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You have spoken of the etymological fallacy (J. Barr (1968) "The Semantics of Biblical Language" has a fine discussion). But you have repeatedly comitted what I would call the "meaning fallacy" (i.e., you have used the word "meaning" without qualification, as if "meaning" is one and the same thing). For example, you have said that NP$ has several "meanings". If "meaning" in this case refers to "lexical meaning in Hebrew", I disagree, and I would argue that NP$ has only one meaning (there is no diachronic difference in the use of NP$ in the Tanakh). I equate lexical meaning with the concept in the mind signaled by the word inside a particular presupposition pool. Some Hebrew words can signal more than one concept and therefore have more than one meaning.
I use the principles of Psycholinguistics as a point of departure (J. Aitchison (1989) "The Articulate Mammal An Introduction to Psycholinguistics"; (1993) "Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon"). The background for the use of the "core" of a concept, is the tendency of people in Psycholinguistic experiments to have an idea of an ideal exemplar of a concept, a "prototype". The robin has for example been viewed as more "birdier" than the ostrich and the penguin. ...
... Hebrew concepts cannot be defined, they could only be known by those having the same presupposition pool. The best we can do is to look at all the occurrences of NP$ to get an idea of a "prototype," and that can be "a living creature". The "core sense" relates to this "prototype". The context indicates which part of the concept the author wants to make visible in a particular clause (and that is not always the core), or the reference of the word in the clause. What is made visible, or the references are not different "(lexical) meanings" of NP$, because the word has only one lexical meaning. This seems to be close to what Karl is saying.
When translators of a literal translation choose one English word to represent the "prototype" or core of the concept, that does not necessarily represent ignorance on the part of the translators (we should not be quick to doubt others motives or abilities). It simply represents one legitimate approach to translation, namely to try to convey the Hebrew concepts to modern people and let the readers do much of the interpretation. ...
... When the translators of idiomatic translations find English words for what is made visible in a particular clause (situation), or what is referred to, this is a legitimate approach as well. Such translators interpret the text to a much greater extent than those who make the literal translation, and much more theology is introduced in such a translation , but many readers want it this way.
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