Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Donald:

OK, I see your point. This looks like one of those splitting hair deals of
which grammarians are fond of making.

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 12:09 AM, Donald R. Vance, Ph.D. <
donaldrvance AT mac.com> wrote:

> We are talking about the MT. If you want to make up your own vowels, go
> ahead, but don't claim to be talking about Hebrew.


Who said anything about making up one’s own vowels? It should be fairly
obvious that the MT vowels are not the same as pre-Exile Hebrew, which are
unknown today, therefore one could make the claim that MT is not Hebrew. I
think that sort of argument is a bit ridiculous, therefore merely claim that
it preserves a pronunciation tradition of that time and place, but that it
is still Hebrew.


> Personal names also don't get pronominal suffixes.


I agree with you there, as I don’t know of any. In meaning found in English,
but not Hebrew.


> …. As for your examples in Judges, every one is "Beth-Lehem, Judah" and
> yes, they are appositional phrases and every published grammar that I know
> of treats them that way. However, as it turns out, Beth-Lehem would look the
> same in the absolute and the constuct states, so there is no morphological
> guide here. We say Atlanta, Georgia without the genitive marker "of"; they
> are simply in apposition. Beth-Lehem, Judah would follow that pattern.


This looks like an imposition of Western (Into-European) grammar onto
Biblical Hebrew. You may call it apposition, functionally, however, it is
identical to the construct state, a grammatical form not found Western
grammar. These examples mention Beth-Lehem that belongs to Judah (to
differentiate it from Beth-Lehem that belongs to Zebulun), a clearly
construct idea.

For those of us who think functionally rather than formally (a discussion of
the differences is found at http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Hebrew_thought),
we give this the “duck test” (If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck,
quacks like a duck…), so here we see something that looks like a construct,
functions like a construct, well … ?


>
>
> Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
> Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
> Oral Roberts University
> dvance AT oru.edu
> donaldrvance AT mac.com
>
>
> As this applies to the thread, this looks like Genesis 14:6 mentions the
towns of Hararam that belongs to Seir, and Ayl that belongs to Paran. In
English would be appositional, but in Hebrew looks and functions like the
construct.

Karl W. Randolph.