Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:53 PM, James Read wrote:

>> Even if you don't think yourself to have a position, you do seem to have
>> one.
>> For example, you began the discussion by suggesting we postulate all kinds
>> of things.
>
> Yeah. If we don't sandbox the discussion then it is becomes impossible to
> analyse the meaning of the text as the author intended it to be understood.
> There are obviously contextual factors that the author took it for granted
> that we would simply know like what language was spoken by which people in
> which country. While it was probably a fair assumption with his direct
> audience the sands of time have made those assumptions less valid.
> Sandboxing the discussion allows us to analyse these assumptions.

No, James.  "Sandboxing the discussion" as you call it reads and probably is
an attempt to force upon the list readership a discussion that conforms to 
your
personal sets of beliefs.  In order to avoid the appearance of such, you 
present
these as "postulates."  But even though the author may have believed that
Abraham came from Ur, it is not granted that he believed that he came from
Babylonian Ur.  Reasonably, the author of the text as we have it places
Abraham at Babylonian Ur, but his source tradition/text may have not been
explicit about which Ur, and the author of the source tradition/text may have
seen Abraham as coming from a different Ur.  Furthermore, it is likely that
none of these authors was interested or concerned about questions of
linguistic development.  So really, in placing your postulates on a discussion
of linguistic development and classification you are asking not what the
ancient author believed but what would a modern person who holds these
postulates as true believes.

Just a bit ago you wrote:
> > > What sort of question is this? The text of Tanakh is evidence. [...]
to which Petr responded:
> > No! It's definitely not an "evidence". The Hebrew Bible is ideologicaly
> > biased text and not a historical record.
and you replied:
> By the definition you've just given there is no such thing as a
> historical record. Everything that has ever been written has a bias of
> some form.

and also:
> We do have some documents making a claim that the English invaders
> were of Germanic descent but I am not willing to consider the historicity
> of these claims because the document is of religious origin and, therefore,
> suspicious

So why are you not willing to consider the historicity of claims in some
purported documents of "religious origin" but are willing to consider the
Biblical claims as evidence?

(I am not debating here the historicity of the Bible, but your attempt at
presenting yourself as objective and absent any personal indication of
your position in the debate, whereas in reality you are taking a very
partial stance to the Bible).

I conclude on the basis of what you wrote that your partial stance towards
the Bible stems from your own personal beliefs, and that the "postulates"
in fact closely match your own beliefs.  You would therefore, in discussing
the linguistic development of Hebrew, want to "sandbox the discussion"
to conform to your own beliefs -- to force your beliefs on other list
participants in the discussion.  But then you also want to present yourself
as objective and absent any personal position.  It is no surprise that some
list members simply refused to play along and consider your postulates.
I think it would also be appropriate for you to be honest and forthcoming as
to what your position is in the debate.  You're really not fooling anyone 
here.

In your other post, you stated:
> I just applied a linguistic analysis of the English language according to
> email evidence. The results of my find showed that the English language
> has two definite articles 'the' and 'teh'. ... it would seem that the 
> article 'teh'
> comes from language X. I therefore conclude the English were invaders of
> the British isles and that their original language was language X

No, you didn't apply a linguistic analysis.  You applied an analysis that you
think is linguistic but which makes no use of any principles of linguistics.
First, linguistics can't tell you if people invaded another country,
were natives,
etc.  Linguistics can tell you about the relationship of languages, and
historians may use some of these relationships along with other data in
attempting to describe population movements and invasions.  Linguistics
says nothing about population movements.  I am surprised you don't know
this because I said this just the other day.  Also, linguistics does not
discern relationships between languages on the basis of a single word in
one or two language.  Languages are related in a family on the basis of
many words that form cognates.  Within a family, sub-classifications are
made on the basis of shared innovations.  Also, linguists do not make
up languages ("Language X").  Finally, linguists recognize that writing
is an imperfect medium to convey speech.  Linguists study language
(the set of all possible grammatical and meaningful utterances of
speech).  They recognize that if a person writes a word, the word may
not correspond exactly to the way he would speak it.  Moreover, it may
be a spelling error.  So, if you really want to apply a linguistic analysis,
try to follow standard principles of linguistics.  Don't make up counter-
examples that have no relationship to linguistics as if they do.

Following Yigal's advice, this concludes my input and comments to the
ongoing discussion.   I still intend to provide sources/references that will
in my opinion be of interest to list members, but to do so without
comment, or follow-up.

Yitzhak Sapir