Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>wrote:

> vayyixtov Karl
> >Is this another case where, by knowing later Hebrew usage and cognate
> languages, that you fail to filter out these other uses when looking at
> Biblical Hebrew? Where ZMN has a different meaning than found in Biblical
> Hebrew, and you are reading the Biblical texts using this other meaning?
> >
>
> No, this is not a problem of knowing mishnaic hebrew and aramaic ve-xule.
> this is a case like 'sheep' and 'mouton' where the entry of a word into a
> new
> language (like mouton into English) causes restructuring of semantic field.
>
> zeman  zemannim is another high-probability Late Biblical Hebraism.
>
> Speculation. Indicated by the term “probability”.

“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Because the Hebrew
recorded in Tanakh is recognized as being only a subset of the Hebrew used
in daily life, you have no evidence that ZMN was not used in early Hebrew.
Therefore, the use of this term in Qohelet is not evidence that Qohelet is a
late Hebrew document. This is especially relevant in that ZMN has a semantic
field not shared by any other Hebrew term, unlike your sheep = mouton
example above, so it cannot be used as a replacement for another (“earlier”)
term.

You have not come to grips with the fact that it has a different meaning
than your earlier examples, in fact was even used as a modifier to one of
your examples, Therefore it is not a replacement for “earlier” terminology.


> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> randallbuth AT gmail.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life


Karl W. Randolph.

Ps: Just out of curiosity, what does “vayyixtov” mean? Why don’t you write
it in Biblical Hebrew?