Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

You didn’t answer my central question, viz.: Where is your documentation? So far all you have sent me is your speculation.

On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 7:08 PM, <jimstinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

Karl:

 

You wrote:  “Incidentally, it was the translators of the LXX who called it the land of the Chaldeans. They knew the Hebrew name, yet they chose to use a different name. What did they know that our modern scholars don’t, or don’t want to, know?”

Look, places change names. For example, records say that my ancestors 3000 years ago lived in Turkey. Turkey is the modern name, not the name the place had at that time. Yet my statement is accurate. So likewise the LXX, were they giving the “modern” name for the place when they made their translation? Probably. And our common English name for the place comes through the LXX. And why did the LXX give that name? Was it because another place then had a name so similar to the ancient Hebrew name that it could cause confusion to its readers if they merely transliterated the Hebrew name? So how is using the “modern” name for the place negating the Hebrew?

 

I thought the question we were discussing is whether the unpointed received  H-e-b-r-e-w  Masoretic Text … 

You keep emphasizing that the Hebrew text is accurate, then why don’t you follow it? Why do you refuse to acknowledge that if you read it as it is written, then it indicates that Abraham lived centuries before even an old date for the Amarna Letters? Likewise his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons? How can we take you seriously if you don’t take the text as written? Either the text as written is myth, or accurate history, but not both.

You need to be honest with yourself that you are treating the Hebrew text as myth, a fiction that was historical fiction like Ivanhoe when it was written because according to your claim, the authors were putting the protagonists in a far more ancient milieu than when you claim they lived. The Hebrew language used in Genesis as analyzed by standard linguistic tools completely contradicts your claims. The text as written indicates that those were datable events in history with clues as to their dates, and to convince us of your claims, you need to show us why we should not follow those dates, why we should treat the text as myth.

You don’t have a single linguistic clue to back up your claims.

This latest try you tried to claim that SLM was a loan word, but others (plural) showed that it is a normal Hebrew word from a Hebrew root derived by Hebrew rules. It refers to an object that was known and used in ancient Canaan, even in Jacob’s time. So why don’t you just accept the linguistic findings?

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois

 

Karl W. Randolph.