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Question on the Pirke de R. Eliezer
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by africurious: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: [qb] To Tukuler: I totally with your philological assessment of the word sh'hhar, even though many Biblical scholars today including Jewish ones obfuscate or distort the definition to mean 'dark' (whether unwittingly or not). I've noted that David Goldenberg too is guilty of this in his book, [i]The Curse of Ham[/i] which I cite many times. The book is actually quite accurate with the exception that he translates sh'hhar to mean 'dark' instead of black which is why he mistranslates texts describing Egyptians as "dark" instead of black. Yet I've noted in extra-Biblical poetry such as that found in the Mishnah which makes use of the word sh'hhar to describe things like the late evening . Obviously if sh'hhar does mean 'dark' it describes a [i]specific[/i] type of darkness to being that of a night sky. [/qb][/QUOTE]I too agree with tukuler that there is a deliberate attempt to change the meaning of shehor. Some scholars are say it can mean dark as in a white person with a tan, and that is just plain nonsense. If it's meant to denote dark then it's a very dark color as is shown by the dark things to which it's applied, ex: late evening (as you point out) and wine. I'd also point out that Goldenberg has it wrong with some of the early arabic quotes too. In a couple of the quotes where he shows the arabs to describe themselves as white and to glorify white complexion, they actually do no such thing. Scholars like to translate the arabic "bayad" as meaning white. However, as was pointed out in several esteemed arabic medieval sources, including the well-known classical arabic lexicon Lisan al-Arab, "bayad" as applied to complexion means black but connotes luminosity of complexion/clearness/purity (which is supposed to be a reflection of purity of character/morals/etc.). Whenever "bayad" is applied to whites, the word "humra" (literally "red") is always applied as a qualifier. This is not totally Goldenberg's fault as he takes the english quotes from other scholars like Bernard Lewis. And that's the issue--if there are highly respected scholars like Lewis incorrectly translating words then it's hard to buck that trend. These mistranslations are deliberate too. Many scholars cannot see how it could be that certain ancients are described as black or anything near it so they come up with various explanations to alter the meaning to reflect what they think is "right" (or they just say the person(s) described was a slave). [/QB][/QUOTE]
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