Labels: culture, hebrew, hebrew.bible, writing
Labels: hebrew, reading, writing
Labels: culture, education, hebrew, hebrew.bible, history
Labels: culture, hebrew, hebrew.bible, reading, technology, writing
Credit: Courtesy of the University of Haifa Usage Restrictions: This image may only be used with the given credit.
1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].If this is roughly correct, while it does not (despite the quoted claims in the press article) either contain ideas that were "unfamiliar to all the cultures in the region besides the Hebrew society" and alone it certainly cannot support Prof. Galil's claim that:
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.
It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research.But it might help support the likelihood that biblical accounts of Daviod and Solomon are not entirely fictional, and cause significant increase in estimates of the likelihood that significant texts could have been composed and written in Hebrew at that time. And, unless closer examination shows that it was not written in Hebrew, it IS the earliest evidence for Hebrew writing so far!
Labels: hebrew, hebrew.bible, history, holy.land
Labels: bible, greek, hebrew, mission
Labels: commentary, hebrew, hebrew.bible
...reading your commentary, I am not happy with the "dried crest of Carmel", for the crest of every mountain is dry, naturally, even without Adonai roaring, and the crest ist scarcely a pasture.This is an interesting suggestion. Certainly in English not only "cape" but also "headland" and "head" itself (as in Bream Head) would seem to be direct uses of "head" metaphorically of just such a geographical feature. However, I can find (on a quick look - life is hectic at present, selling our home and B having medical tests etc.) no evidence for this usage in biblical Hebrew.
How about taking ro'sh not in the partitive sense (top of mountain), but in the metaphorical (huge rock rising from the plain), as in the european languages "Cape", from Latin caput head? Head of Carmel would then be a poetical version of the prosaic "Mount Carmel" and we can easily imagine meadows in the lower parts.
I want to propose this idea to you as an experienced scientist, while I am quite new in Hebrew.
Labels: bible, commentary, geography, hebrew
Labels: biblical.studies, hebrew
Labels: audio.bible, hebrew, hebrew.bible
Labels: hebrew, open.biblical.studies, teaching
The term בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל is asserted to be a "dead metaphor", merely a demonym. The term "dead metaphor" is itself a dead metaphor, whose meaning is complex. However, the linguistic study of dead metaphors offers insights into the philosophy of mind and the psychology of language,[1] which have potential benefits for biblical scholarship.
Distinguishing "live" from "dead" metaphor is relatively easy in living languages, one can potentially interrogate native speakers, but correspondingly problematic in "dead languages". As Cohen notes, our language sample in the Hebrew Bible may be untypical, so frequency is perhaps not a good measure of the mortality of a metaphor.[2]
This paper will explore possible approaches understanding the functioning of such language by assessing the metaphorical mortality of the term בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל. Is this term simply not a metaphor, rather as a "dead letter" was never alive? Is it, like a dead parrot, beyond resuscitation? Or, can we discern instances where, through interaction with the cotext, the metaphorical import of the term may be being revived by the text, much as I might revive even though "dead" tired?
Biblical uses of בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל will be analysed using Guttenplan's four point ordering of the mortality of metaphorical content.[3] Passages where this (possibly) dead metaphor is used in ways which if it were "live" would create a mixed metaphor, and examples where the metaphor is extended, will offer a means of assessing the liveliness of potentially dead metaphors in a "dead language".
This examination of the biblical term is not comprehensive, or quantitative, rather it seeks, through the use of selected examples, to show how Guttenplan's approach can help towards a more nuanced understanding of the usage of potentially dead metaphors in the Biblical Hebrew repertoire.
[1] Derek Melser, The Act Of Thinking (MIT Press, 2004), 171; Samuel Guttenplan, Objects of Metaphor (Oxford University Press, 2005), 183.
[2] Mordechai Z. Cohen, Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor: From Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides (BRILL, 2003), 25 n.81.
[3] Guttenplan, Objects of Metaphor, 192-3.
Labels: hebrew, metaphor, research
the phrase bene-yisra’el (’children of Israel’), ... is so conventional elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible that it is essentially a dead metaphorasks an interesting question: how would one prove this assertion?
Job 6:2-3 O that my vexation were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances! 3 For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea; therefore my words have been rash.My gut feeling yet to be tested is that there are very few contexts in which use of the term "children of Israel" does elicit such a parental thought... more later if I have time...
Labels: hebrew, open.biblical.studies, teaching
Labels: hebrew
Labels: greek, hebrew, open.biblical.studies
Thanks, Daniel, yes it has been a good feature that Logos adopted early, Bibleworks is still playing catch up in cutting and pasting.Another cool thing about Unicode is that when you copy and paste text into your word processor from a program like Logos Bible Software the fonts just...work. This painlessness is what persuaded Logos to adopt the Unicode Way back in 2001...
Post Scriptum II
Daniel (below) also points to Windows Keyboards for Ancient Languages as well as Greek and Hebrew (and transliteration) include also Syriac and one tailored for the entry of Coptic. If you have Logos installed these are probably both the easiest and best Unicode keyboards to use. If you use BibleWorks or another (non-Unicode) program then the Tyndale Font Kit is probably the easiest way to go. Either way your text will be readable by more people! (Everyone using WinXP+ or MacOSX+ if you use no accents... for accents they will require a suitable scholarly Unicode font but it does not matter which one they have :)
Post Scriptum III
Bible Texts in Unicode (for cut and paste if you do not have Logos and can't make BibleWorks export in Unicode):
Labels: biblical.studies.online, greek, hebrew, open.biblical.studies
The phrase concerned is the middle line above and transliterates as something like: bitseva'ot 'o be'aylot hassadeh which (it is suggested) sounds like two names of God each with the preposition prefix b: יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת where tseba'ot = "hosts" as in LORD of Hosts and אֵל שַׁדַּי 'el shadday. It is this pair of possible "sounds like..." effects together in a context that speaks of "adjuring by..." that suggest an intended association.I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,by the gazelles or the wild does:do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready! (NRSV) הִשְׁבַּעְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלִַם
בִּצְבָאוֹת אוֹ בְּאַיְלוֹת הַשָּׂדֶה
אִם־תָּעִירוּ וְאִם־תְּעוֹרְרוּ אֶת־הָאַהֲבָה
Labels: bible, hebrew, song of songs
We can test the system in a provisional way against the book of Ezekiel... First, it is clear from every point of view that much of Ezekiel is straight prose. There are fourteen chapters over 15%, while another eighteen are in the range between 10% and 15%. The remaining sixteen chapters are under 10%; of these, twelve are in the range 5% and 10%, while four are under 5% (chs. 19, 21, 27, 28).1So, let's look at these chapters.
We have devised recently a mechanical test to separate poetry from prose in the Bible, and preliminary tests show that it will work efficiently in most cases.How deliciously "modern" this quote now sounds, with its talk of a "mechanical test" - actually electronically mediated - and working "efficiently". With its stress on numbers and testing this is biblical studies fit for a world of managers!
Coming soon: Part 2 - the "boy" examines the imperial toolbox...
In recent years, such has been the content of a great deal of critical scholarship and, as a result, the entrenched position regarding the possibility of charting the Hebrew language over time (and using that to date texts) has been shaken to the core. Scholarship in this area is a little like the long-necked dinosaur that might receive a mortal blowThis was not intended to suggest that Simon's work was that final blow, but does provide a vivid image of his conviction that seeking linguistic criteria for dating biblical texts is an impossible quest. But is it? Granted that previous use of the frequency of locative he in Chronicles over-simplified the case, yet it may still be that a still more careful investigation will provide more support.
yet take a while to have that information relayed to its brain. Once the many problems settle in, the school of thought that proposes linguistic dating will ultimately keel over and die; they’ve already been hit, but such things take a little while.
Labels: hebrew
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