Biblical Hebrew Forum

[fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>]

Hello Isaac:

Thanks for your comments.

Please allow me to respond in reverse order.

1. I am very interested in your planned experiment. I wait with great
anticipation to hear the results of whether the secular,
fluent, hebrew speaker in 2011 can understand, at all, hebrew language of
torah read or spoken to him.

2. Perhaps mrs. einstein was the smarter of the two. Didn't she have to
abandon her mathematics and take another job to support his thinking?
Perhaps mrs. einstein would opine that "ba-ra" simply means "to fill." ...
:)

3. Thickness implies being? I agree.

regards,

fred burlingame

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 9:01 PM, Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu> wrote:

> 1. I consider root ZB, ZV as composed of the two single consonant roots
> Z+B, namely, זע+בא or עז+עב or יצא+עבה or צאה+בעה. With a B, it is for the
> coming out of bodily fluids ,and with a V, it is for the coming out of
> light.
> 2. The English "to come" is somewhat misleading. BA is 'to be', and to be
> means to have עובי. How can you otherwise 'be'? ANI BA-BAYIT means I am
> home.
> 3. The question is what is "understand". Even Einstein did not understand
> what is really meant by בראשית ברא אלוהים את השמים ואת הארץ
> I don't see any inherent difference between the language of the Torah and
> the language spoken today, except for this funny  VA-YI-GA$
> (come-he-approach, presently-he-approach) form, which is now outmoded. I
> will try to find someone young speaking good Hebrew, but ignorant of the
> torah (in the diaspora it is easy as may children of Israeli parents speak
> good Hebrew but have gone to English school and have never opened the Hebrew
> bible) and read to him some passages and see if he gets it.
>
> Isaac Fried, Boston University
>
>  On Jan 31, 2011, at 7:30 PM, fred burlingame wrote:
>
>  Hello Isaac:
>
> Sorry about the mischaracterization of your granddaugther.
>
> If I understand you correctly, zee-vah זיוה the popular name; and zeev-ah
> זיבה the illness, have a common etymology. And that commonality includes the
> identity of letters "vav" ו and "bet" ב ; and the single root meaning: "to
> come."
>
> The verb עבה "a-va" as thick, and as expressed in noun form 1 kings 7:26, I
> suppose I can see as emanating from the root letter "bet," ב "to come."
>
> Your comment in your paragraph 2 is most interesting. I thought that a
> person raised and trained in the hebrew language spoken in israel today,
> cannot, absent special additional training, understand a reading of the
> torah? Am I incorrect in this conclusion?
>
> In other words, the average college educated person in america, who never
> read the english language bible, can nonetheless understand the
> english language of the bible being read to him the first time at say age
> 21.
>
> Is that true for the average college educated person in israel who has
> never read the torah? Can she understand the torah being read to her for the
> first time at say age 21? ... Or does such a person exist?
>
> Thanks for your comments.
>
> regards,
>
> fred burlingame
>
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu> wrote:
>
>> 0. She is not my "relative", she is my granddaughter, and she is not "very
>> young", she is 5 years old.
>> 1. Yes. ABAH and AWAH mean that something came, BA, materialized עבה (or
>> עוה), and settled in our consciousness, driving us to yield to it's, often
>> vehement, insistence. So, BA LI is a clear and succinct ANI MIT-ABAH
>> (namely, מתאוה or מתעבה) LE-.
>> 2. there is no such thing as "modern" Hebrew.
>> 3. I return to my previous example. You may call (by voice) your daughter
>> ZIYBAH, but you must write it ZIYVAH (the registrar may refuse to register
>> ZIYBAH in order to protect the dignity and reputation of the child). We are
>> calling her ZIYBAH (which is the same as ZIYVAH), but we know that it is
>> written with a vav. Seeing the word and hearing the word are
>> interconnected.
>> 4. All you have to do to study Hebrew etymology is to put your mind to it.
>>
>> Isaac Fried, Boston University
>>
>>  (Isaac Fried, Boston University
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>