Jason Hare wrote:(1) Why am I able to successfully read the narratives of the Tanach without trouble?
Is that true? Or to quote yourself below, are you doing “… if you read the same text with the same mistakes twenty times, you don't improve your knowledge of the text. You just reinforce your mistakes and make yourself feel that you have a better understanding of it - and that everyone else is just plain wrong.”?
“Narratives”? Do you limit yourself here to books like Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and other historical sections when you say “narratives”?
To give a concrete example—using your modern grammar, or the grammar taught by Weingreen and Gesenius, can you explain the verbal usages in Proverbs 31:10–31, where there is a mixture of Qatal and Yiqtol verbs in a context of continuous, present action, in a way applicable to all of Tanakh? Don’t give the cop-out that this is poetry, because poetry, especially poetry intended to teach, doesn’t accomplish its goal unless it uses the same grammar as prose.
Jason Hare wrote:(2) Why, when we were doing translation exercises, was I able to correct your expressions so often??
I don’t remember a single correction. I saw you disagree with me based on two main issues: that I didn’t include the vowel points and the method I used to come to my translations.
The method I used, which you didn’t like, was as follows:
1) I recognized the passage that Weingreen had paraphrased and tweaked
2) I copied and pasted the original passage
3) I tweaked the pasted passage to match the tweaks that Weingreen had made.
You corrected none of my tweaks. You could not “correct” what I didn’t tweak.
The result of my method is that I ended up with different syntax and different vocabulary from what Weingreen and you expected.
Jason Hare wrote:Shouldn't you have a better grasp of the language than those of us whose knowledge of the language has been influenced by the modern language??
How can that not be true?
Jason Hare wrote:(3) Shouldn't you be able to demonstrate that your system produces better results??
Well, just look at the evidence.
Jason Hare wrote:This would include your ability to pass it on to students, to show that it renders a better grasp of the language, to outshine the traditional method and produce students with a clearer understanding and use of the biblical language??
We don’t know the answer to this question, because it hasn’t been tried.
Jason Hare wrote:You're espousing a system that you think is better, but you yourself are ignorant of the modern language and not really in a position to tell us what is going on in the minds of people who come from a traditional training in the language.?
I have had “a traditional training in the language”. The professor taught according to Gesenius using the textbook by Weingreen. I rejected that training because I could not apply it consistently to what I read as I read Tanakh through cover to cover. At that time, the only way I could read it fluently, was to ignore grammar. Now I can incorporate the grammar I understand into all of the Tanakh as I read.
Jason Hare wrote:You haven't demonstrated anything that you're claiming.?
So far you have evinced an ignorance to what I try to teach.
Jason Hare wrote:It's all just claims and amateurish attempts to undermine the authority of those who are, for lack of a better term, real authorities on the subject.?
What makes them “real authorities”?
As far as I can tell, Gesenius was just a hack. His goal was to describe Hebrew language through the lens of German rationalism and anti-Semitism. The only Hebrew he knew was Tiberian Hebrew. I don’t see that he did the careful research needed to back up some of his claims. That is particularly true with his dictionaries, the area with which I am most familiar of his work.
If anyone wants to do better, should he not start with a clean slate and see if he comes to the same results? Not just work on the basis of Gesenius?
Jason Hare wrote:You've got things all mixed up. When we read the Bible with the Tiberian points, it doesn't mean that we're reading later or "medieval" grammar.
Oh? The reason the Masoretes chose the points they did, is because of the understandings they drew from Tiberian Hebrew.
Jason Hare wrote:The only people I've ever met who thought that modern Hebrew was not beneficial for reading biblical Hebrew are people—let's not all be surprised together!—who do not themselves know modern Hebrew.
How can that not be true? One less language to contaminate our understanding of Biblical Hebrew? Cognate languages are the worst contaminators.
Karl W. Randolph.