Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Steve Teague" <cosmos AT intergate.com>]

James wrote:



  Sorry for the delay in reply. Been busy lately with transfers to new 
universities. I'm now doing a new PhD at Essex with a first year MA in 
computational linguistics. Should be fun. Anyway, on with the discussion...

  Some time ago Steve made the question below and expanded on it off list to 
me. He said he wouldn't mind me answering on list.

  Just to make things clear I am not advocating that Wycliffe's translation 
was superior to Tyndale's. Neither am I advocating the reverse. In fact I am 
not advocating anything. The issue is far from resolved in my mind. My 
intention was to stimulate discussion to help me resolve the question. The 
way I see it is this:

  We are clearly attempting to translate a situation which does not occur in 
everday life and so is difficult to find corresponding natural language 
equivalents of as ideal target language translations. My understanding is 
that Tyndale 'invented' the English idiom 'Let there be...' for this very 
reason. So the question is this. Was the Hebrew also an example of such rare 
and funny sounding language? I have reason to believe it wasn't. Did Moses 
(or the author) make up a funny sounding Hebrew expression to express this? 
Or did he reuse easily understood formulas and forms? I am not certain but I 
think he did. Can anybody suggest any similar formulas or forms from other 
parts of the Tanakh? If so, this would seem to suggest implications about the 
register of the language used in the creation account.

  In conclusion, I have no answers. Only more questions. The Greek 
translations show one understanding. That understanding seems to be echoed in 
the Latin. Wycliffer attempted to echo that Latin and Tyndale concluded that 
the English of his day had no form corresponding to the Hebrew and so coined 
a new phrase. What do the list members think? Was Tyndale justified in 
coining a new phrase? Is the register in Hebrew equally strange?

  James Christian


  Steve writes:

  Since no one else has responded to your questions, I want to add two more 
to the mix.

  From a gramatical point of view, I read that the word in question is a 
jussive form of the verb and indicates a mild command or strong wish. What or 
whom is being commanded? Is light being commanded? Or is it something else? 
Tyndale's translation might indicate, or at least allow for the possibility 
that it is something else besides light, but Wycliffe's seems to say that it 
is light. From that perspective it seems to me that the two translations are 
radically different. Does the text allow for each?

  Additionally, can these questions be answered from the text alone? Lurking 
on the list suggests to me that answers from the text of any part of the 
Hebrew Bible are sometimes difficult to come by, and this is doubly true for 
Genesis 1 and 2, which suggests another question for these two chapters in 
particular: Might it be that the purpose of Genesis 1 and 2 is (partly) to 
generate questions, since that is mostly what even educated gramarians and 
such come up with?

  At every turn in the subject verses questions pop up that seem planned, and 
un-answerable from the text alone. For example: the very first word 
(bereshyth: in beginning) leaves many open questions (in fact, there have 
been many arguments about even what the questions should be). I find many 
different answers, but none with across the board acceptance. The same is 
true for "day" in later verses, and many others.

  Thanks,

  Steve Teague
>From kwrandolph AT gmail.com  Thu Oct 15 11:06:01 2009
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Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:05:59 -0700
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From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
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James and Randall:
In this message, I use “dialect” to refer to the different periods of Hebrew
usage that have been more or less codified: the three main ones being
Biblical, Mishnaic and modern Hebrews.

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 3:10 AM, James Christian
<jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> with regard to the differences and similarities and their effect on the
> learner I'm not sure you are justified in making such a broad
> generalisation
>

There is also the question of why one wants to learn Hebrew, which dialect
he should learn and master first. I will emphasize “master” as in really
learning it well.

If his purpose is to read Tanakh, learning modern Hebrew before he has
mastered Biblical Hebrew may actually detract from his understanding of the
text.


> One of the fundamental qualities in the way the learner chooses to put
> focus
> on similarities or differences and how the learner typically treats them.
> Those who focus on similarities tend to learn quicker. Those who focus
> negatively on the differences do not learn well.
>

A difficulty is that those who learn Hebrew as a second language seldom
master any dialect, even if they study only one. Then if they study more
than one dialect, the dialects become mish mashed in their mind with the
result that they really don’t know any.


> James Christian
> >
>
> >
> > Also, those who control both Greek and Hebrew may question whether
> > Greek and Hebrew are a helpful comparison. Modern Greek morphology
> > and ancient Gk morphology are different. modern Hebrew morphology
> > maps onto ancient/biblical morphology 100%. (Allowing, of course,
> > for high register modern "matsiti" 'I found' to map onto mishnaic Hebrew,
> > while standard modern "matsati" does fit biblical "matsati". If
> exceptions
> > like
> > this are disallowed, then you can use 99+% as the comparison figure.)
> >
> > braxot
> > Randall
> >
>

I think that part of the problem of understanding the different verbal forms
stems from the fact that some of them were used differently from Biblical
Hebrew as early as Mishnaic Hebrew, yet the scholars who wrote about those
forms in grammars and lexicons knew both or more dialects so tended to mix
them up. I include Gesenius and BDB among these scholars.

One of the toughest things to deal with when learning more than one dialect
is where words have changed meanings (at least that is my experience). That
results in that a person may *think* he understands a text where a word has
changed meaning, when he really doesn’t.

How many other differences were there between Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic
Hebrew? And Mishnaic Hebrew to modern Hebrew? One that comes to mind from
modern Hebrew is that the waw is pronounced like a “V”, a contribution of
German/Yiddish to modern pronunciation. What about BeGaD KePhaT, that
existed in Mishnaic Hebrew, but did it exist in Biblical Hebrew? There is
some evidence that it didn’t. What about the use of materes lexionis? Were
they full consonants in Biblical Hebrew, that could be left out in poetry
without losing understanding, like “v” in “e’er”? But became materes
lexionis in Mishnaic Hebrew?

Now my 2¢ on the question of learning modern Hebrew.

If the student’s main interest is in reading Tanakh, I recommend that he
read Tanakh completely through a few times before studying another dialect.
Preferably at least once without points, if not a few times that way as
well. If his main interest is in Talmud, then master that dialect first
before studying others. If his main interest is in communicating with modern
Israelis, find an immersion study program, or go to Israel.

As for me, I know only Biblical Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.