Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"
Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 8:59 pm
Im curious to see an answer here, too.
bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org
http://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/
http://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=22472
Try not to forget to hit the quote button when you make a post like this. It would save us the trouble of (as in this case) needing to go backwards a page to see who posted before and what they said. Your post began a new page on my browser, and I had no idea what you were talking about (and I'm bad at filling-in-the-blanks, as I've probably said too much on Nerdy Language Majors, for instance). LOLJonathan Beck wrote:Im curious to see an answer here, too.
That's where I'm at as well. I don't think we should scrutinize beyond what is reasonable. We can admit that our pronunciation is only attested as far back as the Masoretes, but that doesn't mean that it is absolutely different from how it was in the Second Temple period. I don't see any reason to think that the Hebrew of the Masoretes was any different from the Hebrew of the Second Temple, and I don't see that it's particularly useful to be skeptical to the point of rejecting everything that goes back that far for our opinions that we imagine to have better reasons than theirs — especially if our opinions produce something that is both unpronounceable and too simplistic. You will notice that Karl's dictionary doesn't even list meanings based on binyanim. It doesn't matter that ספר means "to count" in the qal and "to tell" in the piel and "to be told" in the pual. Does the binyan really not matter?!Mitchell Powell wrote:I'll admit I come with a high degree of skepticism toward people who think they've cracked the Hebrew Bible in some significant way that is missed by modern scholarship, but I am curious.
And again (Randolph 2020:11):As far as I am able, I try to find the basic action denoted by a word, and list it without denoting all its variations caused by grammatical structures. I list verbs in their basic, Qal meanings. I don’t list the Niphal, Piel, Pual, Hiphil and Hitpael meanings as I expect the reader to be able to recognize the different binyanim and how they change meanings. Further information on grammar is in the grammar section at the end of this dictionary.
It's a student's dictionary, but it doesn't mention irregular forms or attempt to explain them. It assumes that the student understands grammar as it is taught in a standard textbook while denying the validity of that grammar. No attempt at a pronunciation is given, so students are provided with roots (without refer to the binyanim) but have no idea how they are supposed to speak the words aloud, unless they've studied a real grammar. It seems that the only use to be derived from it is by those who already know the language, and they will not find the dictionary all that fulfilling.This dictionary does not list all grammatical constructs, or Binyamim, the use of it [the dictionary] presupposes the reader's recognition of basic Hebrew grammar. This requires the recognition of the forms, both prefixes and suffixes, because they will not be listed in this dictionary except for some irregular forms. The definite article and interrogative ה) prefix) will not be listed here. The prefixed ב, ו, כ, ל and מ will almost always not be listed, except in cases where the same spelling can be understood as deriving from more than one root or they are recognized as making up a noun, so again using this dictionary requires basic understanding of Hebrew. Where the final ה of a feminine is changed to a ת or plural ות, they are listed using a final ה except many cases where the noun is never found ending in a final ה) though one needs to be careful here, as there are several nouns, mostly feminine and otherwise conjugated as a feminine, that end with a ת. (Where a word is found in Tanakh ending only in a ת, it is listed with a ת and not a ה. This dictionary also usually doesn’t include the accusative final ה indicating motion towards a goal. Again it’s expected that the reader recognize the from from the context.
kwrandolph wrote:How do you have conversations in a language that hasn’t been spoken for 2500 years and whose pronunciations have long been forgotten. You certainly don’t have conversations in that language.
Precisely. This is also the case with the study of works such as Beowulf. We don't know exactly how people spoke Old English, but we can approximate it. When it comes to pronunciation, it is more important to be consistent and comprehensible than it is to be historically precise.talmid56 wrote:kwrandolph wrote:How do you have conversations in a language that hasn’t been spoken for 2500 years and whose pronunciations have long been forgotten. You certainly don’t have conversations in that language.
The same way you can in Latin and in Ancient Greek. It is done with them on a regular basis. One doesn't have to know 100% how BH was pronounced to do so, just know a pronunciation that fits with what we know of the language. As there are numerous conversations recorded in the Tanakh, surely they could teach us something about how to start conversing in BH if we wanted to.