Genesis 16:11 - "Hineich harah" Believe it or not, these are the literal words of the Holy Scriptures, the words of the Angel of the Lord proclaiming to Hagar that she was pregnant with Ishmael. English could learn a thing or two from the simplicity of Hebrew. Note the complete lack of verbs and syntax, there aren't even any nouns in this proclamation, yet it gets the job done. Thus, Hebrew is not unlike the language of Cro-magnon man, a certain divine "booga-booga" language...Tarzan would be a quick learner, I think...Stallone too...and maybe Ali-G.So let's take a look at some ways this could be applied to English. Instead of saying, "The cheese is old and moldy. Where is the bathroom?" we could just say, "Behold, cramps, toilet!" Or perhaps applied to our theological arenas we could do away with the complex jargon altogether. Let us consider the quote so popular it should be a song title, "Calvin obviated all manner of subordinationism by giving full weight to the absolute equal ultimacy of each of the distinct hypostases of the ontological Trinity." This, in Hebrew-talk would simply be, "Behold, one God. Three."
We see this at work in other languages too. Check out my main man Snub-nosed's reflections on "All your Amos are belong to us". You'll have to excuse the randomness of this post: it's almost midnight, I've been studying Hebrew for way too long already and see no end in sight. Or, in Hebrew that last phrase would be "This substance time is 30 and 5 (minutes) upon new day. I have studied exceedingly greatly, (waw consecutive imperfect) I see little of completion yet."
Well, enough procrastinating...all my grade are belong to Dr. Enns.
