Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

I was gone for the weekend, then when I returned found I have one last
message I could post. Since I have one last message on this thread, let me
take it.


Jerry:


1) Indirectly, you brought up Mosaic authorship. I just built on what you
wrote. Sometimes the compositional dates are important, as they tell us
clues as to how people thought at that time.


2) What dates of literary style are you talking about? (I know you can’t
answer, so this is a rhetorical question.) The one to which I refer went
out of style before 1500 BC. During the Iron Age, the time of the prophets
and the Amarna tablets, titular and summary statements were at the
beginning. That’s still ancient from our standpoint. That the titular and
summary statements were at the end is a sign that this section was
particularly ancient.


3) Many people believe that Genesis 2:4 is the beginning of the second
chapter, but I think it makes more sense as the closing statement of the
preceding. It fits better with the whole of Genesis. Genesis 2:4 is closer
to Genesis 1 stylistically as well as being a summary of the chapter.


4) This is why I have problems with your reading, namely because שאף $)P
doesn’t have the meaning of “pant”.


Jeremiah 2:24 and 14:6 mentions animals sniffing the wind to find food and
water.


Amos 8:4 has “(the) needy” as a direct object, which makes no sense if
“panting” is meant, but it fits the context if hunting down, as a
bloodhound on the scent.


Psalm 56:2, “me” is the direct object of the verb שאף which doesn’t make
sense if it means “pant”. But using a dog to track him down, sniffing up
his scent, fits the context.


5) You wrote, “it hurries back to the place from which it rose in the first
place.” That’s not in the text. To read it that way is eisogesis.


Which gets us back to Genesis 1:1–2 — the first verse gives the action that
God created the universe, then the second verse describes certain aspects
of the earth that had just been created, one as “lifeless and still”, far
different from the watery chaos of the Enuma Elish and other ancient
cosmologies. Such a reading is consistent with the rest of the chapter as
well, both thematically and stylistically.


I never expected that there’d be such a controversy from asking about the
meaning of one, simple term, namely חוג.


Rolf Furuli: Thanks for your post. My knowledge of the term is based not on
a gloss in a dictionary nor on other translations, rather I have looked it
up in a concordance and analyzed each verse where it is found. I found that
it seems to refer to both two and three dimensional circles, so that while
I don’t insist that it must refer to a sphere, I do insist that no one can
rule it out either.


I never expected that this discussion would involve questions of cosmology,
but those questions are linguistic in so far as we are dealing with how the
ancient writers expected us to understand their texts. In the Bible, both
Old and New Testaments, particularly in the more poetic sections, an object
was often named not to refer to a particular object, but to an action or
state. This is most readily seen in the anthropomorphizing of the deity—did
the ancients really think that God was a man in the heavens, with a face,
arms, lips, etc. or did those descriptions merely refer to actions?
Thinking functionally rather than formally, these anthropomorphisms refer
to God’s actions (“upraised arm and stretched out hand” refer to the
actions of war, that he warred against the Egyptian gods and defeated them)
and not to his physical characteristics. The same thing is true of the
descriptions of the physical universe, e.g. “the sluice gates (not
“windows”) of heaven” refer to the downpour of water (action), not physical
gates in the heavens (form). The much maligned “medieval cosmology” is
understanding formally what the writers expected to be understood
functionally.


In closing, in deciphering the linguistics of the text, one needs to
understand the cultural expectations of the writers. The picture given in
Tanakh is that the writers expected to be understood functionally, showing
actions, nor formally; that even in the naming of objects that they were
sometimes to be understood as referring to actions symbolized by the
objects named, and not of physical objects themselves.


Karl W. Randolph.

On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 7:29 PM, Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Karl,
>
> Several problems here:
>
> (1)  Bringing in Mosaic authorship introduces a side issue that doesn't
> bring any clarity to the translation issue.
>
> (2)  Ancient literary style also had titular and summary statements at the
> beginning of the account as well; and this also true in many places of
> Hebrew narrative.
>
> (3)  As I read the account, I believe it is more likely that Gen 2:4 goes
> with what follows rather than with what precedes.
>
> (4)  For Ecc 1:5, you focused on a very narrow point with regard to the
> "pant" translation.  No, I agree with you that it does not mean "sniff";
> but rather, as I said, "pant," as is the case with, e.g., Job 7:2; Pss
> 56:2; 57:3; 119:1; Isa 42:14; JER 14:6.  Qohelet's point is that the sun
> itself partakes of the vanity, the absurdity, the cyclical nature that the
> rest of God's creation also partakes of.
>
> (5)  Again, it is not eisegesis.  The sun does three things in the
> passage:  it rises, it sets, it hurries back to the place from which it
> rose in the first place.  What path do you think the sun takes in that
> third movement?  It is not eisegesis -- it is simply reflective of the
> logic of the passage.
>
> Blessings,
>
> Jerry Shepherd
> Taylor Seminary
> Edmonton, Alberta
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