Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz>]

Karl wrote:-

> Secondly, not everyone has black hair. What about those with red hair,
> blond, or their hair has whitened with age? To insist that ?black? is
> correct makes this text nonsense.

This text is set in the Middle East. If you look at people's hair colour
from different regions around the world you ought to notice that, with a few
rare exceptions, its only Europeans who have hair colour other than black.
For whatever reasons people of European descent have a range of hair
colours, far more than the rest of the world does. I work in an institution
with students from over 50 countries. Its easy to tell which students are
not of European descent from a distance when they are facing away from you
and their clothes cover most of their skin, which is common in winter. You
just look at their hair. In the region where these texts were written you
would get a rare albino and older people whose hair has greyed. But the vast
majority will have black hair. So Jim's not off the wall in citing other
scholars in understanding the adjective which qualifies hair to mean black.
As usual, I don't want to engage with his other speculations.


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