The Hebrew OT

by onacruse 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  onacruse

  I was watching a History channel show tonight, and one of the assertions made by a rabbi was that 25% of the words in the OT are of disputed meaning.

  In my own meager understanding of Hebrew, and critical text analysis, this seemed a bit overboard, but possibly within linguistic parameters.

  If so, then what the heck was God doing when It provided these sacred texts...sayings and directions and dictums that are supposed to be for our ultimate benefit, and to give us the ability to make life-and-death decisions?

  Please speak my language, plain and simple.

  God can do that, right?
• 

  Leolaia

  I think the reference is to the 1,500 hapax legomena in the OT; that is, the words that occur only once in the Bible and thus have more uncertain meaning. The proportion is supposedly around 20%, which reflects the fact that the OT is an imcomplete record of biblical Hebrew -- and without a broader linguistic context it is often difficult to determine the meanings of the words that occur only once.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Leo,

  Correct me if I'm wrong but when they say 20% they mean in word meaning only! Not with reference "redactions".
• 

  Justin

  In other words, the Bible is practically the only source we have for ancient Hebrew and if words do not appear often enough for the meaning to be determined by context, it is difficult to determine their meaning using Hebrew sources alone. (Unlike Greek, in which other ancient sources [such as the classics] have survived.) But a translator is not free to assign any meaning at all to a disputed word. There are ancient translations - I'm thinking of the Septuagint and the Aramaic targums. There are also the later rabbinical writings which gave Aramaic definitions of biblical words. So, it is a matter of enlarging the paramaters which are used - if something can't be defined in terms which are closer to the source, a more remote or secondary authority must be used. Leo, does this sound like a fair summation of the situation?
• 

  Leolaia

  Yes indeed, plus the translator or lexicographer may have recourse to cognates in Ugaritic, Arabic, Akkadian, etc. though this is much more hazardous.
• 

  euripides

  I think its important to recognize that 20% of the total lexicon/vocabulary is uncertain in meaning, not 20% of the text. This is probably at least the case in English also, where the average person's vocabulary uses only approximately 10% of the English lexicon. A great number of those words which are uncertain form specialized vocabulary such as found in poetry--I recall that much of the poetry of Job is fairly specialized and difficult to ascertain. Yet the frequency of these words are reduced to single occurrences, thus they form only a very small part of the overall text. Euripides
• 

  onacruse

  LeoL, your mentioning the hapax legomena brought back memories, indeed!

  And, in conjunction with what Justin said:

  I'm thinking of the Septuagint and the Aramaic targums.

  That's certainly one thing that strikes me about LXX "interpretatrions" of the Hebrew OT: why such ambiguity? And especially in the so-called prophetic books (Isaiah above all)?

  And why then do so many NT quotes rely on the questionable LXX interpretations of those words?

  One classic example is parthenos...relating to the birth of the Christ himself.

  God couldn't have been clearer in the transmission of his message, except if he's written his words in mud.
• 

  Buster

  Craig, I was watching that show, and it struck me, too. The question that hit me was whether we could esxpect that number to go up or down in the future? Would biblical historians, linguists, and the like come to agreement? Or would they find more to disagree about as the years go on?

  Also, I'm a believer in the 80/20 rule. I'ld guess that 80% of these 25% disputed words are dusputes over relatively small nuances. I'll bet they have the most fun over a relatvely small number of Hebrew words. I'ld also bet that these guys are great fun at cocktail parties.

  - Cliff
• 

  garybuss

  There are no written vowels. Hell and hello are spelled the same. My Rabbi friend says 25% of words are guessed at based on their context and that is conservative.
• 

  z

  garybuss

  My first lang is Hebrow Hell and Hello do not spelled the same

  Hello =שלום

  Hell = שאול