Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Paul Zellmer" <pzellmer AT sc.rr.com>]

Dave was much more polite than I was about to be when I read your response,
Fred.  And, Fred, were you a native speaker of Hebrew, you would not have
needed David Kolinsky's explanation.  You needed it because you are *not* a
native Hebrew speaker.

In addition, you might wish to read all of Deuteronomy.  There is a lot more
there than those laws which cover the Sabbath, and the priests were
commanded to remind the people of the entire body of law.  The division
between religious and secular does not exist in the Pentateuch.  It crept
into our culture through the Greek philosophers.  As for whether or not the
people would have understood what was read without an additional discourse,
are you implying that our English translations are incomprehensible to the
average American church attendee?  If they are incomprehensible, then our
translators have done a very poor job.  If they are indeed able to be
understood, perhaps there are a lot of ministers whose jobs should be done
away with for the very reasons that you pose concerning the priests.  Oh,
but it would be more serious for the ministers today, as the priesthood was
not professional.  They were to have other means of support.

Furthermore, since you said that you drew your conclusion from David
Kolinsky's explanation, then you need to somehow base your response to
David's explanation, not some unrelated link.  And if you answered my
question of what does it matter anyway to the linguistic study of the text
of the Tanach, I did not see it.

Paul Zellmer

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of dwashbur AT nyx.net
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 5:30 PM
To: B-Hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] guess work



On 5 Jan 2011 at 14:02, fred burlingame wrote:

> The conclusion flows naturally from the facts ...
> 
> Let's examine some facts relevant ...
> 
> a. does the average consumer of the language english have the
> slightest clue
> as to what this law means?
> 
> http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode08/usc_sec_08_00001631-
> ---000-.html
> 
> b. does even the average trained purveyor of this law understand
> this
> english language?
> 
> c. obviously, the answer to both "a" and "b" = negative.
> 
> d. and likewise, for the similar deuteronomic legal code in 882
> b.c., all as
> illustrated today by david's excellent explanation of the civil
> law
> then. ezra was not needed to "translate" in 442 b.c.; but to
> "explain" as
> david explained today; or so nehemiah 8:8 states.

Sorry, but you are comparing apples to rabbits again.  The law in the
Cornell link is not 
written in English; it's written in Legalese, an artificial dialect created
by lawyers to confound 
the rest of us while making themselves sound impressive.  Nothing in the
Deuteronomic 
code, or any of the rest of the Law for that matter, is even remotely
comparable.  So your 
conclusion flows naturally from...nothing.

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
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