Do Bashal and Hepsō really mean ‘boil’? A preliminary study in the semantics of biblical Hebrew and Septuagint Greek

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Do Bashal and Hepsō really mean ‘boil’? A preliminary study in the semantics of biblical Hebrew and Septuagint Greek
 
Creator Mangum, Douglas T.
 
Subject Hebrew; Greek; Bible; Cognitive Linguistics biblical Hebrew; Septuagint; lexicography; semantics; cognitive linguistics; boil; Passover; Exodus 12; Deuteronomy 16
Description The meaning of any given lexical item emerges from an analysis of its contextual usage, but with biblical languages, often a traditional gloss will be accepted as if it were the clear meaning of a lexical item. Lexicons and dictionaries rarely go all the way back to a fresh analysis of the actual usage of a lemma, so the traditional meaning is rarely reconsidered. Those learning biblical languages accept the lexicon’s judgement without stopping to reflect on how the lexicon reached its conclusion. The acceptance of a traditional gloss as the meaning then gets assumed as more and more texts are read, reinforcing the assumption that the meaning is the gloss learned early on as the equivalent for that lexical item. This study focuses on the biblical Hebrew root בשׁל and the Greek verb ἕψω, both traditionally understood to denote the activity of preparing food by boiling in liquid. These lexemes appear in the Old Testament in some exegetically challenging texts, so clarifying the range of meaning may help to illuminate the interpretation of difficult passages. The full context of the usage of these lexical items in the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint is examined using cognitive semantics with the goal of identifying the semantic and pragmatic clues that point to the conceptual meaning evoked by these lexical items in biblical Hebrew and Greek.Contribution: The re-analysis of the data serves to re-evaluate traditional assumptions about the meanings of these words. Clarifying the meaning may illuminate some exegetical difficulties.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2022-09-22
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v78i1.7853
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 78, No 1 (2022); 5 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7853/23270 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7853/23271 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7853/23272 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7853/23273
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Douglas T. Mangum https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT