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Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
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Author | Topic: basic reading of genesis 1:1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Can you point to any other biblical examples of this usage with "bara"? no, the two do not appear in conjunction elsewhere. we are left to examine other instances of b'reishit. bara is not particularly special.
I find that "bara" is classed as a "telic" verb, like "die" or "sell", so "only finds meaning at the end of a process". i have never heard anything to that extent.
(BTW, how do you edit Hebrew characters in this window? I can copy and paste yours, but can't figure out how to edit them.) the text above is a copy from mechon-mamre's side-by-side hebrew/english tanakh. for writting myself, i use a (semi-phonetic) web applet. i find this to be the least complicated method.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I disagree; the article IS important. If the article were present on "beginning" ("ba-reshit" instead of "bereshit") there would much less debate. that's not an article, that's a vowel point -- which were added several hundred years after christ, and are not part of the original text. and REALLY easy to screw up, btw.
Is 46:10 uses exactly the same form "bereshit" as Gen 1:1, with no article: I foretell the end from the beginning (JPS) (There are at least half a dozen other examples, but this is about the best.) hmm, ok, that's a good one.
past and present tense third-person verbs in hebrew are actually indistinguishable, even in terms of vowels. either rendering is actually acceptable here. But this is not the issue. well, that's what i mean. it's not an issue -- you can read the word either way, so this does not hamper the construct reading.
Yes, THIS is the issue. To take it as a construct (a la Rashi) requires translating it "in the beginning of the creating of God", i.e. "in the beginning of God's creating". yes. i would like to add, possibly at the expensive of my own case, that a possessive is mysteriously missing. i'm not sure how big of an issue this is, based on the grammar.
For this "bara" MUST be read as an infinitive. But as you note, it is not an infinitive form. well, this is just a quibble -- i would render it "when god began creating..." the infinitive is just an awkward translation into english where it isn't needed. in either language. "creating" works just fine, and is more literal. the nJPS isn't concerned with precision in translating the grammar exactly as it is in the hebrew -- they're more concerned with reflecting the ideas and making it read smoothly in english. i prefer to split the difference between idiomatic and literal. that's all i meant.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2160 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
Re the missing article in "In [the] beginning":
that's not an article, that's a vowel point -- which were added several hundred years after christ, and are not part of the original text. and REALLY easy to screw up, btw.
Yes; when a preposition is prefixed to a noun with article, the article disappears as a character and becomes a vowel point. And I agree that it is very easy to mess up. But as my Hebrew scholar friend claims, the first few verses of the Bible would have been widely memorized and repeated, and it is much less likely that the Jewish community would have lost the vowel points on this verse.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2160 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
yes. i would like to add, possibly at the expensive of my own case, that a possessive is mysteriously missing. i'm not sure how big of an issue this is, based on the grammar.
The "construct" form shows genitive case (which can show possession), and doesn't need any other markers.From wikipedia (Hebrew language - Wikipedia): quote: I noted that for Rashi's translation "bara" MUST be read as an infinitive, though it is not written as one.
well, this is just a quibble -- i would render it "when god began creating..." the infinitive is just an awkward translation into english where it isn't needed. in either language. "creating" works just fine, and is more literal. the nJPS isn't concerned with precision in translating the grammar exactly as it is in the hebrew -- they're more concerned with reflecting the ideas and making it read smoothly in english.
But your translation WOULD need some sort of possessive marker, because it would not follow the noun construct paradigm. A construct requires two or more nouns next to each other, as noted in wikipedia. To be in construct, the word "bara" must act as a noun. It cannot do this while a finite verb; the only way for it to act as a noun is to be an infinitive. (Note: there may be some terminology and usage differences between biblical and modern Hebrew. I have studied biblical but not modern Hebrew, whereas I suspect that you are more fluent in modern Hebrew.)
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Yes; when a preposition is prefixed to a noun with article, the article disappears as a character and becomes a vowel point. And I agree that it is very easy to mess up. But as my Hebrew scholar friend claims, the first few verses of the Bible would have been widely memorized and repeated, and it is much less likely that the Jewish community would have lost the vowel points on this verse. there are all kinds of vowel copy errors all over the bible, and even a few consonant errors (nun becomes bet, etc). and this is a particularly easy one to mess up, because the emphasis is off this vowel. for bet- and mem- and vav- prefixes, i don't even pronounce the vowel (which is why you'll see me render them in latin letters as b' or m' or v' even though this is NOT the accepted standard). and because most people memorize it in a spoken or chanted form, there's little gaurantee. this is the easiest kind of vowel to lose, or screw up, and it's the kind of precision of subtlety that i don't feel is exceptionally important. it's sort of like making an entire point out of comma placement in english -- it can be quite important, yes, but it's also commonly screwed up.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
quote: oh, right, duh! sorry. it's quite possible that bara elohim is such a construct. i'm not familiar with any other such uses, however.
I noted that for Rashi's translation "bara" MUST be read as an infinitive, though it is not written as one. but as a contruct, it need not be. it would just have to function as a noun -- a gerund not an infinitive:
But your translation WOULD need some sort of possessive marker, because it would not follow the noun construct paradigm. A construct requires two or more nouns next to each other, as noted in wikipedia. To be in construct, the word "bara" must act as a noun. It cannot do this while a finite verb; the only way for it to act as a noun is to be an infinitive. i'm not sure about gerunds in hebrew. let me take some time to research that a bit, and see. from a brief look (i'm at work) it doesn't seem that they look like that, but bara is a strange verb to begin with.
(Note: there may be some terminology and usage differences between biblical and modern Hebrew. I have studied biblical but not modern Hebrew, whereas I suspect that you are more fluent in modern Hebrew.) not sure i would say "fluent." there's a pretty good chance you know more than i do. Edited by arachnophilia, : typo
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5878 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
Pardon me for the intrusion, but would you be able to assist in the following matter?
http://EvC Forum: misc lexeme morpholgy and semantic theory -->EvC Forum: misc lexeme morpholgy and semantic theory It's Greek and Latin not Hebrew, but your talents and expertise are welcome.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i'm not particularly well versed in greek or latin. in fact, i know basically nothing at all. from what i can tell, the word "theory" does contain the theos root -- but it's important to remember of course that the origin of a word may not bear much on the current usage. and in this case, in western societies, religion was the only form of academics for a thousand years or so.
i don't want to junk up this thread too much with an aside, but do you have a link to the conversation that prompted the PNT? i'll look at it, and if i feel so inclined, i'll comment once the thread goes through.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
after looking at the "all topics" page and wondering where this page went, i went looking through the bible study forum, to discover it was the very last post.
somehow, we've been posting more than 4 years in the past!
quote: it's funny to have posts from before you joined:
quote: Edited by arachnophilia, : subtitle
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5878 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
I wondered if your linguistic prowess included the Greek and Latin... I guess not. Even so, your other knowledge of morpholgy and language useage is certainly relevant.
Arach: but it's important to remember of course that the origin of a word may not bear much on the current usage. and in this case, in western societies, religion was the only form of academics for a thousand years or so. Excellent observation! I think that is part of Paul Davies' analysis as well. Arach:i don't want to junk up this thread too much with an aside, but do you have a link to the conversation that prompted the PNT? i'll look at it, and if i feel so inclined, i'll comment once the thread goes through. I understand... Thank you. And I invite you to read the whole thing if you wish. If I am missing something, I need to know from a source other than Kuresu who seems very worked up over the issue. Here is where the recent trouble began: http://EvC Forum: The "Digital Code" of DNA -->EvC Forum: The "Digital Code" of DNA
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ah -- after a look or two, i'd like to revise my opinion. it seems you are overlooking something. something i missed on the first pass too. i'll save it for the appropriate thread, should it be promoted.
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5878 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
ah -- after a look or two, i'd like to revise my opinion. it seems you are overlooking something. something i missed on the first pass too. i'll save it for the appropriate thread, should it be promoted. That is not what I wanted to hear. But reality is the issue, so bring it on. I'd like to speculate, but no... The thread appears to be coming, but I have to make some changes. Perhaps in the process I will find what you are saying myself.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
well, it's short. so i'll add it here.
thea and the feminine case of theos appear to be homonyms.
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5878 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
So that's it.... how so?
I am (hopefully) awaiting thread promotion, so feel free to wait to respond.
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fred Junior Member (Idle past 5992 days) Posts: 8 Joined: |
It is a challenge to translate from original languages to modern . That much is obvious. However either rendering of the opening verses allows for an indefinite period of time. This agrees with scientific evidence that the universe may be billions of years old. It also says that there was a beginning- we are just not sure when. The events taking place during the six creative days describe the preparation of earth for life. These time periods were not limited to 24hrs but were much longer in length - again fitting with scientific evidence.
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