[Avodah] What does hamelech hakadosh mean?

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 10:53:49AM +0300, Marty Bluke wrote:
: ...                                             The Beis Yosef
: comments that the same problem should apply to hamelech hakadosh and
: yet Rashi doesn't say anything. He quotes some who say that Rashi
: understood that hamelech hakadosh should be understood as 2 separate
: titles, the translation would be "the king, the holy one". The
: standard translation is "the holy king" (the 2 words are 1 phrase)
: like hamelech hamishpat the king of mishpat.

This is all over Hebrew. HaKel haGadol haGibor vehaNora -- one noun and
three adjectives, or four nouns?
Boneh Y-m could be "the Builder of Y-m" or "who is building Y-m".
HaMotzi lechem min ha'aretz

I argued in early volumes of Avodah that this is for a fundamental
philosophical reason. That lashon haqodesh intentionally treats
present-tense verbs, nouns, and adjectives as the same part of speach.

>From <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol05/v05n103.shtml#18> (16-Aug-2000;
before my quphs):
> I commented a while back that I'm not sure that parts of speech are as
> distinct in lashon hakodesh as they are in English. The example I gave
> was "haKel haGadol haGibor vihaNorah" which the Vilna Gaon takes to be
> four nouns, while others seem to assume haKel is a noun and the other
> three are its adjectives. My suggestion was that Hebrew is intentionally
> ambiguous on this point.

> There is a debate between Aristotle and Plato on the subject of
> definitions. According to the former, when you call something a "horse"
> you are really *describing* the object, saying that it shares a list of
> properties with other "horses". A word that we consider a noun, therefore,
> is merely shorthand for a list of adjectives.

> Kantians would discuss whether a noun refers to the thing itself or
> our perceptions of it. If the latter, then it really is a collection
> of adjectives.

> I'm suggesting that this ambiguity between noun and adjective in
> lashon hakodesh is because it is using nouns in the Aristotilian or
> Kantian-perception sense.


> I would like to add that the same motivation (if real) would apply to
> the ambiguity between "boneh" as a noun (builder) and as a verb (hu
> boneh achshav). The issue comes up in "boneh Y'laim" vs "boneih Y'laim",
> something some of us are discussing off the list. The former uses "boneh"
> as a verb, the latter uses it as a noun and then reconjugates it with a
> tzeirei to make it "the Builder of". But without that semichut to mean
> "of", there is an underlying ambiguity causing that machlokes.

> Lashon hoveh and adjectives are *supposed* to be one notion. "A is
> building B" and "A is the builder of B" both state the same relationship
> between A and B. English has two terms, but since Hebrew is describing
> the relationship and not the pair of objects it only requires one.

> It's a fundamentally different perception of reality.

Later in that thread, I noted that this continues to LhQ giving adjectives
a hei hayedi'ah along with the noun. Because it is also describable as
describing an object using a list of specifying nouns.

GCT!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A sick person never rejects a healing procedure
micha at aishdas.org        as "unbefitting." Why, then, do we care what
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