RE: The Real Bible: Genesis Chapter 1
May 6, 2015 at 7:01 am
(This post was last modified: May 6, 2015 at 7:07 am by Hatshepsut.)
(May 3, 2015 at 10:00 pm)Theoretical Skeptic Wrote: The Hebrew verb consists of two different states.
I rather thought Hebrew verbs did that "seven binyanim" thing. The principles of consonantal roots and gemination applied in common with Egyptian. The verbal system had a causative and a stative, also found in Egyptian but not in Indo-European languages, where for instance in English the past participle and passive are the closest equivalents: We say "the table is set," a state of affairs resulting from a previous action.
Yet as hard as Egyptian be with 19+ grammatical forms for its verb, Hebrew is even worse. I don't know any Hebrew, only that Egyptian borrowed a few words and constructions from it, hence referral to the primers below. The difficulty of Hebrew has made a mess of rendering the Old Testament in English. A fair amount of what we think the bible says based on reading English versions is either misleading or plain wrong, and we have no idea what many of its passages really meant.
The creation models are similar in Egypt and Canaan: Begin with a universe filled with water (instead of empty space). Blow a big air bubble in this infinite flood. That creates a dome, with "waters above the firmament divided from the waters below" and conveniently explains why the sky is blue: It's a water surface (upside down) on which Ra, the sun god, sails in his day boat. (Demote the celestial bodies if you're following the Elohim or Yahweh.) Finally, land emerges from the "waters below" and becomes clothed with vegetation for cattle and people to enjoy. Khnum Yahwheh shapes the first men and women first man from wet clay on a potter's wheel dust into which he breathes life. Voila!
Washington.edu http://depts.washington.edu/bibheb/files/VerbStems.pdf
Tzion.org http://tzion.org/devarim/The%20Seven%20Binyanim.pdf
I think it was the Norse who had that noun "banhammer."
