basic reading of genesis 1:1

Hi kbertsche, My textbook has 5 functions of the infinitive construct and 2 for the infinitive absolute. I don't think understanding the function is getting the cart before the horse as the function determines what form the word will have.But maybe your functions are derived from Modern Hebrew so why don't you present them here instead of telling me you taught them.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

yes, there is. ראשית is in construct form. as discussed above in Message 16, the absolute would be ראשונה. incorrect. not every pair of nouns is in a construct, and not all constructs are pairs. indeed, genesis 1:1 begins with three nouns, and only the last, אלהים, is absolute. the middle noun happens to be an infinitive. and indeed, the example you cited in Message 91 would prove that the prefix is entirely unnecessary.

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תְּחִלַּת דִּבֶּר-יְהוָה

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note that hosea 1:2 lacks a prefix. yet, the verb is still also a noun. that's hilarious, ICANT. did you bother to look it up? yes, it is! and so is בראשית ברא. it is the same kind of construction. it is not a prefix. it's a word. and it's a specific kind of word: it's a preposition. some prepositions are prefixes. but not all. ראשית is a construct -- and thus includes a preposition. not actually relevant. look harder. no. it's a construction that includes a preposition. okay. now, as i asked you in Message 94, please explain why you think it's a qal perfect. without using vowels. and keeping in mind that, as the book said, some infinitive constructs are indistinguishable from qal perfect tense verbs even with vowels, and are simply being used as nouns. i make those assertions partly because you knowledge is quite laughable indeed (why, in this very post, you've again consistently mixed up two letters, nevermind grammar). and partly because, well, we've been over this.back in Message 66, kbertsche raised the legitimate rebuttal of listing instances where ראשית is used in the absolute. by Message 70, we had narrowed that list down to only five -- and a few of those are probably even arguable. that's 10%, or less. the fact of that matter is that ראשית is almost always used in a construction, because it means "first of" something. the verb happens to also be a noun. try reading english that way sometime, where you ignore grammatical context. things will be pretty fun. no, the surrounding words affect meaning, grammar, usage, and syntax. and it is abundantly clear that you do not understand it. and yet, the language did have vowels. i wonder how that could have worked. is there maybe an identical modern language we could look to, that also has vowels, but doesn't typically use them in writing? perhaps, a language that shares most of its vocabulary, a fair portion of its grammar, and all of its alef-bet? see above. i think i struck a nerve.no, please feel free to use sources. i would actually much prefer that you go look things up. but this time, instead of copying and pasting, and then modifying words here and there to make the argument sound like your own, include those words in a quote, with a source and preferably a link.

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אָרַח

or rather, the first subordinate clause of the first sentence. but that's precisely the point.

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אָרַח

please share, then. make your point, or don't. err, form determines function. that's actually sort of the point: you're getting backwards. ICANT apparently know more than:

1. moses
2. rashi
3. orlinskly
4. people who teach biblical hebrew classes

lets keep that list going, shall we?

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אָרַח

Hi kbertsche,I will give you a few uses of infinitive construct.Subject of another verb.Genesis 2:18 לא־טוב היות האד ם לבדו'the man being alone is not good'Object of another verb.Jeremiah 1:6
הנה לא־ידﬠתי דבר'Behold I do not know (how ) to speak'Express purpose/result usually with a ל.I Samuel 23:15
כי־יצא שאול לבקש את־נפשו'that Saul had gone out to seek his life'Explanatory after the main verb (i.e. 'by -ing')Deuteronomy 5:12
שמור את־יום השבת לקדשו'Keep (Inf Abs) the sabbaath day by sanctifying it'Temporal meaning with the ב ,כ prefix.II Samuel 5:4
בז־שלשים שנה דוד במלכו'David was thirty years old when he became king'With the ב a more general temporal sense.I Kings 15:29
כמלכו הכה את־כל־בית ירבﬠם'As soon as he became king he struck down the whole house of Jeroboam'With the כ often refers to an immediately preceeding event.These are according to the rules in my text book.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

No. We are the readers of the text, not the writers. Our job is to understand what the author was trying to communicate. For us, form determines function. Function does not determine form, as you assert. This is only true for the writer, but we are readers not writers. No, I have never studied modern Hebrew. Only biblical Hebrew. Ask Arach if you want to know anything about modern Hebrew.You can find 5 functions of the infinitive construct listed in chapter 14 of the on-line Hebrew grammar by Cook and Holmstedt. My list of 5 functions is slightly different. I have lumped what they call "subject" and "object" functions together as "nominal" functions (where the infin construct functions as a noun; this is the function in Gen 5:1, BTW). I have added its function in a "Causal adverbial clause, with prepositional prefix "bi"".

i am, of course, not an expert. as i have pointed out previously, i have only had two semester of modern hebrew -- enough to understand basic, basic grammar, and how to spell. the stuff that seems to escape ICANT, but i digress.any bits of biblical hebrew that i have learned, where it differs, i have picked up in the process of researching for debates such as these. for instance, you will notice that at the beginning of this debate, i did not understand infinitive constructs either. since then, i have looked them up. so, really, in this case, i believe i will defer to your expertise wherever possible, even though we may differ in opinion on favoured translation. notice also that his examples do not include the one i listed in Message 73, which rather specifically applies to the discussion. (also that his examples come from the same book you linked. i did ask him to provide sources, but ah well. at least they are easily tracked down)Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, Then I suppose ראשית is not in the absolute following the noun קרבן in Leviticus 2:12.And wouldn't have been translated as "As for the oblation of the firstfruits". Sourceברא is not a noun.For ברא to be a noun it would need to be written מברא or it could become the person who does it in this form, שברא. SourceDo you have a source that says ברא is a noun. But when a word is connected to another word by a maqqef that is then one word. There is no maqqef connecting בראשית and ברא.Therefore it is not the same construction. I don't think a man that wrote without vowels would know what a preposition was. He did know what a prefix was because he used a lot of them.But since ץד an independent prefix (preposition) and was attached by a maqqef it became a prefix. It is relevant as they become one word. I am not blind yet and there is not a maqqef in Genesis 1:1 connecting the noun and verb as there as there is in Hosea 1:2.Therefore it is not the same construction. It is a primitive root verb. SourceAnd everytime it is in the construct it is followed by a noun with nothing between them. So you keep asserting. Present your evidence. I keep telling you that Moses wrote in Ancient Hebrew not English, or modern Hebrew. Ancient Hebrew did not have vowels.Ancient Hebrew used these consonants instead of vowels א ,ה ,ו ,י.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

while it's interesting that this is technically the absolute of the construct, it should be noted that this is still actually in a construct. it is not simply a random noun.in any case, please get with the program. this was my first counter-example in Message 67. and, as i wrote in Message 71, "it's sort of being used like an adjective, actually." note: not "as", but "like". uh huh. read it again. as i mention, not all constructs are pairs ("two or more nouns"). and i'm sure you can find a counter-example pretty easily -- for instance, any two nouns where the first one has some other kind of conjunction between them, such as a vav. it's an infinitive construct, which means that, yes, it's a noun. also incorrect. as i've demonstrated several times in this thread, infinitive constructs do not need prefixes. in fact, Message 107, the message you responded to with this post, contains one such example. okay, great. as i have asked you twice now, in Message 107 and Message 94, please explain why exactly you think it's a qal perfect verb in this context. that's going to require you to get your head out of your concordance and bible study tools, and actually make an argument about grammatical context.and remember, you have to do it without using the vowels. i have a source that renders it, in construct, as an infinitive construct. that source is orlinksy, quoting rashi, and can be found in Message 1. that you do not understand that infinitive constructs are also nouns is not my problem, as i have already posted links that happen to explain this in great depth. yes. not actually relevant. as your source writes above, "either by juxtaposition or by means of a maqqef". so the maqef is not actually relevant. words cannot express the facepalm here. stop pretending that you know more than the author, and that he wouldn't have know about features of biblical hebrew grammar derived in part from his work. splitting hairs, and irrelevant. it's a preposition. some prepositions are prefixes. some are not. and עד happens to be used quite frequently without a maqef. here's an example of one such usage.

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בְּזֵעַת אַפֶּיךָ, תֹּאכַל לֶחֶם, עַד שׁוּבְךָ אֶל-הָאֲדָמָה

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-- Genesis 3:19

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notice that the עד is not attached with a maqef (but the אל is). oh, and what tense is שוב in? yes, that's right. it's an infinitive construct. how about that? notice also, not that you care, but it also happens to take the same vowels as the time it appears next, in the other half of the verse. oh, and it happens to lack a prefix, as well.this isn't a particular contrived example. i looked up עד in my concordance, and simply picked the very first time it appears in the bible. the next example happens to use a maqef, and the one after it does not. i do not think a little dash is a good thing to hang your entire point on.oh, and while we're here, it's עדnot ץדdo you see the difference? if not, please endeavor to learn the difference between a final tsadi and an ayin. ץד is not actually a word at all, and can't be, because it uses a final character in a non-final location. okay, why? as pointed out above, genesis 5:1 has it as an infinitive construct. check your concordance. yes. an infinitive constructs are verbs that are nouns. it follows a noun that is typically only used in construct, in a grammatical way the generally begins a dependent clause. no. to you, moses wrote in nonsense. and that is precisely the point. you do not write in any language in the mechanical way that you dissect things. each word affects the next. and the previous. which is why i suggest you try it in english -- it's a language that is clearly not (entirely) nonsense to you. yet, reading it this way would turn it into nonsense.why, just right there, in that last sentence, i used a verb as a the subject of the sentence. one wonders how you think they spoke a string of consonants without vowels. not instead of. they are consonants (or semi-vowels). they make consonantal sounds. and you forgot ayin.but you evidently do not know what an ayin is. yet, you know more about hebrew grammar than orlinksy, and rashi, and moses.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, Talk about grasping for straws.ראשית follows the noun קרבן in Leviticus 2:12 which places it in the absolute. It is not a random noun or a noun in the construct. It is a noun that is in the absolute position to the construct noun preceeding it. SourceIF YOU CLICK ON THE SOURCE YOU WILL FIND A PICTURE WITH THE FIRST NOUN IN CONSTRUCT AND THE SECOND IN THE ABSOLUTE. I did read it again and it says.When two nouns appear together they are said to be in a "construct relation" to one another.When more than two nouns appear together they are said to be in "construct relation" to one another. The first noun in the chain is in the construct the rest are in the absolute. According to my Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon on page CXIII ברא is Kal perfect meaning create, form, make.בראי is Kal inf. constr. See above. I have a source that says it is not an infinitive construct. See above. It is very relevant. There is no two nouns in juxtaposition (side by side) and there is no maqqef.It is actually relevant. If ברא was connected to בראשית with a maqqef they would be considered one word which would put בראשית in construct to אלהים. I was under the impression that preposition was an English word. English did not exist in Moses lifetime. So how would he have any knowledge of a preposition? It is relevant as the maqqef combines the words. On page DCCIV in my Lexicon שובו is an imperfect plural masculine. I can't find בראי which my lexicon says is infinitive construct in Genesis 5:1 in my Hebrew Bible. Well ברא is not an infinitive construct in Genesis 1:1. Well the noun it follows is in the absolute because the verb follows it and has no noun to pair with to put it in the construct.
There is nothing in the text to put the noun or the verb in the construct except your imagination. But my Hebrew Bible is not written in English. I know that ברא is not an infinitive construct in Genesis 1:1.I know that בראשית in Genesis 1:1 is not in the construct.I actually believe Moses wrote something similar to my avatar. I couldn't find a code to put it in the post but I am looking for one.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

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But my Hebrew Bible is not written in English.

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My understanding is that he's asking you to dissect an English sentence the way you are dissecting the Hebrew one. You would be using a dictionary to tell you the meaning and usage of a word without taking into account the surrounding words and how the word is used in the sentence.The same issue I had with Peg and yom.

I have recommended this same source and have found it helpful for conveying concepts. But here it is imprecise and misleading.It is extremely easy to find counter-examples of two nouns juxtaposed where they are NOT in construct relation. For example:
Gen 1:5 "and then God called to the light ‘Day,’ and to the darkness He called ‘Night;’ and then there was evening, and then there was morning, day one. "
Gen 1:11 "And then God said, ‘Let sprout the earth, grass, herb sowing seed,"Unfortunately, I haven't seen a free internet source that compares to the quality of the leading textbooks (Ross, Kelley, Waltke & O'Connor), except perhaps for old public-domain texts such as the classic GKC. I agree with you that ברא is not a noun in Gen 1:1, but not for the reasons that you give.Arach and I agree that ברא is a noun (an infinitive construct) in Gen 5:1, where it has the same consonants but different vowels. The maqqef is optional. It doesn't change the meaning. Ancient Hebrew did have vowel sounds. These were transmitted orally until the Masoretes settled on a system to write them around the consonantal text. I agree that some of the vowel sounds may have been corrupted through centuries of oral tradition. But i also admit that the Masoretes understood biblical Hebrew much better than I ever will, and were much closer to the oral tradition than i will ever be. So I will unapologetically accept the vowels in the MT, unless there is very good reason for changing them.Edited by kbertsche, : clarified translation

I think you mean בראו , not בראי . The infinitive construct can be spelled either בראו (the "full" spelling) or ברא (the "defective" spelling). The meaning is the same. Long vowels in Hebrew can be noted either by vowel-points or by the explicit use of an optional "Mater Lectionis" consonant. This is related to what you said in Message 113: "Ancient Hebrew used these consonants instead of vowels א ,ה ,ו ,י." But they didn't do this uniformly; they could spell it either way.

Hi kbertsche, Nope, I was using a magnifying glass and it is definitely a yud.I checked again and there is none ending with a vav.My lexicon was printed in 1966 in the UK.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi kbertsche, Can you present a noun in the Biblical Hebrew that is in the construct without a noun being in the absolute following it or connected by a maqqef?BTW in Genesis 1:5 the noun light is not in the absolute to God as it has a lamed putting it in construct with the noun day.In Genesis 1:11 why can't the nouns grass, and herb be in the absolute to earth? Why do you believe ברא is not a noun in Gen 1:1?In Genesis 5:1 you believe it is an infinitive construct because of the vowel pointings provided by the Masoretes. Those were not provided by the author. Yes it is optional but when applied the two words become one. Would you also agree that the Jewish Scribes that translated the Hebrew into the Greek LXX were a lot closer to the oral tradition and original text than the Masoretes?The LXX has been supported by the DSS in recent years.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."