Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Hebrew Inscription Quiz: Text and Interpretation?

by at 11

11 comments

  1. EMC7/19/2006 2:44 pm

    Exodus 3:2.

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  2. P.J. Williams7/19/2006 2:45 pm

    zeh seneh 'esh XXX

    This is the bush of fire XXX

    Sorry I can't make out whether the middle letter of the last word is a nun or gimel.

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  3. P.J. Williams7/19/2006 2:50 pm

    OK so what I took as a shin was in fact nun-nun-waw. The middle letter of the final word is kaph. This is the bush that was not consumed. zeh seneh 'e:nennu: 'ukka:l.

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  4. P.J. Williams7/19/2006 2:52 pm

    Correction: initial letter is waw. wehasseneh 'e:nennu: 'ukka:l 'and the bush was not consumed'. Sorry it took me so long to get used to the script.

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  5. Randall Buth7/19/2006 8:51 pm

    clarification of last translation:

    and the bush is/was not being consumed

    This is a real qal passive participle. (what grammar books call a passive particile [qatul] is actually a perfect-passive adjective. This is the qal quta:l participle, where the ancient unaccented short vowel is preserved with a dagesh, as always in the remnants in the MT.)

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  6. P.J. Williams7/20/2006 10:03 am

    Randall, do I hear you correctly that you have evidence that the word should be pronounced 'uka:l and not 'ukka:l (cf. the dagesh lene in ba:ti:m 'houses')?

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  7. Randall Buth7/20/2006 9:17 pm

    Shalom Pete,

    Perhaps I should have written an asterisk for clarity to mark a proto form: *uka:l. this was the older participle form before ukka:l. The pronunciation remains ukka:l, with the dagesh. I was simply explaining where the dagesh came from. (I.e., the word is not a pu`al past but a Qal passive participle. By "passive participle" I mean a real, in-process participle and not the perfect passive qatul commonly called the Qal passive participle in English.)

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  8. P.J. Williams7/21/2006 5:11 pm

    It just gets me thinking how we really know that so-called dagesh forte actually does double begadkepat letters in forms that are not double in Semitic etymology.

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  9. Mississippi Fred MacDowell7/21/2006 7:30 pm

    What is this carving from? It looks like the one from the facade of the JTS, but it obviosuly isn't the same one:

    http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6347/1075/1600/bush.jpg

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  10. Anonymous7/21/2006 10:10 pm

    the last letters of that link are bush.jpg

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  11. Anonymous7/21/2006 10:17 pm

    The Jewish Theological Seminary seal--they transliterate it:
    Ve-Hasneh Aineno Uchal

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