I'm trying to find all singular verbs in Hebrew with plural subjects. Here's what I wrote, but it is not pulling up Gen. 1:1. Thanks.
Hi Carl
As far as I can see (looking at AFAT and ESV RI) the subject in Gen 1:1 is singular which is why it is not being reported.
This is confusing in light of the comment in WBC which states (regarding this verse):
אלהים “God.” “The first subject of Genesis and the Bible is God” (Procksch, 438). The word is the second most frequent noun in the OT. It is derived from the common Semitic word for god il. As here, Hebrew generally prefers the plural form of the noun, which except when it means “gods,” i.e., heathen deities, is construed with a singular verb
Gordon J. Wenham, vol. 1, Word Biblical Commentary : Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary, 14 (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 2002).
So I don't understand what is happening here but hopefully this is a start!
Graham
Graham,
Thanks for this. Elohim is being treated as virtual singular.
Jud
Hi Jud
EDIT: Glad it was useful.
There are others on the forum who are much more knowledgeable than me in Hebrew (we have just exhausted my lack of knowledge!) who I am sure will comment further
I would say this is a tagging error, for the noun is plural. This is correctly tagged as plural in BHS. It appears that all the Reverse Interlinears list this noun as singular.
I believe this is an area of debate in linguistic circles. The AFAT has a different philosophy than Westminster 4.2. It consistently labels elohim as singular.
This search will compensate for the example of elohim being considered singular in the AF database
I don't know if there are other places where something is considered contextually singular when the form is plural. If you want I could cook up a morph search to come up with a rough list.
Though if you consider the form by strict morphology אלהים is the plural of אלוה (late back formation?) it is singular semantically pertaining to the single god of the Hebrews.
This anomaly was explained either as a monotheistic development from a former polytheistic semantic plural or as an abstract plural. But of course you cannot prove any of the claims.
Consider נהרות which is morphologically feminine but is actually masculine (singular נהר) and the concord with the verb or adjective is usually pl. masculine.
I found the following using a proximity morphological search. These would all be plural forms with singular verbs:
Waters + was Num. 20:2; 2 Kings 3:9; filled 1 Kings 19:35; I'm unclear about spices and filled in 2 Chr. 16:14.
Gnats + was Exod. 8:13
Crumbled things + was Josh. 9:5, 12
Your lords (Saul) + died 2 Sam. 2:7
Servants + went up (Kethib singular Qere is plural) 2 Kings 24:10
Plus tons of Elohim or Adonai with a singular.
There are a handful of others.
I did the syntax search and got 48 hits, but some of these seemed tagged wrong to me.
Thank you for this.
I wonder about words like "water" which is plural too but often treated singular.
Kevin,
Could you tell me too how to do the screen shots, and how to post the search. I had to snip mine, but yours seems to be the actual search.
Thanks,
David,
This is exactly what I am interested in, places where concord follows sense rather than form. Plural nouns (collective etc) with singular forms. Singular adjectives with plural words.
I'm unclear about spices and filled in 2 Chr. 16:14
That is plural treated as plural (it is the object of מלא not the subject)
filled 1 Kings 19:35
In my BHS (print) chapter 19 has only 21 verses.
Very interesting! I have no idea at the moment how the singular can be explained.
2 Kings 3:9
Seems like attraction
לחם is a collective noun which is why it is translated by the LXX as plural
David, This is exactly what I am interested in, places where concord follows sense rather than form. Plural nouns (collective etc) with singular forms. Singular adjectives with plural words. Thanks, Jud
Have a look at 2 Sa 23:11 as compared to 1 Chr 11:13
and Jouon Muraoka 150e has lots of examples.
Also compare Classical Arabic syntax regarding word order.
Kevin, Could you tell me too how to do the screen shots, and how to post the search. I had to snip mine, but yours seems to be the actual search. Thanks, Jud
I use Jing to take screen shots. I just ran the search and then positioned the search document above the main Logos window and took the capture. See: http://wiki.logos.com/Screenshot
I see that the ESV {and I assume other RIs) label elohim as singular even when it is subject to a plural verb (e.g., 1 Kings 19:2)
You've absolutely right. This is a highly debated question.
It seems to me there are a lot of places like the example you showed me (2 Sam. 23:11 vs 1 Chr. 11:13) where one biblical writer will construe a word as collective plural and another as a grammatical singular. I wonder if this is happening with Elohim where some adjectives are singular and others are plural when modifying Elohim refering to the one God of Israel.
If the Syntax graphs are choosing to define Elohim as a singular, it makes it hard to see all these together.
Thanks for the help.
It seems to me there are a lot of places like the example you showed me (2 Sam. 23:11 vs 1 Chr. 11:13) where one biblical writer will construe a word as collective plural and another as a grammatical singular. I wonder if this is happening with Elohim where some adjectives are singular and others are plural when modifying Elohim referring to the one God of Israel. If the Syntax graphs are choosing to define Elohim as a singular, it makes it hard to see all these together. Thanks for the help.
It seems to me there are a lot of places like the example you showed me (2 Sam. 23:11 vs 1 Chr. 11:13) where one biblical writer will construe a word as collective plural and another as a grammatical singular. I wonder if this is happening with Elohim where some adjectives are singular and others are plural when modifying Elohim referring to the one God of Israel.
I think the אלהים question is so special that it probably should be considered individually. I don't know the syntax search at all. But can't you search for a lemma without determining its number like Elohim and search all the places where it is modified by a plural adjective or is the subject of a plural verb?
If you can I think you'll get what you want. Or am I missing your point...
PS After my short experience with the morphological search in Logos I suggest you keep a list of some of these instances you have already collected and compare them to your results to see that the search is accurate enough. Logos users don't be offended! The worst thing that can happen to a scholar is that he publish inaccurate data. Double checking always makes one feel safer.
No offense! This is good advice, even for non-scholars. Every database has shortcomings and even errors; it behooves the user to know them. It is a good practice to compare a syntax search in Logos to a morph search to provide a backstop that that the syntax search is doing what you think it's doing.
I am grateful to this thread because it shows me that the AF resources tags words as singular when their form looks plural. If I have time I think I might experiment with some wildcards ימ* in the form box to see if such a search can catch the items in question. Otherwise, once one has identified all the words that the AFAT calls singular but looks plural you could input a list of lemmas to compensate.
I think I would have done the same if I were in AF's shoes. Would we want נהרות to be tagged as feminine? Our search is for synchronic data not diachronic (and thus putative). In fact what I would do is tag אלהים differently according to context. Where it signifies the god of Israel I would tag it as singular where it refers to the gods of the Non-Israelites I would tag it as plural providing that it is the subject of a plural verb or is modified by a plural adjective.
Language does not follow mathematical equations: The form sometimes does not indicate the correct gender or number.
Well said David.
I did the Syntax Search which started off this discussion, and I found some good data, but there were other places where in my humble opinion, Andersen-Forbes mislabeled subjects (see 1 Kings 20:2; 2 Kings 1:2, 16; Isa. 11:4 and others). I cross referenced the Syntax search with an admittedly imperfect morphology proximity search, and I found more data.
I have the SESB 3.0 WIVU constituency trees, but that database only works in Logos 3.0 and since I upgraded that part of SESB will no longer work.
And if you tag Elohim as singular (which would make sense to me too) when referring to the one God of Israel, what do you do with a place like Gen. 20:13 where translators go different ways. Or Gen. 31:53 (in light of 31:7); 35:7; Exod. 22:8; 2 Sam. 7:23 (where the verb is plural and the prep. and suff. is singular); Ps. 58:12; Deut. 4:7; or amazingly Josh. 24:19 with both singulars and plurals side by side; or maybe the most difficult one for me, Exod. 32:4 which uses plural Elohim and a plural verb of the single golden calf; or 1 Sam. 28:13 using plural of Elohim, a plural participle of Samuel.
For me, as a writer on early Christian Christology, I know that first century Jewish writers struggled with exactly these translation issues, and some resorted to the idea of a "little Yahweh"/Metatron, Angel of the LORD, Wisdom to explain things issues like these (Gen. 19, Yahweh raining down fire from Yahweh in heaven). It seems to me that even some of the Targumists attempt to explain the plurality with an idea of God with his angels. What I can't quite get my mind around though, is Would these Jewish writers all say that, say Wisdom, was excluded from the biblical writer's concept of God? Could you even conceive of a God without wisdom/Wisdom?
Every syntax database has a substantial subjective layer.
You mean Onqelos? I doubt whether the sages of the first centuries had such sophisticated and abstract thinking about god. They needed Greek philosophy for that.
Sorry, that was unclear. What I meant about the Targumist is, when faced with Elohim and a plural verb, they tried different things. One would read Elim and apply it to Angels, a slightly different spelling and another Targumist would go with judges (that kind of thing). I have a reference in my notes where one Targumist interpreted the plural verb in one of these places as God and his angels. I looked at Onkelos, Pseudo-Jonathan, Neofiti, the Cairo Geniza.
I don't think that Targumist saw God as a "plurality within a greater unity", but I do think there was dabbling in that kind of idea even in the Rabbi's (A. F. Segal's Two Powers in Heaven, for example) and in Philo (he thought the Cherubim on the Ark were representative of "powers of God". I don't know if somekind of Angel of the Lord idea is driving the 11QMelchizedek thing too (though that document is really to fragmentary to do much with).
Thanks for the Jouon Muraoka reference.
Right,
I searched the lemma Elohim with both singular and plural. I did the same thing from all the verb stems in perfect and imperfect. I'm doing the participles now.
They needed Greek philosophy for that.
I just can't resist: and the Greek philosophers needed the South Asians see: The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophiesby Thomas McEvilley [:D]
Sorry, that was unclear. What I meant about the Targumist is, when faced with Elohim and a plural verb, they tried different things. One would read Elim and apply it to Angels, a slightly different spelling and another Targumist would go with judges (that kind of thing). I have a reference in my notes where one Targumist interpreted the plural verb in one of these places as God and his angels. I looked at Onkelos, Pseudo-Jonathan, Neofiti, the Cairo Geniza. I don't think that Targumist saw God as a "plurality within a greater unity", but I do think there was dabbling in that kind of idea even in the Rabbi's (A. F. Segal's Two Powers in Heaven, for example) and in Philo (he thought the Cherubim on the Ark were representative of "powers of God". I don't know if somekind of Angel of the Lord idea is driving the 11QMelchizedek thing too (though that document is really to fragmentary to do much with).
What I find problematic about this argument is the mixture of different sources arising in different communities and in different time periods. Each Targum must be investigated as a source on its own. Philo was surely influenced by the Greeks but he was of little influence later on.
Perhaps we can discuss a specific reading and its manifestations in these sources and see what we can learn from it.
Philo was surely influenced by the Greeks but he was of little influence later on.
Not for the Jews, but he was a huge influence for the early church:
http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/7081
I just can't resist: and the Greek philosophers needed the South Asians see: The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies by Thomas McEvilley
Sorry for my ignorance but how did Indian knowledge reach the Greeks? Alexander?
Philo was surely influenced by the Greeks but he was of little influence later on. Not for the Jews, but he was a huge influence for the early church: http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/7081
Yes of course but all the sources mentioned above are Jewish.
Sorry, that was a shameless plug for books I like....
If I have time I think I might experiment with some wildcards ימ* in the form box to see if such a search can catch the items in question.
If anyone was interested in my experiment here's the results. I was unable to use a wildcard search to work in the syntax search. I was able to run a wildcard search in the morph search but it failed in the Syntax search even after copying the word directly from the successful morph search. The engine must not support it. It seems like the occurrences under debate here are best evaluated individually. My hope was that I could generate a syntax search that could capture the instances that A-F thought singular but some might think were plural. It appears that a morph proximity search with its attendant false positives to sort through will have to suffice.
I thought Philo's brother was one of the five Jews who represented Judaism before the Roman Emperor at one time (vague memory). Would not that make at least his family important for the Jews of the time?
I meant influence on the Targumists, Rabbinic Literature etc. He was not known to Judaism until the 16th century.
When Babylon was at its zenith, Babylon had a very diverse, cosmopolitan, educated population - including Greeks and South Asians. McEvilley's evidence of interaction is primarily from that period. I would suspect that Alexander was instrumental in a second wave of cross-pollination.
Sorry for my ignorance but how did Indian knowledge reach the Greeks? Alexander? When Babylon was at its zenith, Babylon had a very diverse, cosmopolitan, educated population - including Greeks and South Asians. McEvilley's evidence of interaction is primarily from that period. I would suspect that Alexander was instrumental in a second wave of cross-pollination.
This sounds like an urban legend. Babylon was at its Zenith at least twice. Never, In all the tablets I have read in Standard Babylonian have I encountered a Greek name. I have also never heard of Greeks in Babylonia during my courses on Mesopotamian history. Plus the dates don't add up. Could you point me to the evidence?
Could you point me to the evidence?
McEvilley's book is probably the quickest source not because of his own work but for his list of works cited. West's Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient is another possibility. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't say that McEvilley has proven his case. However, he does present a plausible scenario for what others have observed - and thus made the idea more attractive for exploration. While I thoroughly enjoyed the pre-Socratics as an undergraduate philosophy major, I should confess that my knowledge is much more firmly on the South Asian side having studied with Karl Potter, Leon Hurvitz and D.S. Ruegg - all fairly substantial names in the field.
This sounds like an urban legend.
I can't resist a bit of a tease. My two papers in lieu of a thesis for my Masters were on Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit as a pidginized language and on the changes in Buddhist animal Jataka tales as they became naturalized folktales in Sri Lanka. And I've been on the board of the Washington State Folklife Council. I do recognize most urban legends when I see them. [:)] Funny story: When a friend asked for help in reviewing a well-known book of Jataka tales, I told her that the author had unconsciously made them fit the Western model. When the review came out the author called me at midnight his time demanding examples and mentioning that he had a plane to catch that morning. I gave him examples and he called me back at 4 a.m. his time to apologize and admitted I was right. He'd stayed up all night checking and now had to catch his plane at 6:00 with no sleep.
Never, In all the tablets I have read in Standard Babylonian
I'll take your word for it. I neither read Babylonian nor have a interest in history (other than of language and religious teaching tales). Can I get a tenth of a point for Vedic, Avestan and Old Persian?
McEvilley's book is probably the quickest source not because of his own work but for his list of works cited.
Google Books' type is so tiny that I shall have to borrow it on Sunday.
My two papers in lieu of a thesis for my Masters were on Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit as a pidginized language and on the changes in Buddhist animal Jataka tales as they became naturalized folktales in Sri Lanka.
So you are a sociologist? Have you researched the feild of oral traditions?
Can I get a tenth of a point for Vedic, Avestan and Old Persian?
There is shortage of researchers who actually read these languages and Hebrew and who can also objectively compare early Persian religion with Second Temple Judaism. Everyone is talking about that. Perhaps you could fill the gap.... You probably know the debate on Isa 45:7
Despite the field not exactly existing in the US it is probably best to call myself a philologist by training ... Dr. Ruegg made sure of that. I wish I knew Hebrew. Unfortunately, in graduate school I headed more towards the Central Asian melting pot of religious tales and can muddle my through Old Uighur, Sogdian, Tibetan but, unfortunately, no Semitic languages. I'm am working on Hebrew and Greek now - Greek is a simple simplify the grammar and stuff in new words. Hebrew is much more of a challenge.
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