What I mean by self evident is that all we need for verification is to open the Hebrew Bible and look for it.
In Gen. 3:7 PAQAX is used to the parting of the eyelids to expose the pupil (indeed, in the extended sense of understanding what one sees), while in 1Ki 8:29 the verb PATAX is used for it. In Dt. 15:8 PATAX is used for the parting of the fingers of the hand. Opening the eyes is such a common act that Hebrew has a special verb for it. Hebrew has also this special verb NAGAN, 'to play a musical instrumet', absent in English! All we have in Biblical Hebrew is what we see written, and hence a phonetic analysis of its verbs is irrelevant, methinks. I believe that the only way to penetrate the internal logic of the Hebrew language is via the realization that some of its letters are mere variants, say ג ח כ ק G X K Q. There is no doubt in my mind, for instance, that PISEX RAGLAYIM is PISEQ RAGLAYIM, 'a spreader, or parter, of (limp) legs'. Here [Y] is a PISEX RAGLAYIM standing on his head. What is this RO$ HA-PISG-AH of Nu. 23:14? Of course, it is ראש הפשקה RO$ HA-PISQ-AH, the point where the mountain parts its slopes. The place is also called שדה צופים SDE COPIYM (COPEH is, I believe, a COBEH, 'erect'), a vantage point, an observatory. This is how ancient Hebrews understood PISGAH, and this is how I understand it. Today we use the word פסיג PSIYG for the embryonic parting of the leaves in a sprouting seed. Here is how it looks like [Y]. Isaac Fried, Boston University On Apr 23, 2012, at 7:36 PM, Will Parsons wrote: > Hi Isaac, > > On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:03:54 -0400, Isaac Fried <[email protected]> > wrote: >> 1. It is not clear to me how to advance "real evidence" for something >> that is manifestly self evident. > > What is self-evident to you is not so much to me. A lot of phonetic > similarities can be attributed to simple coincidence, especially when > what are being compared are sequences of three consonants only. > Nevertheless, I'm not completely excluding the possibility of a > relationship, just that it needs to be based on more that individual > phonetic similarities. What I would regard as "real evidence" is a > pattern of correspondences, whereby it could be demonstrated that taw > corresponds to qoph in a series of semantically-related roots (not > just פתח and פקח), and that heth corresponds to... (what? > nothing? a > vowel? a [j]?) in a series of roots besides פתה/פתי and > פקח. Perhaps > it is possible to demonstrate such correspondences on a systematic > level, but I at least haven't seen such claims. > > -- > Will Parsons > μη φαινεσθαι, αλλ' ειναι. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
