Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 1:12 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:

> > Tell me if I misread you.
>
> You misread me. I learned Hebrew from reading the text,
> over and over and over, psalms, prophets, tora, and histories,
> before I ever sat down and read cover to cover
> just for cover to cover's sake.   Especially   helpful
> was having the morphology of the language
> unconsciously impressed deep down inside through
> modern Hebrew. All the theoretical stuff was on the side.
> And as any language learner knows, you don't learn a
> language from linguistics and analytical descriptions.
> That comes afterwards. But a specialist needs both.
> a. Fluent control of the language, which means BOTH-directions.
>

Both directions is no problem, as long as there is vocabulary to describe
what one wishes to talk about. With Biblical Hebrew, that limits us to the
ideas expressed in Tanakh. The moment we wish to speak about other ideas, we
need to import vocabulary and more, then we no longer speak Biblical Hebrew,
but a creole of sorts.


> (reading is different in a language where the brain can
> matrix process and handle the forms back and forth
> without conscious processing)
> b. And technical training, in order to sift wheat from chaff.
>

Define “technical training” when it comes to linguistics.

>
> CVCVCVCV turns out to be chaff and not Biblical Hebrew.
> We certainly differ there.
>

How do you know? The only data you show is from a millennium and more
later.

>
>
> On challenging a status quo,
> from the hard sciences: Newton is still correct within the
> proper framework, just like the the MT brings a marvelous set
> of data for testing and confirmation. Bohr and Einstein
> have an unresolved debate and people are welcome to
> join in. But before they can be taken seriously they need
> to understand Newton, Calculus, and Schroedinger. That's
> what schools are for. New generations are trained, which
> leads to making advances and changes, even if most work
> only within a status quo.
>

As for challenging the status quo, there’s an interesting article I first
read at
http://s8int.com/wrong-science2.html
downloadable as a .pdf file from
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/articles.html
One of the things brought out in the article is that being “taken seriously”
and being accurate are often very different things. That is especially true
in today’s environment where the willingness to falsify data to follow the
party line can be the difference between fame and fortune, and standing in
the unemployment line.

A common statement even back when I was in college was, “New ideas don’t
succeed because they convince others of their truth, they succeed because
the old guard dies off.” While that is an oversimplification, it is not far
from the truth, while Thomas Gold’s description of the “herd instinct” gives
another mechanism.

In your examples above, Newton was not in the mainstream. Rather he invented
a new style of mathematics to describe motion (previously algebra and
geometry could only describe bodies at rest) which was integral calculus,
and as a side effect, differential calculus. Others quickly jumped on the
bandwagon and expanded both because he was doing things that others couldn’t
do before. An example of the herd instinct.

>
> For language learning,
> and that is what is most important
> in this whole thread in my view,
>
> students are highly advised to fully internalize
>
> the most tested, complete, and studied dialect of Biblical
> Hebrew,   BH according to the Masoretic Text.
>

That is not Biblical Hebrew, that is Masoretic Hebrew. All we have left of
Biblical Hebrew is the consonantal text whose pronunciation is uncertain. At
times, Biblical Hebrew contradicts Masoretic Hebrew.

I wish corrections for the Tanakh from DSS and related MSS were widely
available. For example, the Nahal Heber scrap on Psalm 22 shows two
corrections in verses 17–18, both of which should have been anticipated just
from context, syntax and sentence structure of those verses. How many others
have been found, but are not available to the general public?

>
> Afterwards they will be able to study and compare other
> dialects, and to do that more accurately and more
> knowledgeably.
>

Masoretic Hebrew was one of the last things from classroom learning that I
gave up to learn Biblical Hebrew, and I haven’t looked back to keep up my
fluency in it.

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