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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: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:48:37 +0000

Posted on behalf of Rolf Furuli:

Dear listmembers,

We cannot view Hebrew Lexical Semantics in the light of Greek or Latin
translations; we need to study the Hebrew text in its own right. The problem
we all meet in such a study, is that our horizon of understanding, our
religious and philosophical views, and the accepted views of our academic
institutions tend to color our judgements The best we can do is to keep this
problem in mind and to try to be as balanced as possible.

The English meanings for a Hebrew word that we find in a Hebrew-English
lexicon are only glosses—the most common English words used to translate a
Hebrew word—and not the lexical meaning of the word. The lexical meaning of a
word, such as XWG existed in the minds of native speakers of old. Modern
Psycholingiustic experiments suggest that a word represents a concept in the
minds of native speakers. Such a concept has a clear core but is more fuzzy
at the edges. A native speaker will, on the basis of the context,
instantaneously understand the part of the concept in the mind that a word
signals. The core meaning of XWG evidently is circle, and the nature of the
concepts in the mind indicates that the word could refer to any circular
object, including spherical objects. In Isaiah 40:22 it is said tha God
dwells above the XWG of the earth. Because the word is so rare, only a native
speaker would know what XWG signals in this context.

Regarding the following statement: "Also, everything seems to indicate that,
in terms of cosmology, the Israelites were actually not all that different
from those around them," I have some comments. The background for my opinion
on this issue is that I have translated Athrahasis into Norwegian, and that I
have read a great part of Gilgamesh in class together with my students. This
requires a careful analysis of the text. In the book "Gilgamesh og Athrahasis
to babylonske helter" (Gilgamesh and Atrahasis two babylonian heroes), I
listed 23 paralells between Genesis and these two accounts. It is hardly
possible that these parallel accounts could have originated independently.
Thus, one account borrowed from the other, or the both stem from a common
source.

I draw two conclusions from my studies, 1) the "quality" of the Babylonian
and Genesis accounts are very different, and the writer of Genesis did not
borrow from babylonian sources, and 2) the cosmology of Genesis and the
Babylonian accounts is different. The Babylonian accounts are polytheistic;
the gods are not able to sleep because humans have become so many (something
the gods did not anticipate when they created them) and makes so much noise.
So the gods decide a flood to exterminate the people. There are intrigues
between the gods, drunkennes, lying, murdering etc. This is what I mean by
"quality," a poor quality. There is a great contrast between the
monotheistic account of Genesis. Before someone objects to my conclusion
number 2), Please make a careful analysis og the Babylonian word Tiamat and
the Hebrew word THWM. A correspondence is often seen here, and the view is
that the writer of Genesis borrowed from Babylonian accounts. An an alysis
will reveal that this is hardly possible. I use this example to illustrate
superficial correspondences.

Any study or research is based on one or more paradigms or axioms. One such
paradigm is that all ancient accounts dealing with cosmology are similar—they
all represent an outdated world view. From a strictly scientific point of
view, this is a natural paradigm, because supernatural (metaphysical) sources
are a priori excluded from science. However, any study where the conclusions
are reached before the study starts is prejudiced and do not meet scientific
standards. Even though metaphysical approaches are excluded from science, in
the discipline of Exobiology (astrobiology- the study of life in the
universe) approaches that are close to the metaphysical ones are used (i.e.
interpretations of signals from the universe that indicate the existence of
living entities—are the signals so complex that they must come from living
entities?). So, it seems to me that a good approach in the study of the
Tanakh is neither to include nor to exclude what is supernat ural, but let
the text speak for itself. This will prevent us from drawing particular
conclusions before we start our study.


Best regards


Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway





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