Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Jim:

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 8:32 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>
> Karl:
>
> 1.  You wrote, regarding the question of whether Bera of Sodom dies at
> Genesis 14: 10:  "Who cares what the scholars say?"
>
> When several important scholars have focused on the specific issue of
> whether
> Bera dies at Genesis 14: 10, and concluded that he did not, I myself
> consider
> that to be important.
>
> Define ¨important scholar¨! If ¨important scholar¨ is defined as one who
agrees with you, and ¨unimportant scholar¨ is one that disagrees with you,
then your statement above is meaningless, and foolish.

What is important is the text itself. If the text uses a phrase that is a
euphemism for to die in battle, then that´s what the text says: it doesn´t
matter how many scholars argue to the contrary, the text has the final say.


> 2.  You wrote:  "Abraham wants to remain free from any answerability to the
> wicked king of wicked Sodom. Therefore, he refuses the reward so as to
> remain
> free of any leverage that the king of Sodom might bring to bear. You in
> your
> cultural isolation of modern Illinois, you can't see this."
>
> Then why on earth does Abraham hand his nephew Lot back to the ruler of
> Sodom?


What a silly question! Lot was an independent agent, married and owning
slaves, living independently of his uncle Abraham, not Abraham´s slave.
Abraham could no more ¨hand Lot back to the ruler of Sodom¨ than I can order
my grown and married nephew to move to a particular town. While Abraham
could be concerned for and act to rescue his nephew (I would do the same for
my nephew), that in no way indicates that Abraham had authority over Lot.


>  Karl, if the ruler of Sodom were "the wicked king of wicked Sodom", there'
> s no way that righteous Abraham would place his own nephew back into that
> foul
> den of iniquity.  Can't you see that your reading of the text here makes no
> sense?
>
> Who says that Abraham placed his nephew in Sodom? Don´t you see based on
the above, that your statement and question are foolish?


> 3.  You wrote:  "Already by the 15th century BC, late middle bronze age,
> when
> Moses compiled the record of the patriarchs, the Hebrew language was fully
> developed such that a final ayin was never dropped. You have no evidence to
> back
> up your claim
>  that iron age Hebrew was significantly different than bronze age Hebrew."
>
> (a)  The 15th century BCE is the Late Bronze Age, not the late Middle
> Bronze
> Age.  The Middle Bronze Age ended in 1550 BCE.
>
> To use your own criterion, scholars I have read indicate that Joshua´s
invasion of Canaan occurred near the end of the middle bronze age. Hence my
statement.


> (b)  There was no Hebrew language in existence in the 15th century BCE,
> based
> on evidence from secular history.
>
> There you go again, proving Kenneth Greifer correct, showing your
anti-Semitism by discounting Jewish history while touting untrustworthy
¨secular¨ history.


> (c)  There's plenty of evidence to back up my claim that Iron Age Hebrew
> was
> significantly different in certain respects than the west Semitic languages
> that are evidenced in the 15th and 14th centuries BCE.  For example, let's
> look
> at the west Semitic word for the number "four" in Akkadian, Assyrian,
> Ugaritic and Biblical Hebrew.  Akkadian, Assyrian and Ugaritic are the
> three
> best-documented Semitic languages in the Bronze Age.
>
> You should go back and look at discussions we have had in the past
concerning the pitfalls of comparing cognate languages: for example, ¨boot¨
in English and ¨Boot¨ in German mean completely different things. Of course
Biblical Hebrew is different from these languages, that´s the definition of
a different language, that it is different. I mean.. Duh!!

[Delete paragraphs of foolishness]


> 4.  You wrote:  "You make the assumption that Bera is a Hebrew name.  That
> is
> an assumption that is logically not allowed. As a possible different
> language, it is
>  possible that it has a completely different meaning than what it appears
> to
> have from a Hebrew standpoint."
>
> It is impossible that "Bera" could be a Hebrew name, because Bera obviously
> was not a Hebrew.  Yet the name "Bera" could easily be a west Semitic name.
> And if the Patriarchal narratives are truly ancient, then the name "Bera"
> is
> coming from the Bronze Age.  That's why the ayin at the end has a different
> function than in Biblical Hebrew common words from the Iron Age.  That's
> the
> very point I keep trying to make.  One of the reasons why no one has
> figured out
> the meanings of the names "Bera" and "Birsha" is that they try to analyze
> such names as if they were Biblical Hebrew common words from the Iron Age.
> Nothing could be further from the truth.  The names "Bera" and "Birsha"
> must,
> rather, be analyzed from a Bronze Age perspective.  Then those two
> important
> names make perfect sense.
>
> You contradict yourself. Your whole argument claiming that his name meant
¨Mr. Clean¨ is based on Hebrew roots. But if the name is not Hebrew at all,
it could mean almost anything.


> [delete more foolishness]
> If we can recognize that a final ayin in a Bronze Age proper name is a mere
> suffix (as opposed to the different rules that govern Iron Age common
> words),
> then the longstanding mystery of the meaning of the names "Bera" and
> "Birsha"
> has finally been solved!
>
> Sources, sources, sources, where do these ideas come from? If this idea
truly is found in another language (which I seriously doubt), then why base
the meaning on supposed Hebrew roots? In which language are they found? Why
discuss it in b-hebrew?


> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois


What are your qualifications? What are you hiding?


By your refusal to answer these questions, you show that you are a fraud, a
faux scholar who has not put in any time nor effort toward learning the
subject you pretend to speak about. What you are hiding is that fact.
Privately, others call you a troll, and that any response to you is ¨feeding
the troll¨. I tried ignoring you, and so did others, but that only seemed to
encourage you, as if our silence were tacit approval of your half-baked
ideas. You thought you could get on a forum with experts, and wow scholars
with your erudition, but instead you come across as a fool who stupidly
doesn´t know what he´s talking about. Not a pretty picture, is it?


 Only after your continued posting started driving better people than you
from the list, as well as the moderators not taking action to ban you, only
then I decided to show up your foolishness. But even after I openly mock
you, you don´t seem to take the hint. I repeatedly mention facts from the
text and research, such as archaeology, that contradict your claims, and you
don´t acknowledge them.  Are there any facts that you would acknowledge that
could make you change your mind, or is your whole theory part of that never
never land of clairvoyance beyond God that cannot be bothered by objective
facts?

Karl W. Randolph.