[B-Greek] M. Sim diss. hINA in OT citation formulae

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon Feb 9 14:13:43 EST 2009


On Feb 9, 2009, at 8:46 AM, Brian Abasciano wrote:

>  Does it not
> make more sense that hINA has a range of possible meanings, partially
> dictated by the types of constructions it is used in? I do not have  
> trouble
> with accepting that it serves a a structural marker or procedural  
> marker,
> but why would it not have meaning dictated by the context as any  
> other word?
> Surely there is a range of meanings hINA is used with. If one were  
> to assess
> every usage, and make judgments about the meaning communictaed by  
> the hINA
> phrase there, and then draw up the different ways it is used, how is  
> that
> different than what lexicographers do with any word? Would that not  
> be hINAs
> range of meaning, and then its specific meaning in any passage would  
> then be
> dependent on the context it is used in? I guess I am having trouble  
> seeing
> the difference between deriving a telic or ecbatic or any other  
> sense from
> context in a hINA phrase from what we normally do with determing the  
> meaning
> of a word in a specific context.


A valid question, Carl has already addressed it.

One part of this thesis which is particularly difficult is section 3.5  
Introducing quotes from the OT. Here M. Sim makes a case that the  
semantic value 'purpose' should be abandoned in the OT citation  
formulae. I was just reading this section again it seems that Sim has  
produced a caricature with hINA + PLHROW, a straw man, attributing the  
purpose to some human agent where that is not how the expression would  
have been understood by the original readers/auditors of the text.  It  
doesn't really prove anything, pointing out that attributing purpose  
to a human agent makes a ridiculous reading, since IMHO there was no  
intent to attribute purpose to a human agent.

One way to solve the problem is read hINA as a marker of result rather  
than purpose. Another way to solve it is to position the notion of  
purpose within the framework of the purpose of QEOS or the 'Divine  
Will', an approach Sim addresses and explicitly rejects.

Elizabeth Kline







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