Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Sidney wrote:

"The Jewish names of the Gods in the Septuagint, Judges 10.6: Theois (5
times; and 220 times in the entire Old Testament).  This is actually a
mistranslation into Greek, and should read "Theoi."

======

Oh dear! I know I'm risking shaming my mother again, Sidney, but I'm afraid 
you've outed yourself here. The word θεοῖς, to which you refer in Jdg 10.6, 
is simply the dative plural of θεός. To say that it is mistranslated and 
should read θεοί makes zero sense, and actually betrays a lack of 
understanding of how basic case works in Greek — one of the first things 
usually taught to students of Greek. But, I'll resist the temptation of 
giving you a Greek lecture on B-Hebrew.

As for the rest of your 'analysis' it also fails at a number of levels. 
Firstly, you need to distinguish between duals and plurals. Secondly, you 
work purely from the morphology of אלהים and make some faulty conclusions. 
Yes, morphologically the word is plural. No one would dispute that. However, 
if you look at how the word functions in basic syntax, you will see that 
despite the apparent plural ending, it is used with singular verbs. Now it 
could be that every time singular verbs are used with אלהים as subject that 
the verbs are wrong. It's possible, but highly unlikely. It is far more 
plausible an explanation of the frequency, semantics, and syntax that אלהים 
is treated as a singular noun. In other words, you need to take into account 
both morphology and function. If we were to use your morphology-along logic, 
we would have to conclude that all fathers (אבות) in the Bible were actually 
women, and all women (נשׁים) were actually men, which, when you put those two 
observations things together, means that everyone was a man.

As for your "Sid's Rule #7", it still makes no sense. You are still working 
on the faulty assumption that Hebrew verbs are all denominative such that 
there are no truly legitimate 'verbal' verbs in the language. And you claim 
that there are 'internal prepositions' within these so-called 'verbs'? I'm 
sorry, Sidney, I am going to shame my mother again and say that these 
assumptions are totally ridiculous. The ideas you are stating, when I can 
understand them, don't seem to reflect any real legitimate knowledge of the 
language. May I encourage you to do some legitimate, directed study into 
Hebrew with an openness to being taught something new. Perhaps then you might 
be able to have a meaningful discussion about the language. Until then, you 
will not find anyone really able to engage with you.


Yours shamefully yet again,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au