Where are the case endings in Hebrew?

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kwrandolph
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Re: What is Tanakh?

Post by kwrandolph »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:I didn’t set out to study Hebrew, I set out to study Tanakh.
What is Tanakh? Is Tanakh a dialect or language related to Hebrew?
“Tanakh” is the Jewish word for what Christians call “Old Testament”.
Stephen Hughes wrote:I mean what do you now feel that the basis of understanding Hebrew verbs is? (If it is not tense and aspect, what underlies the differentiation of the verbal system? What basis do you use for your understanding of difference and similarity?)
I now think it is modality, but some of the moods are unknown to European recognized moods, and one, indicative mood, is indicated by both conjugations.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Karl are you saying that the chapter divisions are inaccurate?
Sometimes. The chapter and verse numbering systems were developed in the late medieval period, and those who made them didn’t always agree with each other.

In reading texts in the language, it’s possible to recognize how words work together to make meaning. The totality of understanding may not be immediate, but after a while one merely expects certain patterns as an aid to understanding the text, and how not to read the text.

Karl W. Randolph.
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Kirk Lowery
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Re: Where are the case endings in Hebrew?

Post by Kirk Lowery »

"Tanakh" תַּנַ"ךְ is an acronym of the three Jewish divisions of the Hebrew Bible: Torah תּוֹרָה "instruction, law", Nevi'im נְבִיאִים "prophets", and Ketuvim כְּתוּבִים "writings". An older term for the canonical books was mikra מקרא "reading, that which is read (aloud)". Today both terms are used interchangeably for the Bible.
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George Athas
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Re: Chapter divisions - a religion based on evolution?

Post by George Athas »

Stephen Hughes wrote:What is this "secular scholars ... have a religion based on evolution" section about? :?
Let's not pursue this comment please. It has nothing to do with Biblical Hebrew and the original assertion is bordering on ad hominem.

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Re: Chapter divisions - a religion based on evolution?

Post by George Athas »

kwrandolph wrote: If we allow that Genesis was written compiling older documents, we find a literary tradition that posits that Genesis 1:1–2:4 is the oldest section. The next oldest is Genesis 2:5 – 5:2, the next Genesis 5:3 – 6:9. And so forth.
On what basis are you asserting this, Karl? Most tradition critics and redaction critics would say otherwise, arguing that Gen 1.1 – 2.4 probably comes from a time later than the material in 2.5 – 5.2. The first section implies the religious atmosphere of the Persian Era, when people began simply to refer to 'God' without reference to any particular deity's name. The section in 2.5 – 5.2, however, seems to be earlier.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Where are the case endings in Hebrew?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

kwrandolph wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:
kwrandolph wrote: wrote:I didn’t set out to study Hebrew, I set out to study Tanakh.
What is Tanakh? Is Tanakh a dialect or language related to Hebrew?
“Tanakh” is the Jewish word for what Christians call “Old Testament”.
Kirk Lowery wrote:"Tanakh" תַּנַ"ךְ is an acronym of the three Jewish divisions of the Hebrew Bible: Torah תּוֹרָה "instruction, law", Nevi'im נְבִיאִים "prophets", and Ketuvim כְּתוּבִים "writings". An older term for the canonical books was mikra מקרא "reading, that which is read (aloud)". Today both terms are used interchangeably for the Bible.
Thank you two for you answers.

Is there is a recognisable yet non-pejorative English word (like BCE for BC), that we could use instead of "Old Testament", which implies both obselescence and its superscession. Is "The Hebrew Bible" a neutral term?

If there is only this foreign word "Tanakh", why is the word used here without a "The"? There are words for "the" in Hebrew (ה) and Yiddish ( דער etc.).
Stephen Hughes BA (Greek), BTh, MA (Egyptology)
וַאֲהַבְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־הַגֵּ֑ר כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃ (Deut. 10:19)
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Re: Where are the case endings in Hebrew?

Post by Kirk Lowery »

Stephen,

Speaking as a Protestant Christian, I don't understand Old Testament as a pejorative term. But others do. I decide which term to use based upon context. For B-Hebrew and public forums, I usually use "Hebrew Bible" as a neutral term. As for BCE vs BC, that's another debate and outside our forum's parameters.

As a native speaker of English, I don't "feel" the need for a definite article, probably because "Tanakh" is a proper noun, not a common noun. "Bible" is a common noun, so when we refer to the literature we call "Bible" we need to distinguish it from all the other "bibles". But the real answer to this is, "...because that's what everybody does." ;)
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kwrandolph
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Re: Chapter divisions - a religion based on evolution?

Post by kwrandolph »

George Athas wrote:
kwrandolph wrote: If we allow that Genesis was written compiling older documents, we find a literary tradition that posits that Genesis 1:1–2:4 is the oldest section. The next oldest is Genesis 2:5 – 5:2, the next Genesis 5:3 – 6:9. And so forth.
On what basis are you asserting this, Karl? Most tradition critics and redaction critics would say otherwise, arguing that Gen 1.1 – 2.4 probably comes from a time later than the material in 2.5 – 5.2. The first section implies the religious atmosphere of the Persian Era, when people began simply to refer to 'God' without reference to any particular deity's name. The section in 2.5 – 5.2, however, seems to be earlier.
On what basis do you make this claim? What historical documents do you have that back you up? Without historical documents, how is this claim no more than speculation based on nothing?

I have previously referred to the documented history of the Documentary Hypothesis as being founded on a belief of evolution and not without a certain amount of anti-Semitism. It’s anti-Semitic to assume that Solomon couldn’t have thought the ideas he expressed in Qohelet, therefore Qohelet was written in the Hellenistic age. It’s anti-Semitic to claim that no Jew or Hebrew would have referred to ‘God’ without reference to any particular deity’s name before the Persian era. It’s anti-Semitic to assume that the Hebrews learned writing from the Phoenicians, hence the script is called “Phoenician” instead of “Hebrew”. Yet all of these claims are made without a smidgen of historical evidence to back them up.

On the other side, we have historical evidence internal to the documents that Moses wrote most of Torah during the sojourn in the wilderness and that he wrote on impermanent materials subject to rot. On the other side, we have no record who wrote Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles nor when they were written other than that the linguistic patterns in Chronicles indicate a late date.

In Genesis we have vestiges of an ancient literary tradition that apparently went out of use already before Moses, yet Moses included it in Genesis. That tradition had the title and author’s name at the end of the document, not at the beginning as we do today, or as written down already by the time of the Prophets. This literary tradition in Genesis 2:4 lists no author for Genesis 1:1–2:3, but gives a title and the information presented by the document is that which only God could know, therefore had to be given by God. While the use of this literary tradition and position in Genesis don’t prove that this document precedes the one by Adam ending in Genesis 5:2, it’s certainly suggestive.

Karl W. Randolph.
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Stephen Hughes
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The effect of orality on writing.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Ray Harder wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:However, my question, albiet poorly worded, was I thought testing the possible orality of the Biblical tradition. I was wondering if "scripture" had been passed down by word-of-mouth before it had been written down?
Wow, you do know how to ask the hard questions!

The question seemed straightforward enough.
Ray Harder wrote:The question of the orality of any tradition is complicated mostly by the simple fact that speech leaves no physical trace in the record. It is virtually impossible to make evidence based statements about orality. So what can be said about the biblical stories and on what basis?
Kirk Lowery wrote:As for BCE vs BC, that's ... outside our forum's parameters.
Just for argument's sake we presume that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He lived around about 1500 BC (or BCE - if there are academic parameters on the forum here). The things described in Genesis had all transpired before Moses' birth. Because he was not an eye-witness, Moses couldn't have written them without learning about them. If we accept, for argument's sake, that there were an Adam and Eve, their story had to get to the person who wrote it down, and that means that the story must have been kept alive for a very long time. I presumed that that was an indisputable example of orality.
Ray Harder wrote:It is important to recognize that the early Hebrew bible could very well have developed from not only an oral tradition, but from multiple oral traditions. ... They assumed different writers/editors, but these features could just as easily be explained as being two different oral traditions that were edited together by a later author/editor.
It is logical that in the construction of a written record that has both a permanence - in that it could both outlive the one who tells the story onto the papyrus, that it could become a single record for a community, to take as many variations and as much information as possible into the record. Logic may or may nto apply here.
Ray Harder wrote:Since those passages generally acknowledged among secular scholars and even some religious ones as the oldest tend to be “poetic,” is that evidence of orality/oral tradition? I would argue yes, but that is not a universal or even consensus view. It is still even widely debated whether there was/is “meter” in Hebrew poetry. (Which is often seen in written texts from oral cultures because stories with meter are easier to remember.)
My original question about case-endings in Hebrew was because I had read many, many years ago that adding case-endings improved the way the Psalms fit the meter.
Ray Harder wrote:There seems to be evidence (even in the Bible itself) that large parts of the “historical” books” were part of a state sponsored effort to record “history.” This implies that some of the OT was written “on spec” of the king/government. These would probably be written at the time of composition.
From the "corrected" accounts of eye-witnesses, who probably gave their information orally. But that would be a different type of textualisation of an oral account, because it hadn't been transmitted before it was textualised.
Ray Harder wrote:The bible itself teaches that Moses WROTE the Torah. However, most secular scholars frankly discount these stories as very late in the biblical tradition when written texts were more common. Both religious and secular scholars accept the prophetic traditions in the Hebrew Bible as falling between the traditions (historical or not) of Moses and the exilic and post-exilic activity on the Hebrew Bible --whatever that was (creation/editing/transcribing from oral tradition, or....?).
Is there a noticable difference in the language from the Torah "Law" (is that the book of Leviticus - the rules for the priests? or Levitucus and Deuteronomy - the second giving of the Law? or is that the whole Pentateuch?).
Ray Harder wrote:The most influential study of orality in the ancient world is Albert Lord’s 1960 classic “The Singer of Tales.” He studied modern oral traditions among Serbo-Croatians and largely applied his findings to Homer and not the Bible, but his methods and conclusions should be carefully studied by any who approach any question of ancient oral traditions. It is more of a sociological than textual study, but his methods and conclusions should not be ignored by any serious student of this question in any culture.
Are their langauge and text features - as described by Lord's study - that suggest that the Hebrew Bible had been oral at one time?
Stephen Hughes BA (Greek), BTh, MA (Egyptology)
וַאֲהַבְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־הַגֵּ֑ר כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃ (Deut. 10:19)
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Where are the case endings in Hebrew?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Kirk Lowery wrote:... I usually use "Hebrew Bible" as a neutral term. ... "Tanakh" is a proper noun, not a common noun.
Thanks for that.

I had never thought that a book could have a proper name, but I suppose we say, "Galatians" etc.
Stephen Hughes BA (Greek), BTh, MA (Egyptology)
וַאֲהַבְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־הַגֵּ֑ר כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃ (Deut. 10:19)
kwrandolph
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Re: The effect of orality on writing.

Post by kwrandolph »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Just for argument's sake we presume that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He lived around about 1500 BC (or BCE - if there are academic parameters on the forum here). The things described in Genesis had all transpired before Moses' birth. Because he was not an eye-witness, Moses couldn't have written them without learning about them. If we accept, for argument's sake, that there were an Adam and Eve, their story had to get to the person who wrote it down, and that means that the story must have been kept alive for a very long time. I presumed that that was an indisputable example of orality.
No, it’s not indisputable evidence of orality. Moses could have had written documents before him as he compiled Genesis. In fact, that Moses included vestiges of a literary tradition is an argument against orality.
Stephen Hughes wrote:My original question about case-endings in Hebrew was because I had read many, many years ago that adding case-endings improved the way the Psalms fit the meter.
I’ve noticed from other sources that Biblical pronunciation seemed to have more syllables than does modern pronunciation. When one restores these syllables, it very much improves how Psalms fit in meter.
Stephen Hughes wrote:
Ray Harder wrote:There seems to be evidence (even in the Bible itself) that large parts of the “historical” books” were part of a state sponsored effort to record “history.” This implies that some of the OT was written “on spec” of the king/government. These would probably be written at the time of composition.
From the "corrected" accounts of eye-witnesses, who probably gave their information orally. But that would be a different type of textualisation of an oral account, because it hadn't been transmitted before it was textualised.
You’re right, writing down what eye-witnesses recount is not the same as an oral tradition.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Is there a noticable difference in the language from the Torah "Law" (is that the book of Leviticus - the rules for the priests? or Levitucus and Deuteronomy - the second giving of the Law? or is that the whole Pentateuch?).
“Torah” is the Hebrew name of Pentateuch. The literal meaning is ”Pointing out” or “Teaching”. Law is only a part of the total.

Karl W. Randolph.
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