Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 10:08 PM, K Randolph wrote:

>> Here, several problems or mistakes. First, there does not appear to be
>> an answer
>> or even a willingness to learn.
>>
>
> There are three problems with this statement:
>
> 1) You took my statement out of context, which included the reason for the
> question.
> 2) You didn’t answer my question.
> 3) I don’t have ready access to those books. They are most likely in a
> library in another town a couple of hours away, one way, but I don’t want to
> take a day off just to find out if they are worth the effort.
>
> This third point has been a sore point on this list, as people will
> reference books and articles, and simply assume that everyone has access to
> those works, when that is often not the case.

No, Karl, you are just unwilling to learn.  Even when I provided you
with links to
full texts available online for free you refused to go and look at
them.  This has
been the real sore point on this list -- you refuse to accept evidence at 
almost
all costs.

In this case, you have not shown the Masoretic pointing to be incorrect. You
have shown that in some cases, without the Masoretic pointing, the reading
could be ambiguous.  That is not really earth shattering news.

I doubt you really have cases where you see the Masoretic pointing is wrong.
Even now, Randall gave you an example of unpointed Hebrew and you seem
unable to find the infinitive (nslwx).  This is very suggestive that
you do not have
the necessary expertise in reading unpointed Hebrew to be able to consider
all reading possibilities.

When Randall quotes standard grammars he is not making an appeal to
authority.  Any serious student of Hebrew should be expected to be able to
follow up standard common grammars.  In this case one grammar (Gesenius)
is available completely online, and the other (Muraoka) is available for 
google
preview.  In medicine, a doctor who does not look up other current views
before forming his final opinion would be guilty of criminal negligence.  But
then, this is not life and death, -- it is just the Bible, right?

Yitzhak Sapir