Chris Date, who blogs at Rethinking Hell, asked me to write a post on the existence of the passive Qal in the Hebrew Bible. The post, “The Passive Qal and Other Issues,” can be read here.
My post was written as a rejoinder to a discussion between Dr. Glenn Peoples and Adam Blauser on whether the Hebrew verb כָבַה in Isaiah 66:24 has a passive meaning. In that post I also address some of the criticism raised by Blauser against Peoples’s argument for the passive meaning of כָבַה.
Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
Dear Dr. Mariottini,
I enjoyed your guest post on the other blog and the comments section.
It’s not clear what you mean by “What made sense to the biblical writers and their readers, at times, makes no sense to someone today reading what they wrote hundreds or thousands of years ago.” By “their readers” do you mean only the contemporary readers or also those who would have heard them read aloud?
Thank you,
Wellington King
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Wellington,
Thank you for your comment. What I meant to say is that when the biblical writer wrote his book, he knew what he was trying to communicate to his readers. At the same time, his readers understood what he was saying. The problem is that today, we cannot understand everything the writer was trying to communicate. Proverbs 30:1 is just one example of many.
I hope this explanation is clear.
Thank you for visiting my blog.
Claude Mariottini
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