[B-Greek] SEIRAS as 'braids' in Judges 16:13-19?
Albert Pietersma
albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Wed Jun 23 16:07:36 EDT 2010
On Jun 23, 2010, at 2:45 PM, Daniel Buck wrote:
> The usual meaning of SEIRA is a rope or cord. But in the account of
> Sampson and Delida, the LXX uses it in v. 13, 14, and 19 to refer to
> Sampson's hair, "TAS hEPTA SEIRAS THS KEFALHS." I can't imagine
> Sampson's uncut hair falling naturally into seven discrete strands
> each time it is mentioned, so it seems that what he did was wear his
> long hair in seven braids. And a braid does in fact bring to mind
> the twisted joining of strands into a rope.
>
> Could the lexicons be amiss here in not giving 'braids' as a
> specific meaning of SEIRA, or have I just not looked at enough
> lexicons?
No, I think you have looked at enough lexica. What you apparently have
not done is to look at enough texts and considered the linguistic
character of those texts.
In Greek Judges we have essentially two translations, known commonly
as JudgA and JudgB. The evidence you cite reflects JudgB, the more
literalistic of the two.
Irrelevant details aside, in JudgB SEIRA reflects a Hebrew word which
appears only in the passage you cite and, on that basic, is assumed
to mean "braids." Since the word root (Plx) means inter al. 'to pass
through' JudgB inferred that it had to do with 'rope', which makes
minimal contextual sense.
JudgA was less of a literalist and therefore in vv.14, 19 uses bo/
struxoj 'curl, lock of hair', obviously a good contextual fit in the
way that SEIRA is not.
In sum: though the reference of SEIRA in the passage at hand is
clearly to 'a strand or braid of hair', its sense is no different from
what it is in Greek generally. So please don't change your lexicon!
Al
>
> Daniel Buck
>
>
>
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—
Albert Pietersma PhD
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Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm
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