Forgive me,
jaywill, but I continue to struggle with your claim that ...
August Dillman was a prominant Hebrew language scholar
... in suport of which you now offer the following:
quote:
And if there were any question, it would be sufficient for most people who know the meaning of the word ”scholar’ to note that S.R. Driver unhesitatingly recognized Pusey as an authority. It is doubtfulif Driver has an equal as a Hebraist - certainly not, I venture to say, in the matter of the use of the Hebrew verb. And Pusey himslf notes that Dilitzsch, who in earlier editions had argued against his own view, ”subsequently embraced it’. It is also worth noting that another scholar of equal stature with Delitzsch, namely, August Dillman, likewise wrote against the view and subsequently changed his mind - on linquistic grounds alone, In his Commentary on Genesis published in 1897, Dillman renders Gen. 1:2, ”But then was the earth waste, etc.’, and he expresses the view that ”became’ would be incorrect. However, before the two volume work was actually published he had changed his mind, for on page x under Corrigenda, he notes that the above rendering should be altered to read: ”But then the earth became . ’ It was not a matter of indifference to Dillman, therefore, but of sufficient importance to justify two Corrigendum notices. S.R. Driver resisted this translation to the end - even, as we shall see, at the price if a certain inconsistency. But Driver did admit in his The Book of Genesis that it was ”exegetically admissible.’
So, what does this tell us? Apparently ...
- Driver [not Dillman] was a recognized Hebraist who
- unhesitatingly recognized Pusey as an authority - although of what we are not told.
- Pusey notes that Dilitzsch [not Dillman], who had argued against his view, ”subsequently embraced it’.
- another scholar of equal stature with Delitzsch, namely, August Dillman, likewise wrote against the view and subsequently changed his mind - on linquistic grounds alone.
I see nothing here to suggest that Dillman was a Hebraist of note. Perhaps sesnsing that you had not yet validated your claim, you then offered ...
S.R. Driver refers to Dillman as an authority in ancient Hebrew grammer in this excerpt from one of his publications sited by Custance:
quote:
All that a careful scholar like Mr. Wright (Lectures on the Comparative Grammer of the Semitic Languages, 1890) can bring himself to admit with refenrece to the pluperfect sense of any other construction than that of word order inversion, is that while ”no clear instances can be cited in which it is distinctly so used’, there are cases in which ”something like and approximation to the signification can be detected’. And it is rejected unreservedly by Bottcher, Quarry, Pusey, and Dillman.
But here too we see nothing to substantiate your claim. I am more than willing to grant Dillmann's credentials when it comes to the South Semitic Ethiopic grammar, but that would hardly make him an expert in Biblical Hebrew. One might just as reasonably rely on an Icelandic grammarian as an expert on Bergundian.
May I ask why you simply disregard modern Torah translations of Genesis 1?
This message has been edited by ConsequentAtheist, 12-13-2005 12:18 PM
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