Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Hi Ishinan,

I'll start from the end of your post. I have no doubt of the good faith of
your reply, and despite my comments, did not intend to question the
legitimacy of your argument. 
The question of "what did the Bible mean by his comment on Peleg" is
certainly on-topic. The question is not historical. It's not whether the
earth was "really" divided this way or that, since we have no way of
knowing. The question is what the author of Gen. 10 meant to convey. 

You are correct that since the Middle Ages, Hebrew scholars have used Arabic
cognates to understand Hebrew terms. And the results have often proven
correct. But since the recovery of Semitic languages that are both more
closely related and closer in time to Biblical Hebrew, Arabic must take the
back seat. Phoenician and Moabite are the closest, but we have so little of
them that Ugaritic, though farther in time and space, is often more useful.
Then of course come Aramaic and then Akkadian. 

Your statement that "many Biblical themes were simply adapted from Ugaritic 
Sources" is incorrect. No-one really believes that the biblical authors went
digging through the ruins of Ugarit and copied the themes there. The strong
similarities between Ugaritic and biblical literature indicate a shared
"Canaanite" literary and linguistic heritage. However we must remember, that
from that shared source, the two cultures developed independently, and that
(at least according to the standard chronology) "Hebrew" as a written
language is only attested AFTER Ugarit no longer existed. Thus it is
possible that words that do go back to a common source took on different
meanings in each language. So that as useful as comparative linguistics may
be, the best indication of the meaning of a word is its use within the Bible
itself. And within the Bible, no-where can the word PLG be shown to mean
"plough". And within the literary context of Gen. 10, I just don't see the
need for it.


Yigal Levin



-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Ishinan
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 10:12 PM
To: B-Hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "PLG"

ISHINAN: Correct me if am wrong, but isn't it standard procedure among 
Semitic scholars to make use of sister languages, especially Arabic, to 
explain certain Hebrew terms. A cursory look at any serious Hebrew 
dictionary will attest to this fact. Besides, I already made allusion in my 
earlier post that  proto Semitic * plg meant divide/split, while of course 
the sense of ploughing is naturally a derivative.  Now if you consider 
Arabic inappropriate and not pertaining to Hebrew in this instance, then 
what about Ugaritic?

To my knowledge, many Biblical themes were simply adapted from Ugaritic 
sources; the story of the flood for example has a near mirror image in 
Ugaritic literature;  therefore in my opinion, the language of the Bible is 
greatly illuminated by the language of Ugarit.

In this case the Ugaritic 'plg" in  KTU 1.82:24 & KTU 1.100:69  means "a 
long, narrow, shallow trench made in the ground by a plow or simply put a 
furrow". Now If you go back to the Arabic definition offered in my previous 
post you will find that it is exactly the same definition of the Arabic 
"flg": furrow the land or ploughing for sowing.

YIGAL: As a noun, Peleg is mostly connected to streams of water .

ISHINAN: So it is in the Arabic case, see the attachment in my earlier post.

http://labyrinthoflanguage.freewebsitehosting.com/PLG.html

YIGAL: And finally, "in Peleg's days the earth was ploughed"? Why? The first

agriculturist was Cain (Gen. 4:2), and nowhere else does the Bible give a 
postdiluvian etiology for something that was already "invented" before the 
flood.

ISHINAN:  If you don't mind, I will take a leaf of the moderator's 
instructions (in this case yourself) and will avoid getting into a debate 
about the Bible historicity to prove my point, however tempting. Instead, I 
will opt to deal with strictly linguistic matters.

My initial suggestion to Doug was given in good faith, based on my belief of

the significance of comparative studies applied to the Semitic languages. I 
have nothing further to add to my earlier proposal, which I believe has 
merit.

Thank you for your comments, even though I cannot agree with them.

Respectfully,

Ishinan B. Ishibashi