Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

Tell me if I misread you.

I see that we had very different ways of learning Hebrew. As a result, we
still read Hebrew differently.

I learned Hebrew just from reading the text. I see the text as a flowing of
ideas, stories and concepts with the language as a wrapper to hold them.
Because almost all the advanced portions of grammar (beyond basic
descriptions of the forms) I was taught in class have turned out to be
wrong, some slightly, some totally, I have read more to get a feel for the
language, than to parse it.

You on the other hand learned from grammars and experts. You studied up on
all the different theories, beliefs and traditions concerning the
construction of the language. You studied linguistics, comparative
linguistics and all the terminology used in professional circles and what
they all mean, both in Hebrew and in other languages. Some of that
terminology I never heard before, not even from other members on this list.
You have learned other languages for the purposes of comparing their
grammars and structure with Hebrew.

So, in a question like this, you start with a theory, then look for evidence
to back it up. I, OTOH, start with data then try to explain the patterns
that I see. You see first the parsing, I see first the ideas and at times
will miss the parsing. You look first at the individual words, then work up
from there, I look first at the context, then work down to the smaller
bites.

When there’s a question on this list concerning a particular verse, I
usually go to the section, look at a few verses previous to the verse in
question, start reading from there to establish a context before reaching
the verse in question. That’s what I did with all the examples that you
listed, and found thereby that all the examples that you listed are really
secondary, where they are infinitives, and part of a larger construct, not
stand alone.

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>wrote:

> . . .
> > where “that he be” with the infinitive is secondary
> > to the verbal phrase “is intimately connected with”'.
>
> So it appears that by secondary you mean ‘subordinate’


Not exactly, because the total picture requires both. Secondary more in that
it comes after, in conclusion.


> > To give the example of Genesis 41:42–43, pharaoh took a series of actions
> to
> > establish the authority of the new office of grand vizier and the
> identity of
> > the first holder of that office; the final clause of verse 43 uses an
> > infinitive to show that that was the purpose of those preceding actions.
>
> So you claim that the wntwn clause is “secondary” and a “purpose” clause!?
> BH Hebrew has ways of marking subordinate purpose structures, one of which
> is
> “lamed with an infinitive construct”.
>

That’s a different construct with a different meaning. That one has more the
idea of “in order that” while this structure carries a different idea which
I am struggling to put into words. There is no equivalent that I know of in
any language that I have studied, which makes it harder to describe. This is
a structure where the infinitive is not really inferior, but it’s not the
main verb, nor independent either.

>
> Since w-ntwn is coordinated, people read this as a ‘coordinated main
> clause’
> (meaning ‘not subordinated’) and as referring to an event that happened,
> not a
> potential ‘purpose’. To paraphrase in BH ויתן vayyitten (and he appointed).
> That the event was in concert with and connected with previous events has
> always been assumed.
>

This paragraph is exactly what I meant by Western European grammatical
concepts—you are reading the infinitive as a Western infinitive. By
admitting that it was never understood that the infinitive stands alone, are
you changing the question on me?

>
> . . .
> > indicating results, and not a single case of an infinitive standing alone
> > in the place of a finite verb.
>
> …
>
> >> (You still haven’t cleaned up your mess with the Qumran text wnslwH.)
>
> > I already answered more than once that my initial reaction was because I
> > thought you referenced a different verb in that quote.
>
> Some of us have serious trouble with your claim.
>

Well that’s just too bad. That’s your problem, not mine.


> You protested too long, proclaimed the syntax of the whole text as
> ‘non-biblical’
> (without citing anything),


I got the same reaction to this as I got from reading the Jehoash forgery,
like listening to an immigrant who speaks English well only occasionally
using a wrong word or phrase. It’s slightly off, everyone can tell that he’s
not a native speaker, but it’s very hard to put it into words.


> and even protested against the specific mention of
> w-nslwH,


Because you wrote it in Latin letters, I misread it. If you can’t accept
that, …


> before trying a 'miscommunication' in a later post.
> The documentation is in a related thread for readers to make an independent
> appraisal of your skills at reading that text.
> Even at the end you did not admit that w-nislwH fits a Niph`al
> infinitive absolute morphology and that it is not the niph`al suffix verb,
> but you tried to explain the 'w' as scribal nonsense.
>

You didn’t check the text of Tanakh, did you? I did, using an electronic
search which said that this form does not exist in the context of a
following noun or pronoun with a lamed prefix.

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