On Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:42:33 -0400, Bill <[email protected]> wrote: > At 01:13 AM 4/17/2012, K Randolph wrote : > >> PTH to allure, entice, PTY gullible, gullibility. In other words, >> the verb refers to taking advantage of others gullibility. It has >> nothing to do with opening. . . . . . But in these cases, the >> meanings are so different that no etymological connection can be >> made. > > I don't want to come off as being an argumentative know-it-all, > especially because Biblical Hebrew is not my forte. However, the > Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT) has in its entry for > PTH and PTY: "The basic verb idea is 'be open, wide, spacious." > > Moreover, I think we can deduce that the concept of gullibility --as > well as the concepts of enticing, deceiving, and persuading -- that > existed in PTH was indeed a melioration of the concept of openness > that had theretofore lied inchoate a) in the mouth, b) the logogram > that Hebrew scribes used to represent the mouth, c) the root peh that > referred to the mouth, and d) many of peh's derivatives, if we > recognize the following facts and forced deductions. > > First, Roget's Thesaurus lists 1) "susceptible" as a synonym for > "gullible," and 2) "open" as a synonym for "susceptible." Hence > "open" and "gullible" must also be considered synonyms.
So you have by logical deduction based on Roget's Thesaurus come to a conclusion that "open" and "gullible" are synonyms in English, which in fact is not the case. > Second, Greek "anastomow" 'to open up' was derived from Gk "stoma" > 'mouth' evidently to identify the relatively abstract notion of > opening with the physical act of opening the mouth And how is this relevant to Biblical Hebrew? > [other highly speculative ideas on development snipped] > This analysis therefore strongly suggests, if not clearly reveals, > that PTCH and PTH are as cognate as they clearly reveal because PTCH > was coined to associate creating a vacuous, open or empty condition > with opening the mouth, and 2) PTH to refer to the corresponding > psychological condition. Again, highly speculative. Apart from the semantic difficulties that Karl has brought out (and with which I agree) there are phonological problems that cannot be simply glossed over. One cannot simply equate פתה/פתי, פתח, and פקח without justifying the phonological transformations that would be necessary to derive one from another. > I think we can then go even deeper into this linguistic gestalt by > recognizing, as Isaac Fried did, that "The root PTX is apparently a > variant of . . . PSG, PSX, PCX, P$X, P$Q, (PSQ), PTX with acts > connoting 'spread'. I'd like to have more real evidence that these are related than a vague phonetic similarity. [more stuff snipped] -- William Parsons μη φαινεσθαι, αλλ' ειναι. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
