re: "happy", something not clear

From: yochanan bitan (ButhFam@compuserve.com)
Date: Fri Sep 11 1998 - 07:23:19 EDT


dear jack

your 'TOObehon' (Aramaic 'their good things', --> 'their happinesses' -->
'they are happy') is a nice wooden equivalent for the good 1st-2nd temple
Hebrew "ashre-" "happinesses of-". "(so and so) is happy". (Cf. also
4Q525.) they do mean 'happy, and happy because of having a good situation'.

But that's not why i'm writing, since it's good style in NT studies to
ignore Hebrew, both DSS hebrew and rabbinic hebrew, (thanks to geiger and
neusner and ignorant of segal, alon, kutscher, safrai, milik, grintz, rabin
and barr).

your 'sign off' is problematic, --again:

[kilmon]>>Min d'LA rokHEM l'maRAN yeSHUa meshyCHA niheYAH. maRAN aTHA

1. the first word 'min' should be 'man', aramaic/syriac for 'who?',
'whoever'.
I do know several modern ARABIC dialects that use 'min' for "who", but i
doubt that that is your intention. (I don't control modern syriac dialects,
though 'man' is still used in one.)

2. more problematic is that it says ...(not much)...[sic]:

"whuever does not luv our Lord Yeshua` the MashiaH will bee . Our Lord
comed.

 **you left out the content word HerEm 'banned' from 1 Cor. 16.22

3. spelling raHem/roHem with 'kh' is an acceptable style though misleading
for those who pronounce the two very different sounds. soft kaf versus
pharyngeal Het. you did distinguish meshyCHA, even getting the older 'a'
vowel. us arabic speakers gotta stand up for our rights.

4. niheYAH should have been nehWEH. Unless you were trying to get away,
somewhere, from the old eastern Syriac dialect. But you didn't move in the
direction of byzantine period Jewish Aramaic (yeHE).

[I shudder to think that you borrowed from Mishnaic Hebrew! :-) cf.
she-ha-kol NIHYAH bidvaro "that everything came into being through his
word" (ancient Jewish blessing, Mishna (ber.6.8), apparently PRE-Johannine,
cf. Jn 1.2)]

5. The syriac for "come!" should have been "tha" or "tho",
"is coming" should have been "athe" or "othe",
"came" should have been "etha" or "etho"
so i translated for you what it looks like. atha would have made nice 1st
temple Hebrew or Jewish or literary Aramaic, but that doesn't fit the rest
of the sentence.

FYI
and to b-greek, sometimes semitic languages are necessary.

erroso
randall buth

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