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John 1:1
- Thread starter dyanaprajna2011
- Start date
Well, it begins with the observation that the divine world of the Bible is divided into three general classes of deity. The God of Israel is presented as the "Most High," and is referred to frequently with other descriptive titles: Eternal God, Jealous God, God of the Mountains, etc. Then there are a faceless and nameless group referred to as the "sons of God" (בני*אלהים and בני*אלin several places (I listed most of the occurrences above). Then there are the angels (מלאכים
If we look at cognate literature, we find the exact same structure. The Ugaritic texts, for instance, also have a high god, El, who rules over everyone and shares many of the same titles with the biblical El. They also have "sons of God" (bn 'il) who are semi-autonomous and rebellious. Then they have divine messengers (ml'aku) who are obedient servant deities who deliver messages and execute directives. The same is found in Phoenician, Moabite, and other Canaanite texts. Their description is far more detailed than in the Bible, though, so we get a clearer idea of the structures of the generic Canaanite pantheon. The Israelite iteration is obviously drawn from the broader Canaanite cultural matrix (compare, for instance, Isa 27:1 with the Baal Cycle. Both refer to Leviathan as a "fleeing" and a "twisting serpent" who gets killed by the deity). For references to this discussion in the scholarship, see here, here, and here.
arche doesn't mean "in the beginning." That's en arche.
But the Greek understanding of the word "messenger" (aggelos) isn't equivelent at all to angels either. Even in the LXX (Gen. 32:4 using the LXX numbering), the word refers to humans. And it is absent in this sense (a divine messenger of god) in non-Christian Greek texts in general (until Christianity was widespread).
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Well, it begins with the observation that the divine world of the Bible is divided into three general classes of deity. The God of Israel is presented as the "Most High," and is referred to frequently with other descriptive titles: Eternal God, Jealous God, God of the Mountains, etc. Then there are a faceless and nameless group referred to as the "sons of God" (בני*אלהים and בני*אל
If we look at cognate literature, we find the exact same structure. The Ugaritic texts, for instance, also have a high god, El, who rules over everyone and shares many of the same titles with the biblical El. They also have "sons of God" (bn 'il) who are semi-autonomous and rebellious. Then they have divine messengers (ml'aku) who are obedient servant deities who deliver messages and execute directives. The same is found in Phoenician, Moabite, and other Canaanite texts. Their description is far more detailed than in the Bible, though, so we get a clearer idea of the structures of the generic Canaanite pantheon. The Israelite iteration is obviously drawn from the broader Canaanite cultural matrix (compare, for instance, Isa 27:1 with the Baal Cycle. Both refer to Leviathan as a "fleeing" and a "twisting serpent" who gets killed by the deity). For references to this discussion in the scholarship, see here, here, and here.
O.k. thanx for answering.
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Shermana
Heretic
Well yes, it's En Arche. The point is however that the word "Beginning" as in "In the beginning" doesn't mean that it's talking about before ANYTHING was created. If I didn't imply this correctly, my bad. I should have said "As in" instead of "or" to be more clear.
What we do see however is that the word "Elohim" is at times translated as "Angel" such as in the Septuagint Psalm 8:5, or in the NT with Hebrews 2:7. Regardless, the point is that John 1:1c should read "And the word was a god" as numerous non-church-aligned Greek specialists have indicated. The next point was to corrolate the connection of "a god" and what is called "Angel". I believe the distinction between "god" and "Angel" may have gotten muddied at one point, but the text was clearly indicating that the Logos was not THE God but A "god", and "gods" were corrolated with the class of being called "Angels". The word "Angel" can in fact be used for human messengers as well as Divine messengers but they are sometimes interchangeable with the idea of "Divine being" in the Hebrew, and apparently so for the author of Hebrews and the Septuagint of Psalms.
http://www.hebrew-streams.org/works/monotheism/context-elohim-C.html
Psalm 8:5, translating "Elohim" As Aggelos
[FONT=Palatino Linotype,Athena]5 τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος, ὅτι μιμνῄσκῃ αὐτοῦ; ἢ υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου, ὅτι ἐπισκέπτῃ αὐτόν; 6 ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ᾿ ἀγγέλους
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True, but it's not difficult in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to identify entities understood by the authors to be divine messengers. That use of the term had become lexicalized well before the translation of the Septuagint.
I'm not sure what you mean by "lexicalized" here. It's a lexeme, and like all lexemes is polysemous (especially Greek). My Hebrew isn't sufficiently adequate to discuss the nuances of plural vs. singular or or existential verbs in Hebrew (I still need to refer to a lexicon quite frequently to read anything in Biblical Hebrew), but I'm fairly familiar with linguistic studies of Aramaic languages (particularly ancient ones), even more familiar with the linguistics in general, and quite familiar with ancient Greek and the current literature. While it may be just be my lack of sufficient knowledge of Hebrew, after reading your paper I found your discussion of translation (and the translation process) as well as the nuances of things like existential constructions (and how these can allow us to understand the "faithfulness" of a particular translator) a bit confusing.
Take, for example, Ausloos' paper on the LXX's rendering of Hebrew names in the volume Scripture in Transition: Essays on Septuagint, Hebrew Bible, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of Raija Sollamo (Vol. 126 of Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism). Ausloos refers to previous work showing that the hapax legomena in Canticles are "rendered by the Greek translator in a manner that is both faithful with regard to context and the meaning of his Hebrew Vorlage, and, at the same time, 'free'. Indeed, the Greek translator of Canticles renders the greater part of the hapax legomena with great respect for his Vorlage. He searches for a legitimate and adequate Greek equivalent that fits into the literary context. Yet, at the same time, he wants to do this in the form of an idiomatic Greek text. Against this background, it is shown that the translator endeavours to remain faithful to the content of the Hebrew text, even in cases where this is extremely difficult: the retrieval of meaning of the hapax legomena is, for a translator, often like a quiz in which the only option is to venture a guess." (p. 54).
Then there are the issues of 1) textual criticism (e.g., when and where in the LXX might divergence represent neither a theologically motivated deliberate alteration of the Hebrew nor the general issues inherent to translations, but a rendering of an earlier version now lost to us) and 2) the fact that Greek in general (and in particular as a lingua franca) readily extends meanings and that the translation of a text written in a language unrelated to Greek must not only take into account the use of words in Greek, but dimensionality of translation.
This second point is made rather clearly (IMO) and repeatedly in Tov's collected essays (The Greek and Hebrew Bible), where we are advised to "ascribe deviations of the LXX from the MT to factors other than theological Tendenz." (p. 258). Tov states (emphais added) "The first level or dimension records the background of the lexical choice הי
צבאות - παντοκράτωρ by the translators. An analysis of the meaning of παντοκράτωρ at this stage takes into consideration the etymological background of the Greek word, its use outside the LXX, and possibly also the translator's exegetical motivations when using this word as an equivalent of הי צבאות ). The second level or dimension refers to the stage when the word came to be used in the LXX as the stereotyped equivalent for הי צבאות ) in Jeremiah and the Minor Prophets. At this stage the meaning of the Greek has to be expressed as הי צבאות ) since it represented that word in all its usages." (p. 92). Keeping this in mind, it's hard to understand why you say what you do in certain places, e.g., "For instance, where Deut 4:19 makes reference to the "sun, the moon, and the stars—all the host of heaven," LXX renders, "the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and any ornament of the sky ([πάντα τὸν] κόσμον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ
."First, after seeing panta ton in my version, I checked the TLG and found the same. So I am curious why neither your quotation of the Greek nor your translation reflects the fact that the Greek reads "all the" not "any" (additionally, Muraoka's A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint includes panta under the entry kosmos where Deut. 4:19 is cited).
Perhaps more importantly, one could just as easily translate this as "the sun and the moon and the stars and all the hosts of heaven." Muraoka's lexicon uses "objects of worship" as the meaning behind kosmos here. The LSJ has "ruler" and "regulator" along with "government."
This reflects a general problem with lexicons and an approach to language in many fields where texts are analyzed: a dictionary approach to language rather than a construction grammar approach. The fact that the genitive relates kosmos to ouranos should inform any translation of the phrase as a whole, because both these words can refer to celestial objects or regions (e.g., "sky" or "universe"). Which means that kosmos, as the "head" of the genitive construction and the accusative "object" of the participle, should be interpreted as contrasting in meaning to the regional understanding of ouranos, but not necessarily reflect the sense of "ornament" (which is a particular metaphorical extension of the verbal root, meaning "arrange" or "order") rather than the metaphorical extension "government"/"regulating body". The combination of panta ("all") with the singular makes this a difficult reading, and not merely because it isn't toi kosmoi. The sense of "adornment" is rather more secondary in Greek than is the sense of ruler or ruling body. The root meaning is something like "order", and therefore "arrange", which is mapped onto "an ordering of clothing, jewelry, etc." to mean "ornaments". But it is more frequently mapped onto to an abstract ordering or to entities (either conceptualized as a singular body composed of many parts, or a singular ruler/regulator). So why see it as "adornment" and therefore "complete de-deification"?
Or there is your analysis of Deut. 32:39. In the Hebrew, we have a repetition of the first person singular pronoun in apposition to the third singular. I find it hard to follow Wever here (although I haven't read what he wrote; I'm simply going off of your description, but I don't doubt you are accurately reflecting Wever), because in general this kind of apposition of personal pronouns (and with the same referent) is used to focus attention, even without the repetition. And with the double use of "I" in addition to the appositive 3rd person singular, I am not sure how one can explain this without noting the emphatic nature of the construction. In the Greek, instead of the apposition of pronouns lacking agreement and a copula (something Greek cannot do) we find ego eimi. Here, ego is unneeded. It is implied (or contained in) the verb itself. To read this as an example of the use of eimi to imply "a matter of existence" rather than an emphasis on "I" (i.e., YHWH, in contrast to the reference to "gods" in 32:37) is difficult. First, since Kahn's extensive analysis in The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek specifically, and the increasingly nuanced approaches to the Greek verb in General (e.g., Duhoux's Le verbe grec ancien or Rijksbaron's far shorter study of the Greek verb relative to Goodwin, but also more modern in approach), it is difficult to understand this construction as existential rather than emphatic. There are other verbs which are sometimes used as copulae but have a specialized sense relative to einai.
As for what follows ("there is no other god beside/with me" vs "there is no god but/except/apart/beside me"), the use of plen (see e.g., Deut 18:8 or 29:1) is again broader than simply "except." More importantly, what other word would do? Prepositions second only to perhaps particles in there place on the lexico-grammatical continuum, and therefore notoriously ambigious. Here, the easiest rendering of the Hebrew doesn't fit, as interpreting the line to mean "no gods spatially located with me". It is clearly metaphorical. And while I will admit once more that my knowledge of the nuances of Hebrew constructions is inadequate, the BDB has "beside=except" here.
I would say that it is difficult to ascribe theological motivations (or at least particular theological motivations) behind phrases like "sons of God" or "angels" and their translations, as is reflected in everything from Philo's conflation of the two to later attempts at disambiguous with varying results (e.g., Julian and Cyril). If you have not already read it, you may find Wickham's study "The sons of God and the daughters of men: Genesis VI 2 in early Christian exegesis" in Language and Meaning- Studies in Hebrew Language and Biblical Exegesis (Oudtestamentische Studiën) of interest.
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I mean the use of aggelos to refer specifically to divine messengers became standardized within the lexicon.
What does the translation technique of the translator of Judges happen to do with my comments?
Again, how does this bear on my comments? I'm well aware of the issues involved with the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. It was, after all, the topic of my first master's thesis (see here).
This second point is made rather clearly (IMO) and repeatedly in Tov's collected essays (The Greek and Hebrew Bible), where we are advised to "ascribe deviations of the LXX from the MT to factors other than theological Tendenz." (p. 258). Tov states (emphais added) "The first level or dimension records the background of the lexical choice הי
Keeping this in mind, it's hard to understand why you say what you do in certain places, e.g., "For instance, where Deut 4:19 makes reference to the "sun, the moon, and the starsall the host of heaven," LXX renders, "the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and any ornament of the sky ([πάντα τὸν] κόσμον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ
First, after seeing panta ton in my version, I checked the TLG and found the same. So I am curious why neither your quotation of the Greek nor your translation reflects the fact that the Greek reads "all the" not "any" (additionally, Muraoka's A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint includes panta under the entry kosmos where Deut. 4:19 is cited).
So your concern is only with an irrelevant portion of a translation I drew from the New English Translation of the Septuagint? Go ahead and take it up with Mel Peters. You'll find within the context of the entire sentence the sense of "any" is not at all inappropriate.
But the Septuagint already uses stratiá for "host" in the sense of "army." Gen 2:1 shows kosmos with the sense of "ornamentation" is meant for a non-sentient view of the astral bodies. The translator is obviously trying to promote a different view here from the Hebrew. That was the whole point of that portion of the paper.
First, Muraoka has been criticized for using the sense of the Hebrew to govern to strictly his interpretation of the Septuagint's Greek. Second, the rendering "objects of worship" in no way undermines my point, which was that the objects, originally seen as deities, are now seen simply as astral objects. The fact that they are worshipped really has no bearing on my point.
Yes, that would be the third main sense, behind "ornament." It would also be a sense that has nothing to do with the use here or even that of the Hebrew.
Which was a large portion of my second master's thesis.
And why must it be understood as contrastive? Please be specific.
And how, specifically, does it complicate the reading? The view of the astral bodies as beautiful adornments of the heavens is quite in line with the Greco-Roman worldview.
Not according to the LSJ, nor any other lexicon I've found. Where are you getting the idea that it is "secondary"?
This is quite a speculative etymology, especially in light of the fact that other researchers have pointed out that the exact etymology here is unknown.
You're obfuscating here.
Where are you getting the idea that I don't acknowledge the emphatic nature of the verse.
Ego eimi here is a quotation of the Septuagint translation of Exod 3:14. It is very much existential.
To reflect the sense of the Hebrew, it would be meta, as in Zeph 2:15.
That's the meaning of the Hebrew.
Not necessarily.
The BDB is also over 100 years old, and doesn't acknowledge the cultic significance of the phrase in question or its rhetorical point. See N. MacDonald, Deuteronomy and the Meaning of Monotheism, 78–96, for more discussion of this phrase.
Yes, I've read it, along with every other publication on the phrase from the last 150 years. While this pedantic post of yours may give you an opportunity to wax philological in front of everyone, basically all you've done is tell me you disagree with two largely insignificant translation discussions I cited from other scholars.
1) Because the LXX wasn't written by Greco-Romans
2) Because the translator was translating a Hebrew line which can easily mean something like "host of heavens"
3) Because your translation ignores pantes (is this a textual tradition you're following?), not just in the way(s) that it might help here, but entirely.
4) Because "all the arranging of the sky/heavens" makes the mention of sun, moon, and stars unnecessary.
Basically, as the translation need not be "adornment" (and as I will get into below, shouldn't be understood as such), and as it is a translation of something from the target language into a Greek rendering which can match the Hebrew well-enough, why unnecessarily pick a particular extension of kosmos so that it doesn't match the Hebrew?
Two sources. One, modern linguistics. Since Lakoff & Johnson's 1980 book Metaphors We Live By and the advent of the cognitive linguistic framework, we understand a lot more about meaning and metaphor. It's a central area of research. More prototypical meanings become extended into particular instantiations.
The second source is knowing Greek very well. Unlike most languages (but in particular English), Greek extends meanings quite readily from a more basic sense. This is why a lexical approach to Greek is particularly inadequate. kosmos and the related verb (like most of Greek) have something akin to the semitic "roots" used as building blocks, only typically more directly related. Lexicons, from the BDAG to the LSJ and others, were built by taking a basic understanding of the word, and seeing how it was most commonly extended (or even uncommonly) in our texts. There's always a more basic, prototypical "core" from which individual uses are extended.
Etymology doesn't matter, only how constructions are used at the relevant time. For Greek (as it is a dead language), lexicons have used a "frequency" approach combined with a knowledge of the language. The reason that both the LSJ & the BDAG (along with just about every other major and minor Greek lexicon) have entries ordered by the initial definition, followed by (if any) central definitions and sub-entries of these, is because it is arranged in terms of the most basic meaning followed by central subcategories. For kosmos, in the LSJ we find "order" first, and then a series of main sub-entries which are most common. Yet all of these have at their core this sense of "ordering". This again is how language works, both diachronically (e.g., in grammaticalization/grammatization) and at any given period. So, speaking of adornments, a "ring" can be jewelry as well as a conceptually circular network such as "a ring of criminals" or "a ring of smuggler's". But even in English, which so readily adopts new words, such usages have a common core (in this case, the conceptualization of "circular" mapped onto specific types of instantiations). It is not a matter of etymology at all, as that would be an attempt to figure out what was behind a usage (and how), usually one that no longer applied.
Language is like that. The problem within biblical studies, early Christian studies, N.T. studies, etc., is that (like Classics) not only does the study of the languages and their texts go back to the origins of linguistics (or is the origin, as far as modernity is concerned), but so does much of the current approach. While mainstream linguistics has, for the past century, become increasingly devoted to understanding languages like Dyirbal or Basque rather than ancient Greek or Hebrew, the increasingly sophisticated understanding of language and the tools used to analyze it are used less and less outside of linguistics. There are exceptions of course, such as The Pragmatics of Perception and Cognition in MT Jeremiah 1:1-6:30: A Cognitive Linguistics Approach (Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Fur Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft), but comparatively few people with a linguistics background or a knowledge of the field are writing about biblical or related religious texts.
It's not that you know or don't, but why you see the Greek as a divergent reading rather than as a genuine attempt to get the same meaning across when the Hebrew gets this emphatic meaning across in a way not really possible in Greek.
Existential typically relates to the logical (formal language) use common to the philosophy of language about half a century ago: ∃x[P(x) or "there exists an x such that x has the property P". More simply, one can ask "can I replace the verb with 'exist(s)' without much change in meaning?" So, for example, יֵשׁ is "existential" (whether you call it an existential particle or a lexeme). So if you mean it in a different sense, what sense is that?
Yet I cited two passages within the LXX version of Deut. which use plen to mean "beside" in the sense of the Hebrew. Again, on the lexico-grammatical continuum, prepositions are closer to grammar. meta in Greek would be more ambiguous, but not more "faithful" somehow, particularly given the uses of plen elsewhere in Deuteronomy.
So Hebrew is the sole exception when it comes to polysemy in general or (even more astounding) when it comes to prepositions? And the verse literally means "there are no Gods right near me" (implying that there could easily may be gods above, below, within sight but rather distant, and all the other senses inherent in literal spatial orientation) rather than somehow talking about the rank, status, or other similar metaphorical extension of the spatial sense? For the past 20 years or so (and in particular in the past decade or so), the acknowledgement that language, and indeed cognition in general is fundamentally spatial has become perhaps the orthodox view within cognitive science and linguistics (at least those branches which are concerned with how the mind processes language). Hebrew is no exception, and it seems a bit odd for YHWH to be telling anybody "there are no gods around me at the moment, but who knows where they are" (which would be an actual "literal" translation of beside along with what this spatial interpretation entails).
It's also a lexicon, which (as I said) is guarenteed to be inadequate. But not because of age. The BDB is still about the most comprehensive lexicon of biblical hebrew around, and while it hasn't been updated like the LSJ and other lexicons of ancient languages, if one compares the older versions of Liddell & Scott to the current 9th edition of the LSJ, apart from the supplement there is far more similarity than difference. And to make an argument about "cultic significance" of the phrase and relate that to the use of the Greek requires demonstrating why the translation is best viewed not as what all translations are (inexact approximations which involve constant trade-offs in terms of "faithfulness" to the original text) but as theologically motivated.
My, my. Well perhaps it's just me being pedantic, or perhaps it is long experience with reading the continued application of outdated philology in classics and in biblical studies (often supplemented by everything from Jungian-based psychoanalysis to whatever pop literary/textual theory the author happens to subscribe to), while the work and research of the past 50 years in linguistics, cognition, etc., is ignored. The main point was the general approach you applied to the translations and your interpretation of these. And as it is far easier to look at such examples than wade into the quagmire of scholarship on so loaded an issue which involves not just the problems inherent to analyzing the "faithfulness" of translations of dead languages but also comparative religion, that's what I did. And as you state "instances of textual manipulation are few, but divergences in a translation as faithful as Deuteronomy are often indicative of some exegetical concern, and some of the more significant divergences are directly relevant to our topic" and follow this with a discussion of τὸν κόσμον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ (which begins by leaving out a central portion- panta, meaning "all"), it would seem that, according to you, it's relevant.
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[cont. from above]
So you hold a compositionalist stance so far as lexicon and grammar are concerned?
Yes, I saw that, but thanks. It begs another question. First, what counts as "idiomatic Greek" in a period during which Greek was characterized by change in general and regional (as well as literary) differences in particular. In fact, even within a specific dialect of a specific period (esp. Attic), we have studies on linguistic variation based on things like register (of central importance in determing what is or isn't idiomatic), such as Dik's Word Order in Greek Tragic Dialogue or Willi's The Languages of Aristophanes: Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek.
Second, why do you argue that plen emou in Deut: 32:39 is theologically motivated and means "except me" in your paper, but in your thesis use a translation (? or is it yours?) of the exact same phrase which reads "besides me" (p. 14)? This would seem particularly important given that it is the same context.
I don't find that.
So you hold a compositionalist stance so far as lexicon and grammar are concerned?
Yes, I saw that, but thanks. It begs another question. First, what counts as "idiomatic Greek" in a period during which Greek was characterized by change in general and regional (as well as literary) differences in particular. In fact, even within a specific dialect of a specific period (esp. Attic), we have studies on linguistic variation based on things like register (of central importance in determing what is or isn't idiomatic), such as Dik's Word Order in Greek Tragic Dialogue or Willi's The Languages of Aristophanes: Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek.
Second, why do you argue that plen emou in Deut: 32:39 is theologically motivated and means "except me" in your paper, but in your thesis use a translation (? or is it yours?) of the exact same phrase which reads "besides me" (p. 14)? This would seem particularly important given that it is the same context.
Why take up your (uncited) use of some translation rather than ask you about the Greek? And why should I take up the issue with Peters, who says that "[h]ybridized translations like the NRSV with which NETS [New English Translation of the Septuagint] is aligned do more harm than good in representing the state of ancient textual traditions" (from the conclusion to his contribution to "Translation is Required": The Septuagint in Retrospect and Prospect)?
I don't find that.
This is exactly the problem with a lexical approach to any translation.
Why? Because a language in which polysemy reigns supreme can be...well, polysemous?
Yes, and I wasn't convinced by it, as it took a particular (non-central) reading/rendering as evidence, which doesn't fit well.
What was? Construction grammar and the inadequacy of a lexical approach because lexemes cannot be seperated from the constructions in which they occur (like you do by comparing Gen 2:1 with Deut. 4:19)?
I thought I was. First, because these two words have much semantic overlap. The use of kosmos as "cosmos" isn't novel, but reflects much ancient Greek usage, and can be frequently interchanged with ouranos. Both words differ of course, but the overlap when it comes to celestial objects, regions, or reference is quite large. Yet here we have a subjective genitive which grammatically sets the two nouns in apposition or contrast automatically. It specifies a particular relationship, in this case the verbal notion of "governing" is nominalized by making it the "subject" of the genitive construction. Ornament has no verbal component the way that "government" or "governing" or "regulating" does, even with the article (which allows the nominalized verbal aspect to refer to an entity, e.g., "the ruling/governing ones", just as if it were a participle with an article).
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"Greco-Roman" is a modern cultural designation, not an ethnic designation. These were Greek-speaking Jews living in Alexandria and her environs. They were active participants in the Greco-Roman culture, so they absolutely were "Greco-Romans."
Yes, but you have to determine what the translator thought it meant, not what you think it means in the source language. You have to take into account the cultural context of the translator's reading. My whole point is that he had been conditioned to recognize a certain reading in favor of another.
A meaningless comment.
But that's what's in the Hebrew, including the word all. The Greek is trying to render it as closely as possible, even if the semantic sense it's aiming for is not the dead center of the lexical choices. The English rendering "and any . . ." simply moves the translation back to the semantic target in light of the point you make. For someone who claims to know so much about translation, you sure seem unaware of the majority of the dynamics influencing the translation of the Septuagint.
Well, we could list many, many, more:
D. Aaron, Biblical Ambiguities: Metaphor, Semantics and Divine Imagery (Leiden: Brill, 2001)
D. J. A. Clines, "The Challenge of Hebrew Lexicography Today," in Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007 (edited by A. Lemaire; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 8798
C. H. J. van der Merwe, Some Recent Trends in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: A Few Pointers Towards a More Comprehensive Model of Language Use, Hebrew Studies 44 (2003), 2024
Van der Merwe, Towards a Principled Working Model for Biblical Hebrew Lexicology, JNSL 30.1 (2004): 11937
Van der Merwe, Biblical Hebrew Lexicology: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective, in KUSAT 6 (2006): 87112
Van der Merwe, Lexical Meaning in Biblical Hebrew and Cognitive Semantics: A Case Study, Biblica 87.1 (2006): 8595
C. L. Miller-Naudé and van der Merwe, הִנֵּה and Mirativity in Biblical Hebrew, Hebrew Studies 52 (2011): 5381
Tiana Bosman, Biblical Hebrew Lexicology and Cognitive Semantics: A Study of Lexemes of Affliction (PhD diss., University of Stellenbosch, 2011)
Van der Merwe, Biblical Exegesis, Cognitive Linguistics and Hypertext, in Congress Volume, Leiden 2004 (edited by A. Lemaire; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 25580
DesCamp, Metaphor and Ideology: Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum and Literary Methods Through a Cognitive Lens (Leiden: Brill, 2007)
Van der Merwe, A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective on הִנֵּה in the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, Hebrew Studies 48 (2007): 10140
Wardlaw, Conceptualizing Word for God within the Pentateuch: A Cognitive-Semantic Investigation in Literary Context (London: T&T Clark, 2008)
R. Williamson, Jr., Pesher: A Cognitive Model of the Genre, Dead Sea Discoveries 17 (2010): 30731
D. L. Rodriguez, תחת: A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of the Biblical Hebrew Lexeme (PhD diss., University of Stellenbosch, 2011).
The numerous articles in E. van Wolde (ed.), Job 28: Cognition in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2003) (note, too, that several of the contributors are linguists and not biblicists)
Van Wolde, "Cognitive Linguistics and its Application to Genesis 28:10-22", in Text, A Thousand Methods: Studies in Memory of Sjef van Tilborg (edited by P. Chatelion Counet and U. Berges; Leiden, 2005), 12548
van Wolde, Cognitive Linguistics and the Hebrew Bible: Illustrated with a Study of Job 28 and Job 38, in The Professorship of Semitic Languages at Uppsala University 400 years (edited by B. Isaksson, M. Eskhult, and G. Ramsay; Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2007), 247-277.
There have also been numerous other PhD dissertations written under Cristo van der Merwe at Stellenbosch, who is one of the primary advocates for this kind of approach in biblical studies. My second masters thesis, by the way, is a cognitive-semantic look at the generic notion of deity in the Hebrew Bible, so Im well aware of the relationship of cognitive linguistics to lexicography and semantics.
It was possible in 1 Kgs 22:19. Several occurrences in 2 Kgs (17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:5) use dunamis (force of war, army, host) in contexts that are identical (namely, they are objects of worship, with the sun, moon, etc., among them). Why is it suddenly impossible here?
No, I dont mean it in a different sense. The Vorlage of the text refers to the identification of the subject, while the translation appeals to the folk etymology from Exod 3:14, which is unquestionably an existential claim: YHWH is the self-existent one. He is the great I AM.
But there the sense is quantitative, not spatial proximity. The Hebrew of Deut 32;39 is immadi (with me). Deut 18:8 and 29:1 have derivatives of bad, which is quantitative. Also, I showed you other passages where meta was used in the exact same context as Deut 32:39. I dont think I could provide more clear indication that the sense of LXX Deut 32:39 is intended to be different.
Thats simply not true. Youre neglecting the contexts of each usage in favor of your etymological argument. Youre arguing out of both sides of your mouth.
Now youre being ridiculous.
Yes, the reference is spatial. It addresses the presence of additional cultic objects in the temple alongside the representation of YHWH, as well as YHWH’s cooperation with other deities in the process of the exodus.
You would obviously do well to do some research related to the cultic contexts of these theological assertions. I already pointed you to a great introduction.
Holy crap. No it absolutely is not. It is the most comprehensive one available for free on the internet, but HALOT []The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 2 volume set: Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, M. E. J. Richardson: 9789004124455: Amazon.com: Books and the TDOT [http://www.amazon.com/Theological-Dictionary-Old-Testament-Set/dp/0802823386] were published within the last 50 years and are far, far, far more comprehensive than BDB could ever be. Are you seriously this ignorant of Biblical Hebrew lexicography while you’re lecturing me about Biblical Hebrew lexicography?
And we haven’t discovered thousands of new ancient Greek texts in the last 75 years like we have with Hebrew. You already admitted you don’t know Hebrew that well, so save yourself the time and the embarrassment and stop pretending to talk down to me about it.
While I appreciate that you’re trying to cram as much flowery language as possible into your posts, the above is not even a complete sentence.
I think it is you ignoring contemporary biblical studies. As I’ve shown, your awareness of the current state of the field is absolutely abysmal.
It seems to me you just don’t understand the field or my particular argument. I will now go and read your other post. Please give me some time to respond to the second installment.
Not really.
Greek comprising constructs, vernacular, syntax, and grammar that were common elsewhere. If you’ve studied literal/free translation in the Septuagint, you’re aware of exactly what kinds of constructs indicate non-idiomatic Greek.
“Besides me” is semantically parallel to “except me.” “Beside me,” an entirely different phrase that communicates a “spatial relationship,” as I point out on that page of my thesis. I used “except me” in the other paper because it is more explicit, and thus more helpful for my discussion.
This is utterly irrelevant. You should take up the issue with him because you’re naively criticizing his translation. The fact that he has criticisms of some NETS translation philosophies has no real bearing on whether or not he agrees with his own rendering of Deut 4:19. Additionally, the entire point he’s trying to make, which you obscure with your selective quotation, is that the NRSV is theological selective in its appeal to this or that version. He’s saying NETS is aligned with it because NETS chose to align its literary style with it, not the practice of arbitrarily picking this version over that. Obviously you don’t understand what Mel is saying here. You’re just trying to show off by posting irrelevant gripes from texts to which you want everyone to know you have access.
Yes you do. You already pointed out that it doesn’t make sense to refer in the last item of the list to “all the host of heaven” since three of the host of heaven were already named. That’s how they did things in Hebrew, but it’s not how they did things in Greek or in English. The Greek translator ignored the slight discomfort with the rendering, but Mel decided to make it more idiomatic in English. Certainly you can accept that.
What is? You’re intentionally being vague to try to sidestep an issue you know you can’t adeautely engage.
Because Genesis 1 intentionally de-personifies and de-deifies the traditional cosmogonic and cosmological deities. The use of tehom as non-sentient “depths” in Gen 1:2 makes that clear enough. Your attempt to further obfuscate with this vague reference to polysemy isn’t going to save you.
So you don’t agree because it “doesn’t fit well.” As much as you’d love for me to just take your expert word for it, I’m going to have to ask that you actually explain why it doesn’t fit well. So far all you’ve shown is that you misunderstand just about everything I’ve said, but have a basic knowledge of concerns that translation studies had with biblical studies about 20 years ago.
Cognitive linguistics and the inadequacies of a “dictionary” approach to understanding meaning in texts.
Which obviously means the semantic sense of kosmos is probably not found in that overlap.
Not necessarily contrast, but just non-alignment.
But you have no verb, and it is the etymological fallacy to insist that because kosmos comes originally from a verbal root, we must import that “verbal notion” into our understanding of the construction.
And again, that’s the etymological fallacy, and it departs entirely from the sense of the Hebrew, as well as the context of the verse. You’re just trying to show off your lingustic skills. Unfortunately you betray your naivety in the very attempt.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Just an aside, so are the many Rabbinical explanations of Biblical text. It isn't a valid argument, it's usually made by overzealous religionists trying to discredit another religion (sometimes Christianity). or people with no idea of the cultural connections between Judaism & Christianity.
Then we have a bigger problem (bigger than the fact that most of your list is comprised of works by the same two people or their students). Because I've read a fair amount of that list, from Bosman's dissertation to both Congress volumes. I went into the field of cognitive science because I started researching cognitive linguistics for one my undergraduate majors (classical languages). And even though I spend much more time now doing everything from fMRI studies to literature reviews on computational intelligence or categorization, the work I did pouring through decades of literature on ancient Greek trying to deal with the relative paucity of modern linguistic approaches to the language has left its mark. I keep an eye out for work written in biblical studies, classics, or near eastern studies which incorporate developments from cognitive linguistics or cognitive science. And as biblical studies (like most of what I study) isn't my field, but is a hobby, I read a lot of it.
And having read much of that nice list you provided, as well as your paper (and skimmed your thesis), I wonder why the works you cite aren't reflected in either. For example, if you look through Job 28: Cognition in Context, you will find papers by Dirk Geeraerts and Ronald Langacker. Langacker was practically the guy who turned me on to cognitive linguistics, and Geeraerts was central in getting the various people who were really working independently on the same thing together by starting e.g., the journal Cognitive Linguistics. Work like theirs is reflected in e.g.,Van der Merwe, “Lexical Meaning in Biblical Hebrew and Cognitive Semantics: A Case Study,” Biblica 87.1 (2006): 85–95 where we find a lengthy discussion on categorization and "fuzzy" boundaries. We also find that the BDB is linked with The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament as being inadequate and for the same reasons: they're traditional lexicons and the idea that humans use something like a "lexicon" isn't part of cognitive semantics or cognitive linguistics, in which things like frames, constructions, polysemy, metaphor, categorization and conceptual prototypes, etc., orient away from a "dictionary" and atomistic approach to language towards an encyclopedic one, in which concepts & categories are arranged in a network of relations and grammar is internal to instantiation.
Also, a fundamental component of cognitive linguistics is that it holds cognition to be embodied (a newer and increasingly popular view within the cognitive sciences in general). Thus terms which are prototypically spatial are constantly and naturally extended. Abstract thought, language, and expression are built off of our perceptual experience both in and of space and time. Cross-linguistically, then, it is far more common for words which seem to have a primary spatial interpretation to be used abstractly and metaphorically more often this spatially. Which makes your argument about the metaphorical use of a spatial preposition in Greek to be a translation from a non-metaphorical use (despite the fact that you use a translation of the exact same Greek phrase in Exodus which reads "besides me") particularly strange.
Also strange is the fact that rather than adopt a cognitive semantic approach, in which bijective maps from one lexicon to another aren't just problematic, but fundamentally flawed, you state things like:
It was possible in 1 Kgs 22:19. Several occurrences in 2 Kgs (17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:5) use dunamis (“force of war, army, host”
First, as Tov (whom you cite, but then apparently largely ignore) points out, looking at the words in either language is only one dimension. The second is to understand it is a given that for any line in any language, it can be rendered in a number of different ways. So you use an English translation of the Greek to understand how the Hebrew was mapped onto it (ignoring the cognitive linguistic framework entirely in the process), and (contra Tov) not only use the criterion "Linguistic adequacy of lexical choice" but rely on it as primary and (again contra Tov) to understand theological motivations.
Second, dynamis does not mean "host" any more than kosmos does. Once again, we're dealing with a conceptual prototype (and once again, this is not a matter of etymology but an understanding of how language works using metaphor, schemata, prototypes, constructions, and the other foundations of cognitive linguistics). But this "core" meaning of "strength, might, power" becomes extended in usage as in language in general and Greek in particular.
Third, the entire question (why is it impossible here) again ignores pretty much all work in cognitive linguistics by turning the right question on its head. It's not whether the translator could have used something like dynamis or actually use a word which has as its central meaning something like "army, host", or why s/he didn't. It's "how can I understand this particular choice as an attempt to render the Hebrew meaning?" rather than "given that I looked up a translation into English, how can I use this to show that the translation from Hebrew to Greek was theologically motivated?" Because you can always do this, especially when we're dealing with languages from two different families using different constructions and lexico-grammatical devices for conceptual/semantic construal (and when one of them is infamous for metaphorical extension rather than the adoption or creation of new lexemes). I could understand kosmos in Deut. here by looking back at Genesis 2:1. I could then argue that the Greek means "the whole ordering of the heavens" and reflects an influence of Greek cosmology and order from Plato onwards to understand the "heavenly host" as a the metaphorical power of YHWH. For further support, I could turn to the use of dynamis, or "power/might" within Kings to show that "forces/host" in later Jewish thought (influenced by certain strands of Hellenistic philosophy) conceptualized the hosts of heaven not as actual objects of worship or as objects at all, but as the works and might of the one true god.
Ignoring for the moment the problems with the use of "existential" here, as you have no problem seeing the Greek Deuteronomy as reflecting Exodus, what do you make of the exact same use of plen emou (which again, you render elsewhere as "besides me") in Exodus as in Deuteronomy (which, again, you render as "except me")?
You could start by explaining the use of plen in Deut 18:8 or 29:1.
Or maybe it's that I know the difference between etymology and conceptual prototypes & metaphor (among other basic aspects of cognitive semantics).
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Speaking of Dirk Geeraerts (and if you haven't already, I would read his contribution to Job 28: Cognition in Context), in his book Theories of Lexical Semantics (Oxford Linguistics) he states: "the Greek word angelos originally just meant messenger, but developed the meaning angel by copying the polysemy of the Hebrew word mlk, which means human messenger, envoy as well as heavenly messenger, angel."
No, I only listed one publication that was from a student of van der Merwe's. The others are a quite diverse crowd.
Then why did you only manage to come up with a single publication from the field? Why did you insist that biblical studies remains ignorant of these twenty-year-old linguistic concepts?
I hope you will be quite specific, then, when you explain why you could only come up with a single publication from
No, you haven't read my second thesis. You've only read my first. Both texts of mine you've read predate my interest in cognitive linguistics.
Obviously the texts that were published before the advent of this field of study fail to incorporate the insights from that field. A lexicon is a lexicon, and they have a purpose which they serve well. None of this changes the fact that you expose a marked ignorance of contemporary biblical studies. Keep finding little marginal points to waste paragraphs on so others will think you're still in control of the conversation, though.
No it doesn't. You're ignoring the consistent usage elsewhere in the Septuagint to insist, rather naively, that because semantic extension happens elsewhere, it's happening here. You have to show it's happening here. You can't, though, since the Septuagint translator is deviating from the norm in this rendering. Continue to try to use broad principles to undergird your naive declarations about individual texts, though. Certainly you'll convince someone.
More obfuscation. You stated that there was no good way to render what I said the translator was avoiding. I pointed out that there were in fact good ways to render it. You were shortsighted and mistaken. I didn't use an English translation of the Greek, I simply used an English translation to put into my English presentation. I analyzed the Greek, and I was not using cognitive linguistics as part of my methodology. Next, you obviously didn't read my thesis at all carefully. Not only did I point out that Tov doesn't actually employ the "linguistic adequacy of lexical choice" category because it's too subjective, but I also point out that the evidence, at least for Exodus, favors the Finnish approach. The reason I "largely ignore" Tov is because I spent a dozen pages explaining how the nature of Exodus fits the Finnish approach rather than Tov's. I have also spoken personally with Tov about this on numerous occasions. He was living in the same estate as me for six months while I was working on this thesis and he was participating in an Oxford seminar called "The Greek Bible and the Rabbis." I'm quite well aware of his approach and what he thinks of mine, so please refrain from making assumptions in the future about who I am "largely ignoring."
Incorrect. "Armed military force" is a primary meaning given by Muraoka. Lust gives "army," "host." LSJ gives "forces of war." This is the meaning of the Hebrew "host."
Again you're pontificating aimlessly just to try to obfuscate. You don't even know what point you're making anymore.
Another ludicrously meaningless dodge. You were wrong. If you're not adult enough to admit that it is quite possible to render the Hebrew phrase more idiomatically, then I'll stop responding to your posts.
No, you stated the following:
As I pointed out, it's absolutely and positively possible in Greek to express the very sense of the Hebrew. You got caught with your pants down, so you're trying to stir up a smoke screen with this jumblec jargon. You may be fooling others, but you can't possibly think you're fooling me.
I didn't look it up in English. I was presenting a paper in English and needed to give the verse in English. I find it hard to take you seriously when you take the fact that I used an English translation in writing a paper in English as an indication that I didn't look at the Greek, but just based my research on the English translation. Not only have you ignored that my translation is actually a revision of the English translation on which it was based, but you are making a rather serious accusation about my scholarship that you cannot defend.
And then you'd be ignoring the fact that two different translators are responsible for these two verses. You'd be glossing over their differences in the interest of some uninformed presupposition of univocality. You'd basically be eisegeting like a fundamentalist.
And all of this would be absolutely atrocious eisegetical nonsense.
You mean the problems you've manufactured and now don't want to defend?
You evidently did not understand my point about "beside" vs. "besides." "Besides" can mean "other than," "else than," "except," or "excluding." That sense is not spatial, while "beside" is. I rendered the more explicit "except me" in my Deuteronomy paper because I was emphasizing the difference between the Greek sense and the Hebrew sense. Exod 20:3 does not use "with me" as Deuteronomy does.
I already addressed those verses.
That must be it.