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  • From: George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>
  • To: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Circle חוג
  • Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 02:57:06 +0000

Karl,

They are figures of speech to us today who live on this side of the
Copernican revolution. This does not mean they were figures of speech in
antiquity. They could be, but we'd need to see the evidence. Even the
Ptolemaic universe, as I understand it, was geocentric rather than
heliocentric. Therefore, when the ancients said, "The sun rises," they
actually thought that the sun rose. If they didn't think that, where are the
descriptions for what they did think was happening? Why did they use this
particular 'figure of speech', and not give us any other ways of really
describing what was happening as they understood it, in fact they understood
'sunrise' and 'sunset' as purely figurative?

In terms of biblical 'apostasy', I don't see what that has to do with the
architecture of the universe in the ancient mindset. Apostasy seems to be a
covenantal concept, describing disobedience and/or disloyalty to the covenant
deity. Please show me where a biblical writer discusses having the wrong
cosmology as 'apostasy'. Also, would we have the same standard of 'orthodoxy'
about their biology? If so, we'd have to consider Jeremiah, who thinks with
his kidneys, as an apostate.

Job 26.10 is the verbal form of the root.

As for your other arguments, you're dealing with a series of 'could'
statements, for each of which there is another 'could not'. These kinds of
arguments are merely discussing possibilities and ignoring the hard contexts
in which the relevant words occur. In other words, it is an acontextual
approach to semantics that entertains possibilities by overlooking hard data
that suggests plausibilities.

You can entertain the possibilities all you like. I could propose that חוג
actually means dodecahedral prism because it might be related to the root for
making pilgrimage, and all of Israel, the twelve tribes, were told to make
pilgrimage, and therefore the number most naturally associated with that root
is twelve. But how are you going to assess the viability of this argument?
It's possible!

But at the very least, to use your own argument, חוג might mean sphere, but
it also might not. It might also mean just circle or ring. And indeed, that's
how the ancient Greek translators did understand it. Keep putting forth
possibilities, but I've yet to see an argument of plausibility.



GEORGE ATHAS
Dean of Research,
Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
Sydney, Australia




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