medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
For what it is worth I
completely agree with you
Dr Inman. BTW I could not
quite understand or
appreciate what you meant
in citing the Gen. Raba
text in connexion with van
Wolde's phantasy. In
my previous post I make a
guess formulated as a
question - but I was not by
any means certain I
had understood
you.
The very best to
you,
Mata
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 3:44
PM
Subject: Re: [M-R] RE medieval exegeses of
Genesis 1, 1 implying bara' = to separate
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
Thank you, Mata, but the last time we discussed Hebrew, I think you and I
were the only ones on the list following the discussion.
Ellen
van Wolde, who holds her inaugural speech at the Raboud university in Nijmegen
on Friday, says the Hebrew word bara should not be translated as
'created' but as 'separated'.
This is just unbelievably poor scholarship. Whatever the word bara
meant in the past, she bases her study mostly on etymology, it is very unlikely
that it means separate here. The word for separate badal appears only a
few lines below, “God separated the light from the darkness.” If bara
were a synonym for separate, than we would have a parallel grammatical
structure. But we don’t. God separates the light “from” beyn the
darkness. In verse one there is no “from” beyn. To use anyword for
separate without using beyn violates the standard practices (rules if you
like) for all Semitic languages not just Hebrew.
Genesis 1 simply does not say that God separated the
heavens and the earth.
V. Kerry Inman, M.A.,
M.Div., Th.M.
Ph. D. Candidate, Arabic and Hebrew
University of
Pennsylvania
Department of Near Eastern Languages and
Civilizations
> Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:14:04
-0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [M-R] RE
medieval exegeses of Genesis 1, 1 implying bara' = to separate
> To:
[log in to unmask]
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly
discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Isn't George
FERZOCO's question if anyone can
> point to medieval exegeses of Gen 1.1
which are
> along the lines of van Wolde's idea that Bara'
> means
"to separate ..." &c ? that is: the question
> is not RE medieval
exegeses RE the question "from
> what was the univese made" ? i.e. *not*
what tohu
> & bohu is/are (whether hylic or whatever) ? but
>
whether there is a mediaeval precursor to van
> Wolde's idea RE what bara'
means, viz. "to
> separate" and not "to create" ? And isn't V.
>
Kerry Inman pointing out that Genesis Raba in
> taking tohu wa bohu of Gen
1.2 (= unified substrate
> of Heaven and Earth) as the archetype of
earthy
> matter, as it were, may somehow be related to the
> idea
that bara' in Gen 1.1 means "to separate" and
> not "to create" ?
>
> Mata Kimasitayo
>
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