Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

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