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  • From: fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>
  • To: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] lock without a key
  • Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 22:36:44 -0500

Hello Dave:

Thanks for your comments and the "bear" analogy.

I recognize that the posters here apparently view this situation as much ado
about nothing. ..

But the fact remains we have one hebrew word (ha-yil) translated into two
independent english words (army and tangible goods).

And furthermore, this circumstance repeats itself across the masoretic
text.

I could be more accepting of the discount given to this condition, if we
were dealing with a comic book or some other frivolous publication. But the
enormous effort and expense invested to produce this lengthy masoretic text
(prior to printing press) implies the absence of frivolity to its component
parts.

I believe it (use of one word twice or more in physical proximity to
express different meanings) represents a significant literary tool for
binding thoughts or ideas together, in a way that the employment of separate
words lose.

regards,

fred burlingame

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 6:21 PM, <dwashbur AT nyx.net> wrote:

>
>
> On 2 Nov 2010 at 14:44, fred burlingame wrote:
>
> >
> > Hello Dave:
> >
> > Thanks for your informative comments.
> >
> > Some people discount, and some people inflate, the differing
> > characteristics of apples and
> > oranges. Differences abound however, between these plant products;
> > andas anyone can see.
> >
> > Likewise;
> >
> > a. when the hebrew text employs one set of three letters to
> > express bothverb and noun; and to
> > manifest different nounmeanings in repetitive usage of close
> > proximity;
> >
> > b. when the correspondingenglish text utilizes wholly unrelated
> > words to translate this single
> > hebrew word, appearing repetitively in close proximity;
> >
> > c. when this circumstance repeates chronically across the large
> > masoretic text with other hebrew
> > words;
> >
> > such conditions render the hebrew originaland english
> > translationakin to apples and oranges,
> > no matter what significance becomes attached to the distinctions
> > (such as semantics or
> > whimsical).
>
> As you say, we are looking at sets of three letters expressing different
> things. When there's
> a limited corpus of graphemes, that's going to happen.
>
> 1. He couldn't bear the thought that his brother had been killed by a bear;
> the bearing his
> brother followed should not have taken him near any wildlife.
>
> Here we have three instances of the same four-letter sequence, and none of
> the meanings
> are related. Two are nouns (one technically a gerund) and one is a verb,
> and if we were to
> render this sentence into another language, the target language would have
> to utilize very
> different words in each case to render that four-letter English sequence.
> We can, with tools
> like TWOT, assume that such letter sequences in Hebrew must be related, and
> try to find
> connections among their usages (in this case, the notion of "power" must be
> stretched a bit,
> at least IMNSHO), or we can examine them in situ, determine what they mean
> from context,
> and adjust our translations accordingly. I have very little interest in
> diachronic semantics, so
> I choose the latter.
>
> Dave Washburn
>
> http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
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