Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

vayyixtov Karl
>> Speculation. Indicated by the term “probability”.>

Speculation?
Maybe we could communicate better in biblical Hebrew. probability is
based on evidence and in this case by an intersecting of three probabilities
for any word deemed 'highly probably Late Biblical Hebrew". The low side
of this probability gets diminished with each similar patterning word with
which it is joined. One stick may be breakable, ten sticks become very
difficult to break. Thirty sticks become like an iron rod. Speculation would
be to ignore the reinforcing confluence of pattern and to posit, to
speculate, that somehow in a parallel universe it is all irrelevant.

>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.>
>

Maybe you have not come to grips with the fact that zeman remained in
the language along with `et and mo`ed, causing a semantic field adjustment.
You will note that mouton caused a meaning adjustment in English, it does
not mean 'sheep' but 'sheep flesh as food'. It entered with the Normans and
metamorphicized.

and you analysis is poor and unreliable.
It shows an etymoloigical fallacy as if a word's meaning is it root.

>MW(D is from the same root as Y(D meaning *to convoke, call out to a meeting
* so as a noun it has almost the same meaning as εκκλησια in Greek.>

This is not lexicography but etymology and leads to faulty comparisons.
totally unreliable.
mo`ed is a time word. You will find the LXX translates with a word like
KAIROS 'specific time' and others.
While EKKLHSIA is word closer to qahal and `eda in Hebrew.

On zeman, Eccl 3:1 is an example showing how much `et and zeman
overlap. there is a short parallelism:
la-kol zeman  'for everything there is a time'
ve-`et le-xol Hefets 'and a time for every item'
taHat ha-shamayim
zeman covers all of the `ittim that follow

In Neh 2:6 uses zeman for a length of time for a trip to be made.
In Esth 9:27 and 31 use zeman as a tight synonym to Hebrew mo`ed.

I would conclude that zeman is a word that covers mo`ed and is wider,
more generic, so as to reach to include `et. (Of course, in principle
one should
trace how the word continued to be used throughout the history of the
language. 4 biblical ocurrences are not a lot of examples.)
This analysis receives some confirmation
in Daniel and Ezra where the idiom beh-zimna "at that time, in the very hour"
is common in Aramaic for these authors. And as a word that is equivalent and
more generic than mo`ed, its lack in First Temple Hebrew is quite remarkable.
You may scoff, but many of the places in torah where we have mo`ed or
pa`am or a time phrase in Hebrew we find zeman in Onkelos. This is not proof
but is supportive of the overall picture.

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

I really don't know how to answer this question. A language does not depend
on a script. vayyixtov is biblical Hebrew, written in a latin-
based script.
Here in BH, 'v' can be sounded as a 'w' or 'v' as you please.
'x' is the standard IPA for a voiceless velar fricative, the sound of a soft/
fricative kaf according to masora. 'v' at the end of the word is the fricative
bet. the vowels are according to masoretic tradition. The word is

'and [Karl] wrote' . . .

the word is so common that it is difficult to conceive how someone would
not readily grasp it. A couple of other scripts
ويختب كارل
ουαγιχτοβ καρλ
ויכתב כארל
all the same language,
but its easier and faster to write vayyixtov Karl ...

umeqavve ani ki-yesh le-xa Hedva ba-`et ha-zot
ומקוה אני כי יש לך חדוה בעת הזאת
הוי שלום  heve shalom

Randall
-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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