B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

To All:

I’m reading through 1 Kings 6–7 and it’s slow going frankly because of all the seldom used architectural and sculptural terms with uncertainly understood meanings. You’d think that after reading this through so many times and having written a dictionary on it, that it should be clear by now, but it isn’t. As I try to attach Bible verses to the dictionary entries, I find myself questioning anew the meanings.

Here’s the question: was the main hall sixty cubits long, with the Holy of Holies built within the main hall, or was the main hall forty cubits long, with the Holy of Holies a twenty cubit extension attached to the backside?

It also looks as if the walls were strengthened with flying buttresses.

Then the whole temple was surrounded by a colonnaded gallery.

The two bronze pillars were about six feet, two meters, within the gallery.

What do you all think?

Karl W. Randolph.

Truthfully, I gave up trying to sort all that out a long, long time ago.

davew wrote:Truthfully, I gave up trying to sort all that out a long, long time ago.

LOL! I’m really tempted to do so again.

Seriously, by trying to understand all of Tanakh helps prevent me from being lazy and misunderstanding other areas that may be more important to modern readers.

Karl W. Randolph.

To give an example of the difficulty of deciphering this section, I just spent an hour just trying to make sense of 1 Kings 7:30 — it just doesn’t fit the standard dictionaries. In analyzing the sentence structure, it appears that כתפת has the meaning of “extension”, or the first time in the verse as an adjective “extending” rather than the normal dictionary meaning of “shoulder”. No wonder people just throw up their arms in frustration when trying to read this section.

Karl W. Randolph.

What "normal dictionary meaning" are you talking about? Cf. on 1Kgs 7:30:
DCH: bracket, cross piece
KBL3: side piece of the axle
Zorell: pillar (sustenaculum).

Sebastian:

Sebastian Walter wrote:What "normal dictionary meaning" are you talking about? Cf. on 1Kgs 7:30:
DCH: bracket, cross piece
KBL3: side piece of the axle
Zorell: pillar (sustenaculum).

What and who are DCH, KBL3, Zorell? I have never heard of these before. You can’t expect people to know obscure references.

I still have an electronic copy of Davidson’s Lexicon and a paper copy of Lisowski’s concordance, and neither has an entry for כתפת indicating that tradition hasn’t recognized that word as a lexeme.

Karl W. Randolph.

Sorry.

DCH: Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (David J.A. Clines) - 1993-2011.
KBL3: Hebräisches und aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament (Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner) - 1967-1990.
Zorell / ZLH: Lexicon Hebraicum et Aramaicum Veteris Testamenti (Franziscus Zorell S.J.) - 1968.

But they aren't really that obscure.
You wrote your own dictionary without knowing dictionaries more up-to-date than Davidson?

Sebastian Walter.

Sebastian Walter wrote:But they aren't really that obscure.

Sometimes I wish this forum had a "like" button!

Sebastian Walter wrote:DCH: Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (David J.A. Clines) - 1993-2011.
KBL3: Hebräisches und aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament (Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner) - 1967-1990.
Zorell / ZLH: Lexicon Hebraicum et Aramaicum Veteris Testamenti (Franziscus Zorell S.J.) - 1968.

But they aren't really that obscure.

OK, I’ve heard of Koehler and Baumgartner, and seen some examples of their definitions (here the context argues against their interpretation), I just had never heard of “KBL3” before.

The other two dictionaries? Nope, I’ve never heard of them before.

Sebastian Walter wrote:You wrote your own dictionary without knowing dictionaries more up-to-date than Davidson?

Sebastian Walter.

I also have Lisowski. While that book is primarily a concordance, he also gives glosses as to the words’ meanings. I noticed that his glosses tend to be more accurate than other dictionaries I consulted (I found a few examples where his English meaning was wrong, but his German gloss correct, indicating that he probably pulled the English glosses out of a German - English dictionary). I attributed the greater accuracy to the fact that he looked at the words as they were used in Tanakh in preparation of his concordance.

I also had Gesenius, but as I stated before, it was inaccuracies in that dictionary that started me in writing my own dictionary. I started writing the corrections in the margins, which led to my dictionary, in fact had largely finished my first edition, before David J.A. Clines published his dictionary (assuming the earlier date you list is his first edition).

Karl W. Randolph.