Genesis 6:1 "born"

[Jonathan Beck]

Im curious to see an answer here, too.

[Mitchell Powell]

Karl, if you're still handing out copies of your dictionary and/or work on grammar, I'd be interested to take a look. Now, 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.

[Jason Hare]

Im curious to see an answer here, too.

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). LOL

[Jason Hare]

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.

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]

>>You will notice that Karl's dictionary doesn't even list meanings based on binyanim.

Is there a preface or something that outlines the reasons for that decision?

[Kenneth Greifer]

His dictionary is on the internet.
https://www.academia.edu/43875055/A_STU ... DICTIONARY

There is also an introduction of some sort. I didn't read it. I am kind of lazy.

https://www.academia.edu/43874422/Academia_intro

[Jason Hare]

The justification from the preface is that (Randolph 2020:8):

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.

And again (Randolph 2020:11):

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.

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.

The meanings provided are generalized and do not take specific contexts into account. Words are defined as if by intuition and subject judgments. Then again, you can clearly be your own judges. I personally remain unconvinced that anything is being gained by attempting to teach students not to read the language – that is, to read without sounding words out, not to notice subtlety in forms, to ignore the grammar that is essential for making sense of the language. I don't see any benefit in this approach.

In order for a student to use it, they would have to get the grammar (and pronunciation) from somewhere else. This system is not independent, and it has not gone half the distance necessary to declare itself self-sufficient for instructing students in biblical Hebrew. It assumes that students have used a better system to become acquainted with the language, and that at that stage they can simply delete the unnecessary information and declare it non-essential. To be worth its salt, it should be able to instruct a new student in the forms, teach them the general concepts, and provide explanations for the exceptions of accidence. It should be an independent resource that, at the very least, a competent teacher should be able to use to bring someone to reading fluency. Compare it to any teaching grammar, and you will see its drawbacks. Compare it to a reference grammar, and you will understand its uselessness.

Randolph, Karl. (2020). A Student’s Biblical Hebrew to English Dictionary. Retrieved from personal electronic mail.

[talmid56]

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.

[Jason Hare]

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.

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.

We're about to do a group reading on Zoom of the Letter of Paul to the Galatians, and we'll be reading from the Koiné Greek. Do I imagine that anyone in that group is going to read aloud the text of the letter in the same way that it passed through Paul's mind as he penned it? Absolutely not. I don't imagine that I speak Greek like a first-century Jew in the Hellenistic Levant.

That said, as long as we are being consistent in our reading of biblical Hebrew, how we pronounce it doesn't matter. One can speak Australian English or the English of a tribesman in Kenya—and as long as they are consistent and mutually intelligible, it doesn't matter. A purist might want to argue that we should try to pronounce Hebrew as it came out of the mouth of someone in 1,000 BCE, and they have their right to try to reconstruct it. But, that shouldn't stop the rest of the world from studying the language and having a consistent and clear pronunciation that they use with one another.

Thanks for pointing that out, Dewayne.

[talmid56]

I myself have exchanged some emails in BH with people, including some on this forum. I readily admit they were more competent in the language, certainly in composition, than I. Nevertheless, communication took place. A conversation of sorts. I've also had a habit for several years of speaking Biblical Hebrew to family pets. If they could have responded in Hebrew, those would have been conversations. We'll call them half conversations.

As for the Latin and Greek, I've done that too. For about three years now, until the covid crisis came, I had regular short conversations in Latin with a friend at church services. I've also done some text-based chats in Ancient Greek and exchanged some emails in that language. Did I make mistakes? Of course. I also worked at correcting and learning from them. Both experience and research in language acquisition (I've done both) show that language mastery is greatly helped by learning to communicate in the language. This is so even if the main goal, or main opportunity for using the skills, is with reading. I've worked with four living languages (French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese). In each case i achieved good reading comprehension after I started learning to communicate in the language, not before. I don't claim this is the only way to do it. But, it is a good way, even if you just do it a little.

I realize that the path to doing this with an ancient language is more difficult. No question there. But, difficult is not the same as impossible. Though I haven't had the honor of serving in the military, I like this military motto: "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible just takes a little longer."