Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:18 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>  Karl:
>
>
>
> 1.  You wrote:  “The Hebrew word is MDBR, normally translated as “desert”, 
> and from the history of Abraham the area around Beersheba was called a 
> MDBR.”
>
>
>
> But of more relevance to this thread, there was plenty of MDBR in southern 
> hill country, yet the word MDBR is never used in Genesis in describing the 
> Patriarchs’ XBRWN.
>
>
In common speech, desert dwellers talk about going up the mountains “out of
the desert” even though in technical speech that is “high desert”.


>   That’s because the Patriarchs’ XBRWN is the rural paradise of the eastern 
> Aijalon Valley.  No one in the Patriarchal  narratives is ever in rugged 
> southern hill country.
>
>
You contradict yourself, in that in an earlier message you insisted that
Abraham went throughout all the land.

>
>
> 2.  You wrote:  “Too bad you don’t know Hebrew, because “hurried” is 
> nowhere in the text.”
>
>
>
> Both the JPS 1985 and Robert Alter’s translations use the word “hurried” or 
> “hastened” in translating Genesis 19: 27.  E.A. Speiser uses the phrase 
> “hurried back”, and comments on this very issue [at p. 141 of his Anchor 
> Bible translation of Genesis (1962)] as follows:
>
>
They are wrong. If you look at the term $KM in a concordance, there are
times that it refers to normal rising up, and when to emphasize that the
rising up was in the morning, the word “morning” is added. Nowhere does it
indicate a hurried pace.

>
>
> …
>
>
>
> Sodom cannot be southeast of the Dead Sea, because one cannot see that area 
> from a mountaintop near Bethel,
>
>
Thanks for agreeing with me.


>  and Lot would have known nothing about that area, never having been there.
>
>
How do you know? How much did he travel around the land before this event?
He could very well have visited there, at least viewed it from Hebron from
an earlier travel. So where is your information that he knew nothing about
Sodom when he made that choice? Even the Hebrew verbal use can include what
he had viewed earlier, not necessarily limited to what was in view at that
moment.


> …
>
>

> No person in the Patriarchal narratives was ever southeast of the Dead Sea 
> or in southern hill country.  N-e-v-e-r.
>
>
Cite your sources! To be believable, you need sources other than your
idiosyncratic readings of English translations. Again you contradict
yourself, in that you recognize that the quickest route from Egypt to Bethel
while avoiding the heat of the lowlands is through Beersheba, then up to
Hebron, then along the ridge-line to Bethel. Especially if they wanted to
avoid destroying the crops of the coastline cities by the grazing of their
huge flocks. Have you not admitted that yourself earlier?

>
>
> Jim Stinehart
>
> Evanston, Illinois
>
>
After thinking about this for a moment, I don’t think I will respond if you
answer this posting. You have been corrected on your historical references,
on Biblical Hebrew usage, archeological finds contradict your claims, not a
single scholar or even semi-scholar agrees with you, etc., yet none of that
seems to matter to you.

Going from memory, you once claimed that if the text said that Lot entered
Zoar just as the sun rose over the horizon, that that would ruin your whole
theory. People told you that sure enough, that’s exactly what the text
indicates. Yet here you are, still pushing the same theory.

I see no use in continuing this discussion.

Karl W. Randolph.