Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:59 am
kwrandolph wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:23 pmDon’t confuse Biblical Hebrew with modern Israeli Hebrew. There are so many things that are different between the two languages and what you illustrate here is one of them.
I’m not “confusing” anything except to say that your knowledge of Hebrew is insufficient because it isn’t a living language for you.
For that matter, Biblical Hebrew is not a living language for you.
Already we see in Ezra and Nehemiah that Biblical Hebrew was not a living language to them. It had already assumed the same status as medieval Latin in Europe 1500 years later. Yes, people spoke it, and the language changed including a new grammar, but they all spoke it as a learned, second language. It was not the language of the market nor at the hearth.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:59 am
Biblical and modern Hebrew use the word the same word לְהַקִּיף “to make a circle around something.”
It’s not the individual words that are the main difference that I notice. But even with the usage in modern Israeli Hebrew that you mention implies a subtle difference in meaning.
There are many words that are the same in both Biblical and modern Israeli Hebrews. I’ve never said differently. But there are also many words that are different.
It’s like Elizabethan or KJV English—it’s not the words that have dropped out of usage that throw me, rather the words that are still used, but their meanings have changed. An example is “prevent”—in KJV times still had the French meaning of “prevenir”. Unless you know those words, and there are hundreds of them, you cannot understand thoroughly Shakespeare nor the KJV.
Your living language is modern, Israeli Hebrew. Because it is a close cognate to Biblical Hebrew, knowing it can actually interfere with your efforts to understand Biblical Hebrew. Because the only Hebrew I know is Biblical Hebrew, I can have a feeling for the language that you can’t match. The pattern that knowing close cognates can interfere with one’s learning of a target language is well known.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:59 am
kwrandolph wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:23 pmThat’s a very strange action for a lion. What’s the probability that the ancients, who still had lions around them, would have had that meaning? How does that fit with hands and feet as written?
A strange action for a lion to move right and left around the prey that it has trapped, not allowing it to move without being in danger of a strike? Now you make me question your experience of the real world. The psalmist is saying that he feels trapped. That if he moves a hand, it will be attacked. If he moves a foot, it will be attacked. What’s odd about this?
What you have just described is not what the text of the Psalm says.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:59 am
kwrandolph wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:23 pmHere you go, changing things to fit your understanding.
If you really want to understand Biblical Hebrew, don’t change it to fit modern expectations. The reason the Masoretic points are so untrustworthy is because they changed the text through their points and Ketib / Qere pairs in order that their understanding would match the Tiberian Hebrew that they knew at that time. What is written is what is written. Analyze deeply what is written before emending the text.
Did you address my proposed division of the verse? If so, I didn’t recognize it.
As I said: “We have to deal with the fact that the Hebrew Bible often changes person or number unexpectedly and not make a big issue out of such things.”
This is still evading my direct question.
I think that happens less often than you think.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:59 am
The text itself shifts from second to third person.
How often does that happen without a corresponding shift in the subject?
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:59 am
Why do I always forget that you’re a dishonest interlocutor and cannot have a conversation without saying unfounded and ignorant things?
What a laugh! This is my opinion of you. Well, at least we agree on one thing, that the other person is ignorant. LOL!
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:59 am
You don’t know how to recognize an imperative, to determine what a verb is, or even to speak any form of the language that you want to claim expertise in, and yet you act like your approach to the text is better than that of anyone else.
Has it ever crossed you mind that I might just know Biblical Hebrew better than anyone else? Nah, of course not. Do you count reading Tanakh for understanding as the best way to learn Biblical Hebrew, a type of immersion learning? By your own admission on this forum, you haven’t done that. In fact, to my surprise, the majority of university professors who deign to teach “Biblical Hebrew” also have not read all of Tanakh over and over again, immersing themselves in the language. Instead what I find is that they study grammars and lexicons, that are copies of grammars and lexicons, that are copies … One finding that David Clines made in his survey of lexicons is that errors in lexical glosses sometimes could last for centuries because later writers copied earlier ones.
Do I know Biblical Hebrew perfectly? I don’t make that claim. I don’t expect that anyone does. You certainly don’t know Biblical Hebrew perfectly. The Masoretes didn’t know Biblical Hebrew perfectly. That’s one reason I don’t trust their points. Not counting the many times their points don’t correspond to the consonantal text.
Karl W. Randolph.