Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:04 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>  Karl:
>
>
>
> You wrote:  “To look at a record that is readily available, look at Ezekiel 
> 21:2–3
>
> (20:46–47 in English) talks about the forest of the Negev. This was written
>
> during the Babylonian Captivity, well into the iron age, yet it mentions a 
> forest in the Negev.”
>
>
>
> The key word there is Y(R.
>
>
>
> JPS1985 translates Y(R there as “brushland”.
>
>
You need to show examples within Hebrew. Translations don’t count.

>  Gesenius says of Y(R, in part:  “thicket of briers, …rugged place…Eze. 21: 
> 2,3”.
>
>
Gesenius has been criticized on this list for inaccuracies. Where did he get
this meaning? I would not be surprised if it is from a belief that the
present is the key to the past, and since forests were not found in the
south, in the Negev, in his day, therefore they didn’t in Ezekiel’s day
either.

Gesenius was part of that anti-Semitic, anti-Christian cabal that invented
and developed that theory that has since been refined and called the
“Documentary Hypothesis“, more popularly known as the “JEPD Theory”. One of
the reasons he wrote his dictionary was to develop “evidence” for his
beliefs. One of the ways to make his dictionary “evidence” was to give
unique definitions to individual uses of terms to fit his beliefs, his
religion. Another was to bring in meanings from cognate languages that were
not found in Hebrew. Both of these practices are bad linguistics.

>
>
> One of the meanings that Strong’s gives for Y(R is “a copse of bushes”.
>
>
Strong was not a Hebrew scholar.

>
>
> One of the meanings that BDB gives for Y)R at p. 420 is “thicket”.
>
>
BDB were disciples of Gesenius, therefore the same criticisms leveled
against Gesenius fit BDB.

>
>
> Yes, I well realize that Y(R often means “forest”.  But it can also mean 
> “brushland”, “thicket of briers”, “a copse of bushes”, or “thicket”.
>
>
What you need to do is to show evidence from within Hebrew that Y(R meant
other than forest in other Biblical passages. If none exists, then this
passage in Ezekiel is historical evidence for at least one, if not more,
forests in the Negev as late as the iron age. That joins other historical
evidences that within recorded history, that the Negev dried out from being
a savannah with patches of forest able to support vast herds of sheep, to
its present desert.


>  Jim Stinehart
>
> Evanston, Illinois
>
>
Karl W. Randolph.