't care
how many translations and commentaries you bring out, I read the text in
Hebrew, not in English.

That you depend on translations indicates that you don't know Hebrew.


>
> If you are right that Lot made it to Zoar at sunrise, then my entire theory
> of the Bible would be dashed.  Could you please explain why you think that
> Lot
> got to Zoar at sunrise?  That seems impossible to me, and also not to be
> what
> the text says.
>
> That's what the text says, in Hebrew. Or to put it in modern English, "As
the sun came over the horizon that Lot came to Zoar." There are several
clues from grammar, syntax and lexicography that indicate this
understanding.

(delete long speculation)

>
> Please note that any normal translation of Genesis 19: 23 is fundamentally
> incompatible with the age-old, erroneous view that the Patriarchs'
> "Hebron",
> and the city whose name beginning in the 8th century BCE is Hebron, are one
> and
> the same place.  There is  n-o-t-h-i-n-g  in the Patriarchal narratives to
> support that age-old, erroneous view of the text.
>
> There is nothing to contradict the view that modern Hebron is not in fact
situation on the same place that Abraham called "Hebron" in the early bronze
age. Just because no mention was made in other countries about a town well
away from the main trade routes until the eighth century BC does not negate
its existence a millennium earlier. The names of most towns were never
mentioned in the contemporary literature of other countries,


> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
>

Karl W. Randolph.