basic reading of genesis 1:1

{Crappy content hidden - Adminnemooseus}ABE: Since all languages are meant to solve the same problem amongst the same critters it would seem logical to conclude that all languages are equally complex; and this, of course, is exactly the case. Perhaps you could provide some evidence that shows English to be the most complicated language ever 'invented', or even give us some sense of the standard by which you're judging linguistic complexity. The people of the ancient world were anything but simple. If you spend time with children, and compare what they know to what was known by the ancients, you will see that there is simply no comparison; few kindergartners, for example, have even a superficial grasp of farming and agricultureeven most modern farmers, dependent on their machinery and technology, could not match wits with the ancients' intimate knowledge of crop growing. So, once again, offering up some evidence of why these folk were 'simple people of which most could not match our kindergardners [sic], much less a fifth grader' might help us understand the reasoning on which you've based these claims.JonEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Hide crappy content.Edited by Jon, : ExpansionEdited by Jon, : No reason given.

I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. How are you measuring the complexity of the language? I'm familiar with the language in the KJV. What about it? Nor do they get more complex. You'll have to make a case for why 'inventing tractors' is the standard by which we should judge the agricultural IQ of farmers. Very good for you. But how is this related to the knowledge of the ancients? As complex as English by all meaningful measures. I'm not going to PM you a reply to a public discussion; but we are off-topic, and if you'd like to continue with this discussion, please feel free to start a thread and I'll meet you there.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Sorry, but all the evidence indicates that children learn their parents' language with roughly the same amount of difficulty and in roughly the same amount of time, whether it's English or Quechua. The rules in English are as good as in any other language. Well, this is a different issue; you're getting into artificially modified language, which, like anything intentionally invented by humans, can vary in complexity and difficulty to learn, cf. making a wheel versus building a computer. I haven't followed much of your debate, but in what way is understanding the difference between using grammar and describing grammar relevant to the argument?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Such as?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Where did you find that printed with fs? That is very much not accurate. The letter used is the long-s, and looks like ſ, not f.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Well that entirely depends on the similarities to the L1 and the intelligence of the learner. Very well. I won't doubt you on your knowledge of Hebrew. I guess complexity isn't even the issue here, it is just whether or not the descriptions scholars give of Biblical Hebrew grammar are accurate or not (regardless of how 'complex' that makes Biblical Hebrew). I don't know anything about Biblical Hebrew, but for now I'd trust your judgement that those descriptions are accurate. If Biblical Hebrew clearly has a grammatical category that ICANT is claiming didn't exist, then he's just full of shit. Well I thought so myself... but meese will be meese, as they say.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Well, while it may be theoretically possible to have a language without infinitives or subordinate clausesthough that would requite increased complexity elsewhere, one merely needs to look at the Biblical Hebrew to determine whether or not it possesses these grammatical features in trying to discern whether the authors knew of these things.Overall, the more poetic authors tend to be rather knowledgeable in linguistic matters, much more so than ICANT has shown himself to be for sure.JonEdited by Jon, : clarity

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Sorry, Egyptian hieroglyphs is not a language; it is a writing system. I guarantee you, few if any slaves adopted any type of writing system in the ancient world. I've never heard of these languages you describe that make due with only one or two consonants; sounds like rubbish to me. Of course it wasn't; the writing system of Egypt was a mixture of phonetic, pictographic, logographic, ideographic (to name a few) methodologies.Besides, what does it even mean to have 'pictures with words under them'? If the pictures are the writing, how are the 'words' underneath represented?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Honestly, after reading his post through again, I'm not even sure. He began talking about Egyptian hieroglyphs, then started mentioning things about alphabets and 'aleph' letters, etc.Best I can think is that he believes the Egyptians used some sort of pictogram-only system, under which they wrote wordsusing more pictures no doubt. Of course, you already demonstrated why that is false, as you've shown that certain hieroglyphs represented phonetic values, and so the hieroglyphic system wasn't simply pictographic.Hopefully, he'll come by to clear up the confusion.JonABE:Interestingly, I have no idea how ICANT feels Egyptian hieroglyphs to be relevant to a discussion on reading Genesis, which is written in Hebrew. Edited by Jon, : oops...Edited by Jon, : ABE

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

As far as I know, Biblical Hebrew is written with an alphabet, where the symbols have no pictographic significance and are instead purely phonetic. Whatever symbols the Hebrew-speaking people borrowed from the Egyptians, they incorporated them into a system which was entirely phoneticnot pictographic. According to that chart, aleph has no pronunciation, which is just false.

quote:

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Wikipedia on Aleph:

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In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter represents either a glottal stop, or has no pronunciation besides that of the vowel attached to it. The pronunciation varies among Jewish ethnic groups.

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You should avoid citing sources that are so demonstrably wrong.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Good thing I never said that it was. Too bad you don't know how to read your own sources. According to your source (PDF), the modern value of Aleph is silent. This is demonstrably false, as are other claims on that bogus little cheat sheet you linked to. That, of course, is false. The Hebrew language used in the Bible most certainly had vowelsall languages have vowels.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Yup, and by that standard the spoken Biblical Hebrew and the written Biblical Hebrew are two different languages; which is whyas has already been pointed out to youpretending they are equivalent in every regard leads to crappy unsupported conclusions.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr