Alward's Confused
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Wed, 21 Oct 1998 23:13:03 -0700 (00909054783, 2.2.32.19981022061303.00874a9c@midwest.net)
>Joe Alward:
>
>That's extremely interesting. Thanks very much. Does it help? Yes, it
>absolutely does. It helps make me even more suspicious.
>
>
>"But-did the same the magicians with-their-secret-arts to bring forth the-
>gnats-lice
>but-not [they] were-able/had power and-there-were the-gnats/lice on-man and-
>on-beasts"
>
>This is similar to the the KJV translation. Your Masoretic translation does
>not show the magicians TRIED to bring forth the lice, although it's perfectly
>clear that they failed to do so. I'm looking for the key word "tried" in the
>first half of the verse that Farrell found in the several other translations.
>Why is it not in the Masoretic?
>
>Thus, it seems I'm back to where I started, wondering whether we have good
>reason to believe that the "did so" in the blood plague story meant "did
>everything Moses did, including converting all the water to blood". On the
>one hand, Farrel shows several translations which show the word "tried", while
>you show that the Masoretic does NOT have this crucial word.
>
>To summarize, unless we have a definitive translation which shows that "did
>so" always meant "did everything that Moses did", instead of sometimes just
>meaning "waved his rod the way Moses did", then I remain unconvinced (but
>still sure that you'll show that I've overlooked something) that the blood-
>plague story is unequivocal.
>
>Can you help further?
>
TILL
For pity sakes, Joe, didn't you have to learn another language in order to
earn your Ph. D.? If so, then you should know at least a little more about
linguistics than your statement above shows. Why don't you get a KJV
concordance and look up the word "try"? If you do, you will see that there
was apparently no word in Hebrew that was exactly equivalent to the English
word "try" in the sense of "attempt." You will find the word "try" listed
in a concordance, but it is always "try" in the sense of "test" or "prove,"
as in 2 Chronicles 32:31, "God left him, to try him, that he might know all
that was in his heart." So if you are looking for the Hebrew word in Exodus
8:18 that in and of itself meant "try," you won't find it, but you won't
find it anywhere else either. However, the meaning of a statement in one
language can depend on morphology, syntax, inflection, tense, mood, etc., so
the translation of it into another language can't always be done on a
literal, word-for-word basis. The translators of various Bible versions
obviously recognized in the structure of Exodus 8:18 something that connoted
the sense of "trying," but I am not expert enough in Hebrew to know what
this was. However, I certainly do know that language doesn't function in
the way you apparently believe it does, because when I read your postings on
subjects like this one, I sometimes get the idea that you think all
languages are just like English except that different sounds are used to
make words, but that isn't the case at all. When I lived in New Mexico, I
took a few lessons in Navajo, because there were so many Navajo students at
the school where I taught. I learned that in this language the meaning of
words is sometimes determined by the tone that the speaker gives to them.
Try to get out of your head the apparent notion that the Bible was written
in a language equivalent to English but with the words just pronounced
differently.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net