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  • From: fred putnam <fred.putnam AT gmail.com>
  • To: Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • Cc: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] cognate alphabet
  • Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 06:39:29 -0500

Arnaud,

2. Right--Hurrian was Hurro-Urartian. Sorry.

5. Ferdinand de Saussure was the first person to separate synchronic and
diachronic approaches to language. The diachronic approach, which dominated
the study of language in the 19th and early 20th centuries (following the
lead established by William Jones, 1788), assumed that etymology rather than
use determines meaning (a theory most publicly set aside by Webster's Third
New International Dictionary (1961), and decried with regard to its abuse in
biblical studies by James Barr in *The Semantics of Biblical Language* (also
1961). De Saussure's famous analogy was that the studying a language is like
analyzing game of chess: we can examine the sequence of moves that lead to a
particular position on the board (diachronic analysis), or we can study that
position (synchronic analysis), in which case the moves that brought the
game to that point are essentially meaningless--it doesn't matter how the
pieces arrived at their current positions; all that matters is where they
are and what they can do from that point on.

7. I'm afraid that we seem to be talking past each other at this point. I
say that they are not related, you say they are (distantly). If so, it is a
distance so remote that no one has yet discovered the connection. A study
done a number of years ago (I forget the source, perhaps *Hebrew Education*?)
demonstrated that American seminary students who had studied even one other
Indo-European languages found it easier to learn Greek than those who had
not, whereas studying a Indo-European language--any language--did not help
those same students when they studied Hebrew. This suggests a far remove
indeed (although, as you suggest, my reading in linguistics may not be as
current as yours).

Best wishes.

Fred

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 5:25 AM, Arnaud Fournet
<fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>wrote:

>
> From: "fred putnam" <fred.putnam AT gmail.com>
>
>
>> 2. Cognate Semitic languages (e.g., Ugaritic and Hurrian) and Greek (LXX)
>> are used from time to time to interpret biblical passages,
>>
> ***
> I suppose you meant: Cognate Semitic languages (e.g., Ugaritic), Hurrian,
> etc.
> Hurrian is certainly not a Semitic languages.
> A.
> ***
>
>
>> 5. BDB lists Hebrew from the Second Temple period as "NH" (= New (Late)
>> Hebrew); it also refers to the Mishna (abbreviated "Mish(n).") and Talmud
>> (abbr. "Talm."). Linguistic descent, however, has no bearing on a word's
>> antecedents. Both "dynamo" and "dynamite" were created from the Greek word
>> "dynamis", which refers to "power" or "strength", but no ancient Greek was
>> thinking of either dynamite or a dynamo when saying or writing "dynamis".
>> The English word "gossip" was "god-sib", meaning a friend who was close
>> enough to be a relative ("sibling"), normally the person who might be
>> asked
>> to be a child's godparent at their christening. It was a great compliment
>> to
>> be called a "gossip", because it meant that you were such close friends
>> that
>> you unburdened your hearts to one another. (Note how the word "gossip" is
>> used in many of Shakespeare's plays. Note also that it does not occur in
>> the
>> King James (Authorised) Version.) Eventually, however, the word referred
>> not
>> only to a bosom friend, but to someone who shared with others what they
>> had
>> received in confidence, and to "gossip" became a sin (and appears in
>> modern
>> translations where KJV reads "tale-bearer"). James Barr's work, *The
>> Semantics of Biblical Language*, is helpful on this point, as is Ferdinand
>> de Saussure, *Course in General Linguistics*.
>>
> ***
> To be frank I do not see what Saussure adds here!?
> A.
> ***
>
>
>
>
>> 7. On cognates, see any discussion of the Semitic languages, perhaps
>> beginning with Bergstrasser's *Introduction & Text Specimens* (not the
>> exact
>> title). On Greek, Hebrew and Greek are *not* cousins, any more than
>> Chinese
>> and English are "cousins". The two languages are not related, as you will
>> see if you read any discussion of linguistic families (so-called).
>>
> ***
> Actually they may be distant cousins.
> All these statements about "being not related" are overstatements or
> miswordings.
> A.
> ***
>
>
>
> On the
>
>> "omission of its children", see #5 (above). Its descendants are rarely
>> material witnesses to their ancestor.
>>
>> I strongly recommend that you do some reading in these areas and then come
>> back with questions; it will make the discussion far more profitable for
>> us
>> both (all):
>>
>>
>> - A college-level introduction to linguistics (e.g., George Yule, among
>> many others)
>> - General linguistics (e.g., John Lyons)
>> - Historical linguistics (e.g., Theodora Bynon)
>> - Comparative Semitics (e.g., articles in *Encyclopedia Judaica*,
>> *Encyclopedia
>> Britannica*, Bergstrasser (above))
>> - Lexical Semantics (e.g., Barr (above), Moises Silva, *Biblical Words
>> and Their Meanings*)
>>
>> I hope that this is helpful.
>>
> ***
>
> Thanks.
>
> Other references, sometimes more recent, are possible.
>
> Arnaud Fournet
>

--)---------------
"We are not yet what we already are" (J. Pieper).

Frederic Clarke Putnam, Ph.D. | Professor of Biblical Studies
Philadelphia Biblical University | 200 Manor Avenue | Langhorne, PA
19047-2990
http://pbu.edu | 1215-702-4502 | Fax: 1-215-702-4533 | www.fredputnam.org

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