At 05:06 PM 6/15/97 -0500, rcannon@usa.net wrote:
>The scripture must be understood in its total contextual setting. Part
>of that context comes from an understanding of the underlying languages
>in which it was written. The chief problem in studying the Old
>Testament--where the Flood Myth appears--is that the Hebrew language had
>at the time only a few thousand words. This meant that each word could
>carry a much wider range of meanings than similar words in modern
>languages.
Do you have a reference for this?, I mean the fact that Hebrew only had a
few thousand words? I am learning Mandarin Chinese, and I know about 6,000
words in that language and can hardly communicate at all with them. My
sentences are poor and it is hard for me to express certain concepts in
Chinese. A people with that difficulty conveying information could hardly
be a neolithic or early iron age people.
typical vocabularies among children are as follows.
A six year old knows 13,000 words.
The average high school graduate has a vocabulary of 45,000
Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, (New York:
Harper/Perennial, 1994), p. 150-151
I doubt that Hebrew was less complex, but am willing to be corrected on this
count.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm