Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <davidlwashburn AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Mike Burke <michaelgburk AT yahoo.com> wrote:

>>>>An electronic search of Hamlet would either turn up or not turn up the phrase we were looking for, depending on whether he used it there or not. That's what this list is for: dealing with the language of the Hebrew Bible as we have received it, and seeking to understand it.<<<<

If you wanted to understand the language of Shakespeare, there would be no reason to limit yourself to the text of Hamlet "as we have received it," and every reason to look at The King James Bible, Julius Caesar, Henry V, the Merchant of Venice, the Taming of the Shrew, etc.,etc., etc.

We don't have any of those things for biblical Hebrew. If you're just trying to build hypothetical phrases in biblical Hebrew that are analogous to something you see in other languages or texts, this probably isn't the place to do it. We deal with the text as it has come to us. One reason your project likely won't work is, we have such a small corpus of material with which to determine the ins and outs of BH it's an uphill job just to work with what we have, to say nothing of trying to make speculative phrases. We don't have enough preserved to try and revive it as a spoken language like this.

Example: A Hebrew man has been out in the field all day, doing whatever he does, and he comes home to discover that his wife has rearranged her hair. She pats it and says "How do you like my new _____________?" My new, what? We have no idea, because we don't have anything in the preserved material that's analogous to "hairdo." I suppose we could try something like S(R (SWT, which is roughly, "hair (to) do" but that's just silly.

You're asking for the impossible. It has nothing to do with any level of scholarship or learning. It has to do with the fact that none of us can create something ex nihilo. Plus, we have our hands and lives full just trying to comprehend the text that has come to us; speculating about what else might have been done with that language is pointless for our endeavors.

-- 
Dave Washburn

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